Forever Sinners, Anastasija N. [best color ereader .TXT] 📗

pondering. Once she started to analyze things, she quickly tended to overanalyze them.

Miss Sonja, who was busy shutting off the oven, sighed quietly. “As always, I would say. Better on some days, worse on others. Most of the time, he sat in his office. I don’t even know anymore how many times I had to rant and rave at him, because he would not go to bed and get some rest.”

“I thought so.” Liliana rubbed one hand across her face, suddenly feeling the tiredness fire back with double intensity. “Did you see his pipe? I can’t believe he still keeps smoking, even though the doctors have all told him that it would be for his best to quit. I told him to quit, that it’d be better on him, but he’s just so freakin’ stubborn.”

“A trait that I also see in you every day –”

Liliana shot a dry look at Miss Sonja. “Very funny.”

“– but there’s nothing that we can do about it. Telling him to quit will do nothing good. Your father needs to come to that decision by himself.”

“Yeah.” Liliana picked the spoon at the ice cream a little too hard. “You’re probably right.”

Miss Sonja turned around to her, the oven mittens already covering her hands. She looked at Liliana with a concerned expression, her eyes radiating nothing but warmth and compassion. “Your father doesn’t want you to worry about him. You know how he gets when someone of us worries too much about him.” She glanced at the clock and opened the oven with a mild smile at Liliana. “It's late, sweetie. You should go to bed. I’ll just take out the plate before I go to my room as well.”

But how could Liliana not worry? After all, he was her father. She lived with the fear and worry for him inside her chest every day, knowing that each hour could very well be the last. She saw him look worse with each passing day, could see his spirit fading from his eyes little by little, and it was torture for her not being able to do anything about it. Her hands were tied in that matter. Every people’s hands were tied. Money couldn’t make it better, power and influence just as little. Those things held no significance when it came to her father’s condition.

All of those things were of no importance to Liliana, they never had been. She didn’t want money and riches. She just wanted to belong, to know that she would be okay, and that she wasn’t alone.

And right now, she was just a daughter wanting for her father to always be there in her life.

“You’re right,” Liliana muttered and put her spoon into the sink before throwing the emptied ice cream tub into the trash bin. “I really could use twelve hours of sleep right now. Good night, Miss Sonja.”

“Sleep well, sweetie.”

.

 

.

 

berlin; germany – 00:19 { august 4th, 2015 }

The world in Apollo’s nightmare was shadowed and oppressive. Fire surrounded him, singeing his hair, scorching his skin, and the thick smoke made it hard for him to breathe properly. He tried to fight his way through the flames, screaming for his wife and his daughter, and when he found them, he saw that they were laying on the floor next to each other. The life drained from their eyes, blood pooled around them. Apollo felt the fire burning him alive, but it was nothing compared to the pain the picture of his lifeless family brought him.

Blood poured out of the wound beside his temple, the place where the bullet had penetrated his skull, and he didn’t even wonder why the hell he wasn’t on the ground. The wound was deadly. But he stumbled through the fire, his eyes no longer able to see anything but pure fire, the flames of hell that burned everything to ashes. Apollo clawed at his head, his fingernails scratching over his face, drawing blood as he begged for it to stop, as he begged for air and death. But the voices of his wife and his daughter wouldn’t leave him alone.

Your fault, his wife screamed into his ear.

You couldn’t protect us, Daddy, his little princess whimpered.

You failed us.

“Please, stop,” he sobbed into the darkness of the motel room he was staying in, and then the nightmare ended with a sudden flash. He shot upwards in his bed, breathing hard through a raw throat. Cold sweat trickled down his back.

Struggling to regain his breath, Apollo pulled his legs up and braced his arms on his knees. He lowered his head as he ran his hands through his hair, pulling on them to feel a shot of pain that woke him up some more.

It was the same every night.

Nightmares haunted him, robbing him of his sleep and making it so much harder for him to stay awake and functioning during the light of the day, which made him even lonelier than the darkness. Every night was the same hell, the same achingly familiar pain. It made him want to claw at his skin, peel it off his body just to have a little relief, to forget everything for a little moment and just feel the ache.

“Fuck,” Apollo mumbled and brought his palms to his face, clenching his eyes to chase away the pictures of fire and blood. He beat his fists down into the mattress and groaned in frustration, leaning over toward the bedside table, flicking on the light. As much as he wanted it to, the light didn’t help ease his anxiety, panic, and utter helplessness that the monsters of his nightmares brought him.

There had been a time Apollo didn’t believe in them – monsters. Sometimes, his daughter would wake from nightmares, screaming of them under her bed. Like all parents, Apollo told her they didn’t exist.

Except, monsters did exist. They didn’t hide under the bed, though. They stormed through the fucking door and stole away everything you loved. To defeat a monster, he had to become one, and he often wondered what kind of man he would be if they hadn’t robbed him of everything that night.

Snapping from his absent musing, Apollo rose from the bed and rummaged through his clothes hanging off the chair until he found exactly what he was looking for – a pack of cigarettes. Camel. He opened the small window, the only one in the room, and leaned forwards, taking a huge breath of the heavy air.

As he lit his cigarette with the lighter laying on the windowsill, Apollo closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his tired face. The stubble covering his cheeks and jaw felt rough and scratchy against his palm. Then, he snapped his eyes open and let his gaze drift toward the small coffee table whose surface was littered with tons of pictures, maps, a closed laptop, pencils, and an ashtray. The bottle of vodka he drowned yesterday still stood by the side of the table.

For two years, Apollo had been watching Ivan and Liliana Romanov parade the streets like Russian royalty, donating to the homeless of Saint Petersburg, all the while hiding their true ugly faces from the crowd. During that time, he’d gathered all information about them that was necessary for him to break through their defenses. He knew the way the alarm devices worked in their manor, he knew the schedule of Liliana Romanov inside and out. He knew when she had her dance classes or when she went to the beauty salon or in what kind of stores she used to buy her clothes. Apollo had everything that no one else had, and it was only a matter of time until he could get his hit.

Kidnapping Liliana Romanov wouldn’t be a piece of cake, Apollo was smart enough to admit that, but he had done things much harder than abducting a girl that didn’t even weigh the half of him.

Daddy’s girl was written all over her smiles for the camera. Apollo would bet all his money on the fact that she had never begged for a thing in her life, never felt pain or displeasure. A spoiled, naïve little girl, that was what she was, and seeing her father suffer when he’d notice her abduction, made Apollo look forward to the day it came true.

His gaze fell to a slip of paper on the table. The paper was of a gray shade, looking elegant and expensive, and the golden letters on it spoke:

 

We, the Romanovs, cordially invite you to the Masquerade ball which will take place on August 5th, 2015 at 6 p.m. in our manor ...

 

Apollo took a puff of his cigarette and ran a hand through his messy hair, his gaze resting darkly on the invitation.

He had it all perfectly planned out. He’d taken care of everything, every little detail had been taken into consideration. It was an operation, a mission that had one goal kill or maybe more at the end. The day Apollo would get his revenge was coming soon, and he couldn’t feel more excited about it. It was the adrenaline mixed with the incredible desire for revenge that had him so pumped, and perhaps that made him a fucking weirdo, but he couldn’t find the strength in himself to care about it.

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Publication Date: 05-21-2017

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Dedication:
To my dearest mother who means the world to me, and to my best friend Rebecca who's always putting up with me.