Siren's Song

PROLOGUE

"You can't save someone who wants to burn. But you can claim the fire."

I stepped into the world of numbers not because I loved them, but because I was running away. When your body and emotions are subjected to constant evaluation for years—on the ballet stage, at the easel in art school, in the tense glances of loved ones—you start dreaming of something constant. Something that doesn't have mood swings, doesn't betray you, and doesn't expect you to constantly burn yourself to ashes.

For me, economics became that safe haven. Excel columns were predictable. Numbers didn't lie. They gave me the illusion that if I just calculated everything correctly, no one could hurt me again. I wanted to become quantifiable, cold, immune to chaos.

My Aunt Basia, however, used to say I had a factory defect: I'm always drawn to wherever the fire burns hottest. And she was right. Because even the most precisely calculated algorithm surrenders when it comes to people who have black holes where their hearts should be.

I thought that by fleeing to Stockholm, I was leaving my past behind. I didn't know I was walking straight into the lion's den, and that the men who were supposed to be my saviors were holding the matches themselves.

My name is Justyna. And I've just stopped running. It's time to claim the fire.

CHAPTER I

I move my eyelids like butterfly wings... I must be dreaming, I need to wake up. I hear a sound, some strange noise coming from inside my head... yes, it must be in my dream, because I am dreaming... I'll open my eyes in a second and everything will vanish like another meaningless dream, like thousands of meaningless dreams. Just like pages in a child's coloring book.

I feel a chill penetrating every tiny corner of my body... A voice? Whose voice is that? Far away...? No, it's close... getting closer... Damn it, my eyes are so heavy... wake up! Where am I?

"Mme... please fasten your seatbelt."

A warm smile on the flight attendant's sweet face hurts my eyes.

"Seatbelt? What seatbelt? What am I doing here?" I mutter under my breath before snapping back to reality. "Ah, right, I'm on it."

Damn it, I'm on a plane. On this damn plane that's witnessing yet another one of my failures. I'm going back... no, I'm running away again. Repeating the exact same pattern. Only the places and the people change. Like an old, boring play in a provincial theater—even the poster stays the same.

"Just a little longer and we'll be home," the passenger sitting next to me says, turning her smiling face toward me.

"Yeah, just a little longer... home..." I try to return her smile.

I left behind something that shouldn't have happened, and someone who disappeared when he could have stayed... he should have stayed. Damn Per-Ola... no, it's my fault. I let the one person who had been by my side all this time walk away. I ruined everything again. It's too much... so many unspoken words. God! I'm so angry, I want to howl and cry at the same time. I shattered his soul into pieces... No! I won't go back there. I won't go back to Stockholm. It hurts... it hurts so damn much...

Those faces and names flashed through my memory, bringing tears to my eyes and contorting my face in a grimace.

The taxi pulled up with a hiss of tires on wet asphalt, leaving me alone with the sticky November dusk. It was just past four o'clock, and the sky was the color of an old, faded rag, barely distinguishable from the gray smudge of Wawel Castle looming in the distance. I didn't feel the cold outside; I only felt a chill within—the same chill reflected in the shining glare of the streetlights spilling over the wet cobblestones.