Chapter 18: MEMORIES

***\-JAX-***

Darkness enveloped the car like a cloak, heavy and omnipresent. The only source of light was the headlights, which illuminated the road ahead of me in cold white. Celine lay on the back seat, wrapped in a blanket, her breathing barely audible. I kept glancing back, looking for a sign that she would hold out. My heart tightened with each glance, a mixture of guilt, anger, and despair that consumed me.

Celine.

I had let her name pass through my mind so often in the last few days that it felt like a prayer. But it was a prayer without redemption, a reminder of what I had lost before I even had a chance to know. My sister.

She didn’t know. And I wasn’t going to tell her.

Not now. Maybe never.

How could I explain to her that I had searched for her? That I had spent years of my life trying to find a trace of my mother, only to end up in dead ends again and again?

I looked at her again, her pale face, her closed eyes. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile, and yet I knew that she had a strength within her that she probably didn’t even know about. How could she? Damian had left no strength in her, only pain.

My breathing was heavy as the memories caught up with me. I had been three years old when my world first fell apart. My mother, her gentle hands that had always reached for me, her smile that made even the worst days bearable – it had all vanished in a single night. I hadn’t understood what had happened. I just knew that she was gone.

She had left me with him. With the devil himself.

My father hadn’t even tried to hide it. “Your mother has left you,” he had said, his voice hard, as if I had done something to deserve this punishment.

The thought of the past was like an icy hand gripping me around the neck and not letting go. While I gripped the steering wheel tightly, I fought against the images that kept popping up in my head. Images from back then. Of him. Of us. **Damian and I.**

I was three years old when my father remarried. I didn’t know darkness then, nor fear. Everything seemed fine. And when Damian was born, I was happy. Really happy. He was my little brother. The one I wanted to protect, who admired me and looked at me with big, curious eyes, as if I were his hero.

The early years were good. We played together, shared everything we had, and laughed often. Damian was always by my side, and I by his. It was the kind of bond you can only feel as a child, pure and unbreakable. Or at least that’s what I believed back then.

But everything changed when Damian turned twelve. Our father, whom I had previously seen as a strict but present figure in our lives, showed his true colors.

It was night when I first noticed it. I was on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water when I heard soft noises coming from Damian’s room. At first I thought he was having a nightmare, but when I opened the door a crack, I froze.

My father was there. His massive frame was crouched over Damian, whose face was turned to the side, tears streaming down his cheeks. I couldn’t make out the words my father was whispering, but I didn’t need to hear them to know what was happening there. I felt my breath catch, my heart race, as I slowly closed the door and retreated.

I didn’t say a word the next morning. I didn’t know how to look at Damian, didn’t know how to deal with it. My father acted as if nothing had happened. And then, a few days later, I learned that I didn’t just have to watch – I was supposed to become a part of it.

I remember him taking me out of my room that evening, his hand tight around my arm. I trembled, but I followed him, unable to resist. Damian was sitting on the bed, his eyes vacant as my father pulled me into the room. “Watch,” he said simply. “You’re going to learn how to do this.”

I tried to look away, to close my eyes, but he forced me to watch. My hands trembled, my stomach turned, while he continued to destroy Damian. And then it was over – at least for Damian. Because my father turned to me.

He led me into the kitchen, his hand heavy on my shoulder. My stepmother was sitting there, as if she had nothing better to do than wait for us. He grinned at her, and his eyes were filled with something I couldn’t comprehend. “Do you want to see what the good boy has learned today?” he asked.

She nodded. Without a word. Without resistance. And then he forced me to do to my stepmother what he had done to Damian before. My body was numb, my mind screamed as I obeyed because I had no choice.

Damian knew nothing of this. Never. And I couldn’t have told him. How could I have explained to him that I was just as broken as he was? That our father had used me in the same way, only in a different way? He wouldn’t have understood. He would have hated me for it.

The worst night came when I was fourteen. My father, drunk and even crueler than usual, came to my room with a pistol in his hand. He pressed it to my temple, his breath heavy and stinking, while he led me towards Damian’s room.

“Today you’ll learn how to do it right,” he said with a malicious grin. ”Go on, give it to him good, fuck his sweet ass, or I’ll pull the trigger!”

I knew he would do it. My body was numb, my mind blank as I dragged myself into the room. Damian sat there, his eyes wide with fear when he saw the gun in my father’s hand. He didn’t know it was pointed at me. And maybe that was better that way.

But something inside of me broke. Maybe it was pure desperation, maybe it was the realization that I couldn’t sink any lower. I screamed. I don’t even remember what I said, but I screamed until my father got angry and pushed me aside. The gun fell to the ground, and I ran. I ran out of the house, out into the night, and I swore that I would never let him treat us like that again.

But I had left Damian behind. I had left him alone.

The memories made me barely aware of the road in front of me. I glanced in the rearview mirror, saw Celine still asleep, and my heart tightened. **She knew nothing about it.** She knew nothing of the things that Damian and I had been through. And she would never know if I could help it.

But what she did know was that Damian was a monster. She had now experienced that first hand. I should have protected her from it, should have saved her before it came to this. But I had failed – just like before.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, although she couldn’t hear me. ”I should have taken better care of you.”

The rage seethed inside me, a hot, burning hatred directed against everything – against my father, against Damian, but also against myself. I had failed as a brother, as a human being. But this time I would make amends. For Celine. Maybe even for myself.

The city lights passed by me, blurred by the dark thoughts that raged like a storm in my head. The engine of the car hummed softly as the streets disappeared under the tires, an endless journey through the night. My gaze kept wandering to the rearview mirror, to Celine, who was lying in the back seat, so still that it made my heart contract. **He would not take her from me again.**

I owed this city a great deal . I still remembered the day I arrived here. Sixteen, alone, angry at the world and with nothing but a shattered spirit and an irrepressible will to never again be someone’s plaything. I had struggled through, joined a gang. It had been easy to fit into their dark world. **The streets were our kingdom**, and we ruled them with an iron fist. Extortion, protection money, theft – we were good at it. Very good.

But it wasn’t enough for me. **I wanted more.** More money, more power, more control. I wanted to be the one that everyone in this city bowed to, the name they whispered in hushed tones for fear I might be listening. And I got what I wanted. Within a few years, I had become the terror of the city, unchallenged, untouchable. I had built an empire, a web of lies, fear and violence, that I ruled by my own rules.

But then... he showed up.

I knew it before I saw him. Damian. It was like a shadow that fell over my world, a familiar, vicious feeling that I couldn’t shake. It wasn’t long before I got confirmation: He was in town. **He had found me.**

Despite the new life I had built for myself, despite the new name I had taken, he had come. Like a plague that spread relentlessly, Damian had crept into my world, and with him came the darkness he carried with him. He had never forgotten. Never. And he had sworn to destroy me.

Damian was no ordinary opponent. He had a way of manipulating people, drawing them into his world until they would do anything for him – no matter how depraved. He found people willing to die for him, men as dark as he was. And together they had begun to take pieces of my empire.

**The war had begun.**

The city became our battlefield, divided into two halves. My part, his part. Every street, every alley, every damn block was a front line. He had managed to take a lot from me – territories, people, resources. But I hadn’t given up. I did everything I could to get it all back. Every damn stone he had torn from my kingdom.

But now? Now it was no longer just a war for power or money. It had become more personal.

Damian had managed to find me, but Celine? She was my last link to a life I was never allowed to have. When I heard that she had moved in with him, I couldn’t believe it at first. The man who destroyed everything he touched had her in his hands. And when I finally saw her after all these years... it had changed everything in me.

I looked at her again, her sleep calm but exhausted. Her wounds were deep, and not just the ones you could see with the naked eye. But this time I was here. This time I would fight. And I would win.

He could take everything from me – my power, my money, my city. But **her**? Celine belonged to me. And Damian would pay for even daring to lay a hand on her.

I let the thought grow in me, the anger, the revenge. Damian had long since lost my respect. But now? Now he had done something that could not be forgiven. And I knew exactly how I would take him down. This time he was finished.

“You’ll see, Damian,” I murmured softly, my gaze returning to the road. ”I’ll destroy you. And this time I’ll finish the job.”