THE PREQUEL TO THE PAST

A scene was currently playing. A woman who seemed to be in her late thirties was on the floor with blood on her body, there was a young boy close to her who was crying hard, “Mum, please don’t leave me alone. Please, how can I live without you?”. This young boy right here was Andrew and since he called the young woman his mother, then that means there was more to his parent’s death than what was being told.

“I am sorry, Andrew. I didn’t intend to leave the both of you this soon, please don’t act out of impulse and run about finding out who our killers were. Just take care of your younger brother and if you can, please, don’t let your younger brother know about what has happened. With how intelligent he is, he would seek to go about finding out the culprit”, she says forcefully, seems like she didn’t have much time left from the way she was currently speaking. “Why? Why would someone want to kill you both?”, Andrew says almost screaming, as a man was currently a distance away from him lying down in a pool of blood, probably his father.

But his mother didn’t reply to his question and rather said, “I am sure you will grow up to be a fine young man. You will go through a lot of struggles, but I am sure you will overcome. I will forever love you my child”, and so she passes on, Andrew who was crying, cries more while his direction shifts ever slowly from the view of his dying mother to a place, but the view was blurry at this moment probably due to the fact that it was from Andrew's point of view since he was teary-eyed. Bit by bit though, the scene was starting to clear up and the silhouette of a person was getting visible, but we would not know who the person was as a phone rings at this moment to destroy this moment.

Both eyes were open as they stared at the ceiling of this apartment, ‘A dream, huh?’, the person thought, but his thought didn’t last much as he turned to pick up the phone which was still ringing.

“Hello”, a familiar voice says, to which another familiar voice answers from the other end, “Sorry, it seems like I woke you up”. “Hmm, no problem about that. It must be important so go on”, the very much recognizable voice says once again, this voice seems to belong to Andrew who has been shot by Williams and proclaimed dead to the whole world, how manage he was alive and communicating to the same Williams who had shot him, and what kind of plan did they make that made them perform such an act.

"All the pieces are in place already", Williams says from his end. "Yeah, everything seems to have gone well without much trouble", Andrew replies. "It was mostly due to your involvement, though", Williams adds.

“I still don’t understand one thing though”, Williams asks after a moment of silence. “Which is?”, Andrew replies with a question of his. “Why did you say I should fire real bullets at you?”, Williams asks from the other end. “Ohh, about that. I wanted to check if I was worthy of being the boss of this organization, you know”, Andrew replies with a matter-of-fact tone.

“Always giving the most unreasonable answer”, Williams replies. “Besides, why did you make me kill your son?”, Andrew couldn’t help asking, “You know that I would kill him, and you still sent him to me”, he continued, trying to understand Williams.

“Stop calling that bastard my son, when you know he isn’t”, Williams says with an annoyed tone. “Hahahaha”, Andrew couldn’t help laughing, but he soon groaned in pain though.

“Serves you right”, Williams says. The way they were talking wasn’t like that of a boss and a subordinate, but that of two friends. It was a stark difference from when Andrew had been in the meeting. They were talking without any limits and making fun of each other over the phone.

Andrew doesn’t take Williams's words seriously, he just says, “You were the one who decided to raise him when I had wanted to kill him”. “I didn’t know he would end up the way he was. Maybe his mother left something for him so that he would know who his real father was, he has started behaving weirdly around me and has even started communicating secretly with James. He has no filial piety at all”, Williams replies. “And someone who can be easily influenced, isn’t worthy of being in the round table, that you have always explained to me and I now understand”, he ends it.

Time was being traced back to when Williams was in the room with Thomas advising him. “Although he has developed this organization from scratch, and done so much, doesn’t mean that he is untouchable right?”, Thomas asks. Williams kept quiet for a while before saying, “Yes, you are right. There is a way for him to be taken care of, after all, he has thrown his weight around for a while, but you have to do exactly as I tell you with no doubt”. “Okay father”, Thomas replies without any hesitation.

The time is being skipped a bit to when Andrew has just finished his killing spree at the big factory. He puts a call through to Williams, “Have you taken him there?”, he asks. “Yes, I have. I have someone that you would help me in taking care of though”, Williams says. “Someone you can’t take care of yourself?”, Andrew asks with his eyebrows a bit squinted. “Although I am not his biological father, it is still difficult for me to end his life. You should be meeting up with him soon”, Williams replies. “He still told me you would do something like this, soon enough. Ohh, seems like I see him already”, Andrew says and we are brought back to the present when Andrew and Williams are currently on the phone talking.

“So Ava still found a way to get something to her child huh? She has been intelligent after all, a pity she had to die early, she could have been of use”, Andrew just sighs as if reminiscing about the past.

“You have him already, so I don’t think she would be of any use”, Williams replies. “You know I had to go off the grid for a while, so he had to also stay away”, Andrew says.

“For you to send him away before you run your massacre, seems like you still don’t want him on the field”, Williams says. This was the third time they had talked about this 'him' in their conversation, who was the one they were talking about that they couldn’t reveal his name? “Yeah, he is not the field person. Although he is known to be the third person to be able to keep up with me, that’s not due to his fighting abilities, but because of his intelligence which has put me in shock more than once”, Andrew pauses for a while.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

So there seems to be a third person able to keep up with Andrew, this was shocking and has been kept a secret since James was shot before he could complete his statement. “He is better behind the scenes and developing the plans”, Andrew continues. “And you modify the plans”, Williams laughs while completing Andrew’s statement. Andrew joins in his laughter soon enough.

This sentence seems way too familiar, wasn’t this the same sentence used by Raphael during their live broadcast at the beginning just a day before his death by his lover? No, it just couldn’t be possible for such a thing to occur.

“Guess you have reunited with him already?”, Williams asks. “Yeah, he missed me so much that he hugged me so tight forgetting that I had these wounds on me”, Andrew replies.

“Andy, you know you should be resting”, a voice sounds out at this moment. “Speak of the devil”, Williams says on hearing the voice. “It’s Williams on the other line”, Andrew says in his defense.

There was only one person who had called him, Andy since the start of the story till this point. But the fact that this person was still alive was more shocking as he had already been proclaimed dead by the world and had been buried. He was the reason all these ruckus ensued in the country.

If he was still alive, it meant that James had died for nothing. Believing that he had achieved something, meanwhile, he didn’t do anything.

The view was being changed to that of the new entrant, and it was the lovable face that we all know, if it wasn’t Raphael, who could it be? “You can both talk later. But for now, you need to be resting”, Raphael replies.

Another backward scan was made, to when Andrew and Raphael had been in the car going back home from the interview.

“I am tired of all this peaceful environment. We should probably return to the other side”, Raphael says while his head is gently massaged by his brother. “It won’t be easy to do that. You know there is a plan to kill you in place. We should probably get rid of those people first. And I made a promise to keep off the underworld forever and without a good reason, I can’t go back”, Andrew replies.

“Hmm”, Raphael breathes out lightly. He all of a sudden sits upright before saying, “How about we use the plan of those people wanting to kill me in our favor?”. “How so?”, Andrew asks not fully understanding. “Let’s go somewhere nice. I would fill you in about it over there”, Raphael says. “Ohh, Okay then”, Andrew replies. So it turns out that Andrew wasn’t fully to blame for Raphael sleeping over.

Time is being brought back to the present as the call was currently on loudspeaker. “I am sure James always suspected his son till the end. He thought he was being set up”, Williams says. “Hehehe. Who wouldn’t be? Suddenly being called by a young man from the same organization who put him in such a state that he was, and then the same young man claims to be his son. A son he didn’t know he had. Even I would doubt it all”, Raphael replies in place of Andrew.

“Until his death, he still thought that Ava was still alive and was the brains behind the organization. He died a fool’s death”, Andrew says. They were all currently mocking a dead man.

“Hmm hmm hmm”, the sound of someone clearing their throat was heard. Andrew and Raphael turn to meet the new person, who happens to be Ella. The one thought to be dead also, but her death wasn’t announced in the news no matter what happened, so it was thought that her body wasn’t found until now.

“Since your big bro is back, you no longer have time for me right?”, she asks on entering the room. To which Raphael just replies jokingly, “I was trying to get him to rest”. “Hmm, I see”, Ella replies with a pout.

“But I still don’t understand why you allowed her to pass through the same situation if you knew you weren’t going to broadcast her death”, Williams asks. “It was just for fun, besides she is still needed in the normal world”, Andrew replies.

“Just for fun. Do you know how terrifying being in that situation was?”, Ella says still pouting. “I have been in worse”, Andrew says while throwing his face to the other side.

“Why did you have to use that method? There were other methods you could have used which I had suggested”, Raphael asks. “It’s linking with the rest part was critical. I didn’t want anything that would make the story a bit doubtful”, Andrew replies with little to no thought on the issue.

Ella was the critical link to this whole issue as Andrew had already manipulated the plan to the point where he had James and his group believing that they had something that could be used on Ella, so they used her to kill Raphael. Andrew was the one who also brought that drug into play which has been used and tested billions of times before being used on his brother. Raphael hadn’t even known that it was on that day that the plan was to be carried out. He was shocked after taking that drug and the fact that it affected him almost immediately. The reason he had asked "why" at that instant before his supposed death wasn’t because he felt he was going to die, but because he knew that she was part of the plan, but didn’t let him know. It was such a heartbreaker as he understood that Andrew was probably the reason she didn’t dare let him know. The call she had received when she got to the hotel came from Andrew and it was Andrew’s hotel after all, so it wasn’t hard to get such a thing in and get all the evidence cleaned up. Andrew probably thought it wouldn’t be right to let only Raphael go through that, that was why he did the same thing to Ella.

“Well then, let me allow you rest. It’s needed for you to recuperate”, Williams says. “Yeah, take care of yourself”, Andrew replies, after which the call was ended. Andrew takes a deep breath with a smile on his face then says, “You both can leave my room now, I need to rest”.

The moment Andrew says these words, Ella is the first to leave the room, although she understood that Andrew joked with her, she didn’t have the right to defy his orders. He was scary, and the only one who could handle him was Raphael, as that has always been the case.

Raphael on getting to the door says, “You don’t have to go through all this stuff alone you know”. “I do know. You have been the one doing things at your risk right from the beginning. If not you would have come with me when I wanted to leave the house after Mum and Dad’s death, rather than staying behind and figuring out who the killer was. Since you saw what happened”, Andrew replies. Raphael just smiles while he closes the door and goes out of the room.

It turns out the person he looked at, during the death of his parents was Raphael who was standing by the door staring at everything calmly, with not a single tears coming out from his eyes. A young kid of ten years staring at all these calmly was nothing short of being devilish.

Seems like there was more than what was being told in the beginning. There is more than what meets the eye in this story of brothers.

Well, we are going to find out about all that some other time, that concludes part one of ONE WEEK. Thanks for your time.