21st May 20XX
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have entered this record in my diary. After all, this thing only exists for the most crucial events of my life. As I turn back the pages, I realise how narcissistic I have been all this time, how selfish, and perhaps I'll unapologetically continue to be. However, if anything, or rather if anyone is capable of monopolising my thoughts, it would only be this person, this once in a lifetime woman that I met, who made me fall in love with her within three seconds...
.
.
.
I slammed the car door shut as I stepped out into the rain and kicked the rear-side wheel with the tip of my boot. It had been a bad day all along. The Crosses had started taking action on all spies, the Fords were silent and underground, and the Red Phoenix and his now-wife were still on the run. So much for all the careful planning I did to drive a wedge between the two families.
I let the tiny water droplets drip down my face onto the ground, mimicking the role of the tears I had held back all this time. I couldn't give up- not after I had come this far. My parents gave up their lives to protect me from them. They placed all their hopes on me, and I could not fail them.
I was born with an extraordinary power, one that would aid me to become a great leader. At least, that was what our elders of the council told me. The king of the old, our ancestor, was the first person to possess that, and I the second, and everyone already viewed me as his reincarnation.
"Sir, this might take a little while to fix. Why don't you take some rest inside?" My chauffeur requested me while trying to fix the engine. Another text popped up on my phone screen, and the contents made me want to smash the screen to pieces.
"Lancelot Ford stepped down as head of the family. Landon Ford to be appointed as the next head. Ceasefire called between the two families."
-THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THAT MAN!
I pinched the bridge between my nose to try to ward off the impending headache. The sound of the raindrops falling on the road and the clang of my driver's tools engulfed the silence around me. I wasn't in the best of my moods, but those sounds were oddly comforting. I could feel my nerves calming. I needed to start from scratch again to bring them down.
"I'll need to get a mechanic, sir. I'll be right back."
The retreating sound of his footsteps on the water-laid road was the last thing I heard before the street went silent again, except for the harmonic thrumming of the rainfall.
A soft whimpering woke me up from my trance. An abandoned puppy was trying to seek shelter while stuck in a box at the corner of the street but failing miserably. Sympathy flickered within me for the tiniest of seconds before apathy replaced it. Being weak and helpless was a sin, not fate, and the best way to help was to let people fight their battles.
My eyes darted to the side when I noticed the figure of a woman approaching it. She scratched its chin before placing her umbrella over the box. The raindrops started drenching her clothes, making the fabric stick to her flawless creamy skin. Her smooth wavy blonde hair turned pointed at the ends as water started dripping down them. She pulled a small loaf of bread out of her grocery bag and broke it into smaller crumbs before placing it near the puppy. The scenery amused me, and I scoffed, looking the other way.
"You have got some problem with me?" She muttered without taking her eyes away from the animal.
Pretentious. Acting as if she cares only to feel good about herself.
"If you are so worried about the pup, why don't you adopt it? Why even bother to show it any hope only to crush it later?"
"I am not the one standing on the sides and preaching," she replied without a speck of contempt in the words. It was as if she wasn't offended in the least by my words.
I felt disgusted by people like her and their holier-than-thou attitude. They think they are better than the lot, that their actions would save the world as if they are higher beings than us. Fucking arrogant b-
She sighed as she continued, "I would rather help it wait for the right person to come and adopt it. I am not the one. I can't put it through the torture of living with me. The best I can do is make sure its wait is comfortable."
The words got stuck in my throat. As if, like magic, I forgot what I had intended to say. I was dumbfounded, and my eyes froze on her. I watched as her gaze never faltered. She never once looked up at me. It was as if she understood why I said that, what I had suffered through to become what I was, and she was telling me, challenging me, that she was a worse person to be with. She accepted her flaws- she didn't justify them and waited for someone to do the right thing. All my earlier thoughts of disgust suddenly convoluted into an alien feeling. It was as if someone had shattered the very core of my beliefs. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, the feeling of....
Guilt.
Her words weren't a challenge- they were a warning, and like every rebel that had always ignored the dangers of an adventure, I was sucked to her flame.
One...
She picked herself up and stepped away from the abandoned creature. Her drenched figure walked past me without batting an eye, and something took over me when I reached out and held onto her hand.
Two...
"Would you believe me if I told you I was the President?"
She looked at me as if I was some lunatic. She tried to pull her hand away from my grip, but I yanked her closer to me and looked into her ocean-hued eyes as I said, "I am the President."
Yes, this was a test. I knew already what had just happened to me, but I was determined to test those old beliefs.
Three...
"And I am the Goddess of calamity."
Three seconds. It took me exactly three seconds to fall in love with her.
***
I grazed my index finger over the contours of the piano and tapped on a random white key. The classroom had a cosy environment, very much like what you would expect of her. The doorknob clicked, and she entered inside but halted in her steps when she took note of me.
"You are here again, Mr Hunt. I thought I requested you to stop doing that."
The last rays of the setting sun penetrated the window glass and fell right on her figure, giving her hair a golden look like that of an angel. My curious gaze made her uncomfortable as she shifted her weight on her other leg and pushed a strand of her golden locks behind her ear.
One would call me insane for having fallen in love with this woman by happenstance on the road over a matter of three seconds, but my life so far had been anything but ordinary. Her confidence in her flaws made me want to break her and then pick her pieces up so she could see she was wrong about herself. That I was worse than her, and someone like her was the only person who could fit in with me. Someone who wouldn't try to fix me, who wouldn't lecture me, but just make sure to make my miserable life comfortable.
"Do I seem like a person who would heed to requests, Suana?"
Suana Clives worked as a music teacher in this private school where "incidentally" I had acquired a recent stake. For starters, I knew that wasn't her real name, and she did a damn well job hiding her information. She was running away from her past, and as much as the better part of me kept screaming to steer clear of her, the mystery drew me in.
To be fair, since she hadn't been honest about herself, I decided to throw in a few lies of mine as well. I used one of my aliases. My name was Cayleigh Hunt, and I worked as an investor, apparently.
"Well then, this time, it is not a request. Stop trying to pry into my life." She didn't even give me as much as a glance as she stepped ahead and collected her music sheets, and picked up her clarinet case. "I hope I don't see you again, Mr Hunt."
And that was where she was wrong. I wasn't a gentleman. I didn't care about courtesies and manners. I wasn't a man of law either. There probably didn't exist a more selfish person than me, and that is what someone must become if they want to achieve what they wish, no matter the price.
I didn't care if I made her uncomfortable. I wanted her in my life at any cost.
"What would it take for you to have dinner with me tonight?"
She sighed and then replied, "Why do you have a problem accepting the fact that I am not interested? This is the sixth time you are asking me, and my answer will continue to remain the same."
I closed in on her and sat myself on the edge of the table. "You are making me curious, Suana. Continuous rejection will make me want to do a background check on you."
She was swift in masking her reaction, but it didn't escape me. I noticed that brief moment of nervousness. I had her there, her weakness. Her identity worked against her and in my favour.
"Five million dollars." She announced after a brief pause and a long sigh. "If you want to have dinner with me, give me that amount."
I was amused at that demand and immediately pulled out my pen and chequebook from the inside pocket of my blazer. I filled in the amount, tore the page and slid it across the table towards her.
She gazed at it and then back at my face in sheer disbelief. "So you just happen to carry around that booklet with you?"
"Pick a place for dinner, Suana. I'll make the reservation."
"Are you hoping to impress me with all the cash you are loaded with?"
The exchange was more entertaining than I had imagined it to be. While everything in my life was on fire right now, I could push it all into the background when I was with her.
"I wasn't the one who flashed the money first, sweetheart. You made the demand."
We stared at each other, none of us ready to give in. She finally broke the staring contest with a sigh and picked up the cheque, and tore it into two pieces.
"I don't eat outside. Spaghetti at my place- take it or leave it."
Things were escalating faster than I had expected. For a single woman to be inviting a man right into her house was a bold feat. She was probably an idiot, a fearless woman or both, and either worked just fine for me.
...or not.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" I spit those words out as I coughed and took another sip of water.
That spaghetti was AWFUL! Garbage would taste better than that!
"I never claimed to be a professional chef," she mumbled nonchalantly, shrugging her shoulders.
"You don't need to be a professional to make spaghetti! My cat could do a better job than that!"
Her eyes twinkled in delight at the mention of my cat. Well, not exactly my cat. It was just a stray cat that I happened to feed most evenings.
She lifted her fork to her mouth to take another bite, and my insides curled at the thought of the horrible taste. My hands moved on instinct to grab her wrist as I pulled the plate away from her with my other hand.
"I can't allow you to consume that experiment-gone-wrong while on my watch. I am ordering something."
"I'll pay."
She let out those words, and I turned around and narrowed my eyes at her while the barely audible voice of an employee from my favourite Chinese food place resounded on the other end of my cellphone.
"What did you just say? You are being delusional if you think I will let you pay for anything."
She lazily placed her elbows on the top of the table and, resting her chin over her palms, replied, "I am not going to be owing anything to you, mister. It's that, or the date ends now, and you can take your ass back to whatever rich hole it came from."
That was funny coming from the woman who demanded five million dollars from me for a date. She did tear that cheque off though. She was probably trying to come off as a gold digger to scare me away, but honestly, I wouldn't have cared if she even was one, as long as she'd continue to give me that sass.
Yes, meeting her taught me one thing - obedience was overrated. There wasn't a better turn on than a woman who wasn't scared to tell you off to your face.
I hung up the phone, then sighed and gestured my hand towards her as I asked, "Where's the apron?"
***
"I can't believe this was made in my kitchen." she moaned as she took another bite of the spaghetti I had made. "You really need to stop flashing your money and show off these skills instead if you want to impress a woman!"
I felt like my ego was inflated by another few inches. Cooking wasn't something I enthusiastically learned; it was a skill borne out of necessity. As a child, having constantly lived amongst people I couldn't trust-I needed to be careful about the food I was consuming too. It was thus often most convenient to make my own. However, I had never made food for another soul before. But the situation here called for it. I definitely wasn't the kind of man to silently endure any horrible cooking of the woman he was attracted to.
Or so I thought...
There I was six months later, mindlessly munching on an egg sandwich made in the exact horrible manner as the spaghetti she made on our first date- perhaps even worse- but my taste buds could hardly sense anything because my eyes were riveted on the sight of the breathtaking woman opposite me, sitting on the stool practising her flute while clad in my white shirt from last night, which was much too big for her frail figure. She was sweating with me just a few hours before, but she still smelled like flowers; her hair was a mess, but they still appeared like precious strands of gold.
At that moment, I longed to be the flute that was getting caressed by her gentle lips and frail fingers. She had the talent to produce music out of a wooden piece, much like how she could make me want to become a better man as well. She was the gust of wind to my flute that blew away the silence in my stale life.
"Don-Don't eat that!" She cried as she ran around the table to my side. Grabbing hold of the plate, she pulled it away from me and dropped them into the sink. "I was trying to make you something nice, but it turned out bad again. I'll fix you up something different and easy, just ho-"
I cut her off in the middle as I grabbed her by the back of her neck and yanked her towards me for a kiss. Her fingers clenched on my skin, and the strength slowly left her body as her grip loosened. It only took me a few weeks to break past the cold and distant facade she had put up. She was the kindest soul I had ever met, and I had not the faintest idea why she didn't think any better about herself. She would ask me about my meals; she would worry about me if I got hurt; at times, her presence felt like a dream, like something that wasn't supposed to exist. If this was true, then I had probably already sucked up a lifetime's worth of luck.
And that would mean something terrible was about to happen.
I didn't try to pry into her past more. I wanted to respect her privacy, and I knew I could handle whatever would be thrown at me. What really frightened me was the thought that if my life would ever catch up to her and cause her harm.
***
"Really, Cayleigh? I told you no expensive gifts." she stood on the doorstep of her classroom where I had just gotten her piano replaced. She told me about a note missing or something, so I did what I was good at, spending on her.
"It was just an impulse buy, you know. I wanted to put it in my living room, but after I bought it, I realised there's no space for it, and the company takes no returns. So really, I am just giving you the leftovers."
"Yeah, right, leftovers." she crossed her arms over her chest and gave me the most adorable knowing smile.
I grabbed her hand and dragged her with me towards the piano stool. I seated her there and then placed a kiss on her neck while tightly clenching my arms around her. "I really don't get it, you know. I work hard for whatever money I have, and it makes me the happiest to make you happy with it. Then why am I not allowed to spend any on you?"
"Because..." she stood up and turned towards me and continued, "You know I can't-"
Before she could complete her statement, the sound of the glass window shattering interrupted us. It took me a second too long to realise that it was a gunshot. I instinctively grabbed her head and shielded her, and we crouched down. My eyes darted across her body to check for injuries, and that was when I noticed the red darkening spot on her waist. My insides curled as I thought of the worst. I could feel my fingers shivering and my eyes burning. I knew not when my men barged inside the classroom and pulled us out of there. I only returned to my senses when I woke up in a hospital room.
"Suana, where's she-"
"Sir, she's in surgery right now." My secretary replied.
My heart sank as I heard those words. The fears that I had been keeping at bay, all of them suddenly had resurfaced and hit like a hurricane.
I swear to God if anything happens to her-... If-...
I was lost for words. I didn't know how to imagine my world without her.
If there is a God out there, please, please save her. I'll leave this life behind and go far away with her. I don't even want any of this! Who cares about some 700-year-old story!
After another twelve hours of torturous wait later, I finally heard the news I had wanted to.
"She's out of danger now..."
I felt a surge of relief through my body. I had to take a step back to balance myself and lean on my secretary's shoulder.
"...and so is the baby."
A baby?
Suana's... pregnant?
Am I going to be a... father?
It felt like a divine sign, as if I was being given a way out and a refresh at life. I could leave everything behind right now and go away with her. I felt the other expensive gift I had purchased for her, along with the piano, in my jacket pocket- that tiny piece of stone that could bind us together forever. All that I had done so far for my clan was because I had no purpose yet. I kept telling myself that my parents wanted it too, but somewhere in my heart, I knew that all they ever wanted for me was happiness. My child wasn't even born yet, and I could already not stop thinking about how to keep it safe.
.
.
.
"Where the hell is she?" I yelled as soon as I entered her room. Her bed lay vacant, the machines disconnected, and her belongings were gone. I glared at my secretary as I barked my orders, "Find the people who took her away, NOW!"
"Sir, there is something that you should know..."
I gave him a confused look, to which he handed me a folder. I hurried to look at the contents, and the first page had me at my wit's end.
Suana Clives...
No, Sharon Cross. The Silver Hawk from the Order.
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!
"Sir-"
All this time, these months... A lie...?
"Sir..."
It can't be! Of all the people, how could I-
"Sir Gilaan!" My secretary's voice woke me out of my trance. It had been a while since someone called me by that name. I had gotten used to hearing my alias from her mouth. "We confirmed that the attack from yesterday was organised by The Order."
I clenched the sheets inside the folder containing all information about her. I felt like a thousand nails had been hammered into my heart. I had become immune to pain and misery now. All I wanted now was payback- Payback with a heavy interest.
"Find this woman, alive or dead."
.
.
.
.
***
Leander
I gently caressed his smooth silver hair that shimmered brightly under the lamplight. I put a blanket around him and gently pulled the old journal from under his sleeping face on the table, the pages slightly wet from the silent tears he cried on reading them.
Seydon and I went back to their old hideout a few days later. While mostly everything of use was either vacated or burned, we did manage to salvage this diary.
His father's diary.
I stared at his sleeping face and sighed, recalling that ugly day. I pitied him, this cursed child. Conceived out of love but born only to be hated.