ALEKS

Since I was clearly being considered a flight risk, I was forced to leave the children asleep at the cabin with Lander and Leukas’ parents while Leukas drove me home so that I could pack for our journey to Leukas’ home, where ever that was. I had no choice in that either and the whole situation was driving me crazy. I hated that once again, my life was not completely mine.

The time was five-thirty-four am and the sun was rising, a slight drizzle cooling the air as the car glided along the road towards the cottage I had managed to secure with Lander’s help, six or so years back. The cottage had become a home for my little family and the only secure one I’d ever had. Leukas had been driving for a while but the tension in the car was still as thick as it had been when we had left the cabin, the sound of the wipers the only semblance of life in the car. His anger was like a blanket, encompassing the whole car in its heat and oh so palpable. His body was also extremely tense, as if he sat with an enemy. His long fingers were encased in black gloves and placed firmly on the sleek steering wheel. The gloves were a new barrier between us. I was no longer the exception. He had to protect himself from my touch just like he did to the whole world’s.

I sighed to myself. Leukas has made it more than clear that he had no desire to engage with me. I rested my face against the window and watched the droplets of rain slide against the glass windows as my mind drifted.

I remembered the exact day I first saw Leukas. Even he didn’t know about it but I had marked it down at the center of my brain. I might not have had an eidetic memory like Leukas or my kids did but I had a pretty great one and the date of 18 August 10 2013 was one I’d never forget.

***PAST****

My father letting me go to university for my final year was his first and only good deed towards me. Maybe somewhere in his stone-cold heart he felt guilty for selling his daughter to the highest bidder. Maybe he wanted to give me a taste of the freedom I’d never had before. I’d never done things that kids my age were doing. It wasn’t long before I found out that that to was another selfish deed on his part.

I was born to Pakan Ludwik Brigadier the Third, the leader of the fifth biggest mob in Russia and Brigit Lee, a North Korean wannabee model who had fallen for the psychopath who had refused to see her as anything but one of his most loyal whores. My birth had been highly anticipated by my father after a series of miscarriages by my mom, so the disappointment that my father experienced when he found out I wasn’t a boy was great. Since I hadn’t been born a boy, he endeavored to make me a man, child that I was.

He’d hired the best trainers for me, trainers in all forms of martial arts, jujitsu, karate, kung-Fu, Krav-Maga and boxing. I did them all when I was six-years-old. Kendo too. At age thirteen I trained with one of Russia’s private armies, and when I was sixteen, I actually went to a one-man boot camp in Japan where I was trained by the best martial art fighters money could buy. I was honed into the deadliest weapon in Russia there. My father used to say to me: “Your body doesn’t control you. Your mind does. It doesn’t matter what your body looks like, a girl’s or a boy’s, I will make a man out of you Aleksander. And I will make you the best man.” He saw something in me that made him invest so much into my transformation from a simple child to whatever he needed me to be.

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I trained hard and fought harder. I became a perfect killing machine. Any misdemeanor on my part was paid for with my mother’s blood and tears. Once upon a time I was touched by her blood and tears, so I thrived, I fought, I killed and I destroyed. And soon all that destruction and power became my entire identity. I cared about little else. I lost my soul. The conscience that once whispered in my ear and made me sick to my stomach at the sight of a life gone by the power of my hands was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

It was addicting; the power that is. The fear that my name invoked became thrilling to me. Men trembled before me, and it was such a heady feeling after being so hurt and powerless in my father’s care. Maybe he finally saw that the less my mother failed to fight or show any care for me, the less I cared about his hold over me. He saw that I would break free of him, because in no time my name and his were held in the same level of regard and fear. He saw that the childish love and devotion I’d had to a mother who didn’t care about or love anyone but him was fading as I became more jaded and revered by everyone around me. My father grew wary and threatened by me then.

He decided to get rid of me when my mother gave birth to their first son Adrian, an innocent soul I would have done anything to protect from my father. I hated my mother then. I hated her obsession with the monster who was my father. I hated that she’d brought in another child for him to ruin. So I made a deal with my father. A deal for Adrian’s future. I would do whatever he said as long as he gave his word that Adrian would never be forced to do all I had been forced to do. He would be allowed a somewhat normal childhood. My father had never been one to break his word.

He fixed my marriage with his associate’s son, Alexei, when I was twenty. Alexei and I were to be married when I turned twenty-two so I managed to convince my father to let me go to University for the year before my fate. I had been taking computer engineering courses online for two years and I had managed to get my bachelor’s degree. I wanted to pursue another degree and live…. My father had only allowed my online lessons because they benefited him as I had become more adept at computers and therefore handled more of his interests in that regard. He had grown to trust me more than anyone else. Me going to college was also one more thing to add to the portfolio he wanted me to have in order to get potential husband bids despite the fact that he had already promised me to another. He liked the thought of many people wanting me; his possession. Somehow he let me go. He used his connections to get me a last minute place in Stanford; that too during the academic year, he paid for my school fees, bought me proper girl clothes and he got me a fancy three-bedroom apartment accompanied by a car. A very healthy bank account was also made in my name. It was a life any normal girl my age could ever dream of. And I’d only have it for a year or so.