Page 171 of Mafia and Scars

After I wake, I sit on the edge of it, elbows braced to my knees, head in my hands. It’s not just the absence of her warmth that makes my chest feel like it’s being crushed. I’m missing everything about her. The echo of her laugh. Her voice in the kitchen at breakfast. The smell of her shampoo.

She’s really fucking gone.

The silence in the house feels wrong. Too still in the way that reminds me I was always alone before her. And now, I’m alone again.

I should have gone with her.

But I didn’t. Couldn’t. My mind still spirals in circles every time I try to picture it. Leaving the compound. Leaving the men and mybrothers. Leaving the routines I’ve built here over the years. My structure. My systems. My rules. They work. And without them, things fall apart.Ifall apart.

But Avelina… She was a wildcard. A glorious, devastating disruption to everything I thought I needed to survive.

Because what does survival matterwithout the people you love?

I should have fucking said it.

I hinted at it before. But I never said it outright to her in unambiguous terms. In a way that would leave her with no doubts about my feelings.

Just once.

I love you.

And I still don’t know why I didn’t.

A while later, I sit in the kitchen, my fingers curled around a mug of black coffee I haven’t touched. Even here, her scent lingers. And there’s that tightness in my chest again. The one where I can’t breathe and everything feels unanchored. This place—the compound, the men, my routines—used to keep me tethered.But now it’s all gone to shit.

My eyes flicker to the table. I can almost picture the three of them there. Leon’s tiny fingers grabbing at the cereal. Sofia asking her usual array of questions. Avelina’s sunshine smile as she catches my eye.

A heavy tread of boots hits my ears. Grigory doesn’t bother with pleasantries. He strides into the kitchen and eyes me as he walks to the counter, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “You gonna talk about it?” he asks.

I grunt. “No.”

“Too bad. I’m not letting you sit here brooding like some cursed Victorian ghost haunting my goddamn compound.” He leans back against the counter. “You look like shit.”

“I feel worse.”

“Because you’re too busy doing the math in your head. The calculations. That scoring about love or whatever shit you asked me about that time. You’re overthinking this and got stuck in some loop, Vik.”

I don’t deny it. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

“I didn’t think it’d be like this. I thought if I let her go…it’d be the right thing to do. She wants peace. Safety. I can’t give her that.”

Grigory studies me for a long second. “Maybe. Or maybe you were scared. Not of the risk, but of what it meant to choose her over everything.”

That hits a little closer to home than I’d like. “I can’t have both, Grigory,” I say through gritted teeth. “I can’t have her and be this.”

“Look, you can’t rewire your brain, Vik. You need structure. You need these systems you built brick-by-brick over the years, I get that. But don’t confuse needing support with needing to isolate yourself.”

My throat tightens as he walks away silently, leaving me alone again.

I go to the office to work. But all I do is stare at the spreadsheets she made pretty. The bright colors bothered me before. Now? They don’t.

I remember the way her shoulders trembled when she told me she needed to leave. But I keep telling myself that it’s safer this way. That it’sbetterthis way.

But I can’t stop my thoughts from racing. About her. About how her voice cracked when she asked me to go with her.

And how I said no.

That replays like a damn fucking horror movie.