My world has been reduced to running through a dark forest and waking up in pain, my shoulder throbbing angrily.
The sound of the rain crashing on the roof seems endless, drowning out reality.
I try to move, even just my hand, but my body isn’t my own; it no longer obeys me.
All I feel is pain, a hazy pain that stains my reality with its black liquid, threatening to drown me for good.
The innkeeper is usually there when I wake up, but she doesn’t speak much.
That worried look in her eyes tells me all I need to know as I tether on the edge of reality, ready to plummet into the abyss at any moment.
She wipes my face with a cold cloth sometimes, but perhaps that’s also part of my dreams. I can’t imagine her giving enough of a fuck to do something like that.
All I know is that I don’t want to die.
Not like this.
Not without clearing my name, claiming my throne.
But I’m not strong enough to fight yet. I’ll have to bide my time.
My dreams aren’t all running through the forest.
Sometimes, real memories haunt me, muddying my shitty present with my shitty past.
Faces come back to me, conversations. Things could have been so different. But with parents like mine, every possible reality would’ve been fucked up either way—that much I’m certain of.
When I was younger, I let myself believe it could be different, that I had some control over my own life.
But what I wanted never mattered.
I was but a pawn in my parents’ twisted game.
When I met Annika, I thought I could finally have a normal life. That we could get away from it all.
It’s been three years since her death, but every little detail of our tragic love story will forever be burned into my memory like a permanent record.
The happy memories hurt as much as the reminder of her painful demise.
Annika didn’t care about my violent tendencies; she didn’t need my empathy. Born into the Russian mob, my dark-haired princess was well-accustomed to our nefarious life and its dangers. A Bonnie to my Clyde, we were going to set the world on fire; we were going to have it all.
Despite my displeased parents, we were married within a month.
“Too young,” everyone said, but I was done letting them control my life like they did my childhood.
However, Mommy dearest already had my perfect match all set up for me. “Don’t be silly, Dom. You can’t marry into the Russian mob.”
She laughed when I told them I was engaged. They had Don Greco’s niece lined up for me, “a harmonious merger of families,” my father called it.
I always blamed myself for Annika’s death.
We had two happy years of beautiful chaos that set my skin on fire and left me in a permanent state of arousal.
Once, I fucked her right there in a pool of someone’s blood, someone she had just stabbed. It was beautiful.
And then it was over.
I found her body dangling from the ceiling beam in our bedroom, a suicide note neatly stashed in an envelope.
