“I hope you change your mind, but I support your decision.”
The nurse comes in and that means it time to go.
“I will be back tomorrow,” I promiose.
“Bring that kid of yours to see me again.”
I smile at that. “I will.”
I giving the nurse a polite nod and then I leave.
Every time I walk past this section I remember that last night I saw Olivia. I knew it was going to be hard but I didn’t know it was going to stay with me and haunt me.
I thought when you do the right thing it should feel right.
I don’t, and all I can do is remind myself that she should do better than being with a man like me.
I knew I was never going to be able to keep her.
Every time I looked at her, I knew it. Even when she unlocked my heart I allowed myself to love her.
I knew I couldn’t do it. But I did it anyway.
I used to think Gabriella was it for me. I couldn’t imagine feeling this way again.
People think you find love again to fill the hole your first love might have left behind. But that’s not what happens. The same way there will never be another Gabriella, is the same way there will never be another Olivia.
Two different women who had a massive effect on me. Neither ever belonged to me, even if I called them mine.
Like Gabriella, Olivia was my weakness and the same thing would undoubtedly happen again to her.
Whether my enemies come for her to punish me, or I do something to mess it all up. I would ruin us.
Being with me would be the death I spoke her.
It would be destruction and the end of dreams. The killer of hope and wishes and life.
That is the life I have chosen as Pakhan, whether it chose me or I chose it.
That is who I am. Aiden Romanov.
* * *
This is the first Syndicate meeting we’ve had this month and it’s probably the most interesting since Eric Markov is joining us via a video call.
With the exception of Maksim, all the bosses and their counterparts are here. that makes eight of us and Eric.
It’s been a two weeks since the show down in Brazil and his rescue. He shaved so he really looks young, like a kid although he’s thirty. He’s a kid to me since I’m thirty-six.
It’s his tattoos that make him look as hard as the rest of us.
He’s just spent the last hour briefing us on the Order and what he went through. We’ve just been listening.
“I tried to escape several time but I couldn’t,” he says. “I knew I’d be needed to clear a few things up but every time I tried to leave the punishment got more severe, as did the torture. I couldn’t have gotten out of there without you guys.”
“Well this wouldn’t have happened without you,” Massimo motions his hand to all of us in the room. “We wouldn’t have known there were more people involved in our fathers deaths and I wouldn’t have reformed the Syndicate and lead it. I think now that we you wrote the letter everything is now resolved.”
“I wished I’d done more than just write that letter,” Eric says. “It’s not my style to run away when danger is on the horizon. I had to, or at least I thought I had to. the weapon my grandfather designed was powerful and I realized why he abandoned it. he didn’t want it falling in the wrong hands.”