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Eight years ago
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Everyone at the nurses station had a hard time not staring as a young, dark-haired man stepped out of the elevator, his gaze trained on his phone as his fingers moved swiftly on the screen. He was extremely attractive, with ebony black hair, brilliant green eyes, and beautifully chiseled features. Despite his young age, the stoic look on his face as well as the way he carried himself lent him an unusual air of maturity. Unlike most eighteen-year-old boys, he neither swaggered nor walked with a slouch. Instead, he was perfectly poised, his pace steady, and his every movement both graceful and correct.
In most cases, he would have been considered an outstandingly upright young man but because he was Reid Chalkias, people saw him differently. It didn’t matter that he was only eighteen, didn’t matter that he had never stepped foot on any Mafia-owned soil. When one looked at Reid Chalkias, it didn’t matter that his citizenship was British and that he was a staunch advocate of all the right causes.
For most people, Reid Chalkias’ singularly defining identity was that he was the son of two notorious criminals, and for them, the apple could never fall far from the tree. It did not help, of course, that despite how stylishly urbane he appeared, Reid also had an innate aura of dangerous strength about him. He might have only been with Cosa Nostra for the first eight years of his life, but it was more than enough to give him a raw, unpredictable edge that isolated him from the rest of humanity.
When it became obvious that Reid Chalkias was heading straight to their station, a silent but dead-serious flurry of activity ensued as the nurses competed among themselves on who could speak with him first. They elbowed and jabbed each other. all the while biting back cries and groans, none of them wanting the apple of their eye to realize that he was the prize they were fighting over.
Upon reaching the counter, Reid dropped the phone back into his pocket and looked up. “Good afternoon—-” He paused, momentarily disconcerted by the sight that greeted him. The nurse smiling at him possessed hair that strongly resembled a bird’s nest, and if he wasn’t mistaken, the top button of her uniform also appeared to have been torn off. Even more astonishingly, all the other nurses appeared in the same state, which led him to ask slowly, “Is everything alright?”
“E-everything’s quite fine.” Pia forced herself to stay still as she found herself the sole focus of Reid’s mesmerizing gaze. She had expected him to be hot, but not this hot. If he had asked her to give him a blowjob then and there, she would have been on her knees in a flash.
Those green eyes could make a girl do anything, she thought wistfully. For this beautiful young man, she wouldn’t mind risking her job and coming on to him. And she probably would have – if she hadn’t been aware of the purpose of his visit.
But the problem was, she and the other nurses did know why he was here, and only the most insensitive woman would have made a move on someone whose girlfriend had been kidnapped and nearly beaten to death.
Taking a deep breath in an effort to control her racing pulse, she fought to keep her voice level as she asked, “May I help you, sir?”
“I’m here to visit Ms. Georgette Durham.”
“May I have your name, sir?” As she spoke, Pia belatedly tucked loose locks behind her ear, which were an inevitable result of hair-pulling tactics.
“Reid Chalkias.”
“Thank you, sir. Please give me a moment to check the list for approved visitors.” Taking out the list, Pia pretended to scan it for a few moments before looking up with a smile. “Ms. Durham is in Room 1214, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Pia saw a brief smile touch his lips as he spoke, and the unexpected sight had her wetting her suddenly dry lips. Oh God, what she’d give just to have a taste of this man’s kiss!
Injecting a note of sympathy in her voice, she said huskily, “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.” Like fuck you, she thought, or let myself be fucked by you. Either was fine. She really wasn’t choosy.
“I will. Thank you.”
Pia watched Reid turn and walk down the hallway, a look of smiling triumph replacing the sham concern on her face. Turning to the other nurses, she blew them a kiss, saying tauntingly, “Better luck next time, girls.”
****
All the lights were off when Reid entered Room 1412, and the only sound in the room was the beeps of the heartbeat monitor. As he stepped inside, the girl on the bed immediately turned towards him, her plain-looking face lighting up at the sight of him.
Reid took a seat next to her bed, and for a few moments they stared at each other, his green gaze unreadable while hers was searching.
He stared at her and didn’t know where to start. Would sorry even cut it when someone innocent and kind like Georgette—-
Reid expelled air in a savage hiss as vicious images assaulted his mind.
Georgette abducted on her way home—-
Georgette tortured—-
Georgette raped—-
“Reid.” Georgette’s trembling voice pulled him out of the nightmare he deserved to live in.
He opened his eyes, and his chest nearly exploded with pain at her anxious gaze.
Why, God?
He wanted to shout it to the heavens because he really did not understand why someone like Georgette had to suffer while men a thousand times more evil continued to crawl the face of the earth.
“Reid. Talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” His voice cracked in the end. “What is there for me to say?” She was everything that was pure in the world, he thought dully, and yet fate had chosen her to be the one to pay for the sins of his family.
Why?
“I want you to say you won’t blame yourself for what happened.”
He didn’t answer.
“P-please?”
He said dully, “I can’t.” Because he did believe he was to blame. How fucking stupid he had been, thinking that someone like him could lead a normal life. Looking at Georgette, he said tightly, “You should have cooperated with them.”
“Never. And if I have to do it again, I still—-”
“Then you’re a fucking idiot,” Reid half-shouted. If he weren’t so terrified he would cause her more injury, he would have tried shaking some sense into her. “I’m just your neighbor, Georgie.” The words had her flinching, but he didn’t care. He wanted – needed – her to understand that they were from different worlds and would always be. “Your neighbor. You didn’t owe me anything. You barely know me—-”
“It’s true I barely know you,” she cut him off shakily, “but I also loved you. I’ve loved you since we first met, and you know that.”
Silence.
And then Reid said bleakly, “You deserve better.”
Ah.
In the three agonizing days she had been under those men’s power, she had never once cried. Even now, she didn’t know how it was that she had been able to keep herself from crying, with all the ways they had defiled her.
But she hadn’t.
And yet right now, the tears were suddenly impossible to stop.
It was that look in Reid’s eyes, she thought numbly.
A look that told her—-
No matter how much he wished otherwise—-
He did not love her.
The tears fell faster.
In spite of what she had done, what she had gone through, Reid Chalkias was still not in love with her.
A part of Georgette had already expected this, but her foolish heart had still hoped for the impossible.
Even so, what she had said was still true.
Even as she remembered the terror that seized her heart when she realized she was being kidnapped—-
Even as she remembered the despair that strangled her throat as the men began tearing her clothing off—-
Even as she remembered the pain that consumed her when they started carving their initials on her body—-
She would still have made the same choice.
Because she loved him.
A painful sob was fast climbing out of her throat, but this time she fought to keep it down. In front of her, Reid was ashen, and for one moment Georgette wanted to be selfish. She wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter if he didn’t love her. He could lie to her, couldn’t he? She deserved that, didn’t she?
“Georgie—-”
Never had his voice sounded more beautiful and painful.
Because now she knew that voice could never say her name with the love she had always wanted from him.
The knowledge had Georgette gulping back another sob.
Reid clenched his fists. “Georgie, if there’s—-”
She cut him off desperately, saying, “I h-have something to ask you.” She couldn’t let him finish. She might not know him well, but she knew him enough to know what he had been about to say – just as she knew she couldn’t ever let herself hear his words.
Because right now she might just be weak enough to take it.
Turning her gaze away from him, she said haltingly, “I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
Ah.
How unfair he was to say that.
How painfully, beautifully, heartbreakingly unfair.
Anything, he said.
And the way Reid had spoken, Georgette knew that if she asked him to stay by her side forever, he would have done it. If she asked him to lie about loving her for all eternity, until the day they would walk down the aisle, he would have.
And she was tempted to do that.
She was tempted to use her age as an excuse, her trauma, her love for him—-
But in the end, she couldn’t.
Because if there was one thing she had learned in those three days she had danced with death—-
Life was too short.
Not a single second of it should be wasted, not for anything or anyone, and certainly not for chasing someone who could never love you.
“Georgie?”
Reid’s voice had Georgette wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. “S-sorry.” But then she felt his hands cup her face, and she started crying again. “N-no.” She pulled away from him, knowing that she had to say what she had to say now—-
Before she succumbed to her greatest weakness.
“Promise me...promise me you won’t ever blame yourself for this.”
Reid whitened.
“T-that’s all I want.”
Silence.
Finally, he managed to find his voice, and Reid said hoarsely, “You’re crazy.”
A teary giggle escaped her, and somehow it gave her the strength to meet his gaze. “P-please?”
His heart clenched.
And then he heard himself say, “I promise.”
They looked at each other.
More words could have been spoken. More words might have changed the future. But none were said because neither of them had ever expected it would be the last time they would see each other.
It was almost half a year later when Reid, together with five other men, walked in grim silence as one of Georgette’s pallbearers. Upon finding out that her ordeal had left her carrying one of her attackers’ child, Georgette had insisted on an abortion. And in so doing, the world had lost both her and her unborn baby.
Even now, a part of him was numb with shock, unable to believe that she was gone.
But she was.
When they made it to her burial plot and the coffin was laid to rest, her parents came forward, followed by others, showering her resting place with white roses.
He stared at the growing pile of flowers without really seeing them.
All he could see was Georgie.
She was smiling at him in the hazy distance of his mind.
Her lips began to move, and her soft voice slowly reached him.
Words from the letter she had left for Reid before undergoing the operation drifted to his ears.
Since I last saw you, I never stopped thinking about you. It always felt like I should have said more, and I’m not sure why, but right now I suddenly feel like I have to tell you everything that’s in my heart.
In the five years I’ve known you, I’ve seen how tirelessly you’ve worked just to do something good. Believe me. I know how uncommon that is when someone looks like the way you do.
But in those years, I’ve also seen how the world has stupidly insisted on being blind to everything. You take a girl out, and they think you’re about to rape her. They see you drinking beer, and they think you’re on your way to rehab.
It’s stupid, but that’s how it is and lately, the same thing’s happened to me, too.
Everybody paints me as the martyr, the girl you heartlessly dumped, the one who has all the reasons to hate you, and no matter what I say or do, they just don’t seem to care.
I wanted the world to believe I was okay because I didn’t want my parents to worry. I didn’t want YOU to worry. But the more I tried, the more it felt like I was lying to myself. They made me feel like I could only cry with their approval, could only forgive you if they think it’s the right time.
And it wasn’t right.
The same way it’s not right stupid people like them should have power over you.
You’re a good man, Reid.
No matter what people think – you’re a good man. I think not enough people tell you that. So I’m saying it now. You’re a good man, and I hope that you don’t dishonor your parents’ sacrifice by letting the sins of the past define you.
And yes, I do know what really happened. I’m sorry, but I was really obsessively in love with you that I bribed someone in the courthouse – it pays to have a barrister for a father – to give me a copy of the proceedings of your adoption case. I’ve known about it since I was fifteen, actually, so that thing you said about me barely knowing you?
Sorry.
I do know you.
And what I know has made me love you more.
I still love you actually, so if it’s okay, will you let me get away with something else? Something a bit crazy?
Like...maybe if you can’t escape your past, then maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you were meant to embrace it instead. Maybe you were meant to use it, ruthlessly, to be the best you can be.
If the world wants you to be evil, then let them think you’re evil and use it to do good.
Does that sound too twisted for someone like me?
I can almost imagine you grinning and shaking your head incredulously as you read this.
But...it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Whether you think it does or doesn’t – I’d love to hear from you. Call me?
I miss you.
Enid gently touched her son’s back. “We have to go, Reid.” They were the only ones left at the graveyard, with Georgette’s own parents having left half an hour ago.
Reid asked quietly, “May I have a few minutes alone? I’ll join you in the car as soon as I’m done.”
She glanced at her husband worriedly, not sure if it was right to leave their boy alone. But when Payton nodded at her, she said reluctantly, “Okay.”
As his parents walked away, he turned to face Georgie again. He still owed her an answer to her letter, albeit a few days late.
It makes sense, Georgie.
I’ll make sure it does.
Also—-
He inhaled deeply and his eyes began to burn.
I miss you, too.
As Reid turned away and started down the hill, he left behind him his old self, the one that had done its damnedest to please the world.
From there, he walked into a future that would eventually turn him into the Prince of Darkness. In the years that passed, everything that was corrupt and dirty soon came to be associated with his name. He wooed the world with promises of cruelty veiled in pleasure, beguiled them with the most delicious forms of iniquity, seduced them into glorifying both his real and imagined depravities.
And he succeeded...because Georgie was right.
Everyone loved a sinner.
Continuing on the path of self-righteousness would never have gotten him anywhere, but as the Prince of Darkness?
People from all walks of life begged for a chance to indulge in his tainted paradise. Through his never-ending parties, the prince was able to hear things, hidden truths and uncovered lies that he then silently fed to the authorities.
It was the kind of life that demanded the prince keep everyone at arm’s length, and for many years, the prince more than welcomed the isolation. Georgie’s death had killed his heart, and he never wanted it to beat again.
But then he met Fawn.
And the bloodstained foundation of the prince’s life began to crumble.