Prequel- Chapter 10: Unleashing The Anger
Elian Storm
I was deep in my slumber when I heard shuffling around me. I peeked an eye open to find Alena running around my room in a hurry while getting dressed.
"Good morning, babe," I mumbled groggily, stretching my arms and rising up from the bed.
Alena stopped in the middle of putting on her cardigan and came to give me a hurried kiss. "Good morning, baby. Did you sleep well?"
"I always sleep well when you are with me," I replied and tried to catch her for another kiss, but she was already on her way to the dressing table to grab her hairbrush.
"Of course, I'm the most huggable person ever," she praised herself.
I smiled looking at her and all the things in my bedroom that belonged to her.
It had been ten and half months since we started dating and tomorrow was the anniversary of the day we first met. It has been an amazing year. It had its good and bad moments, but I wouldn't trade them for anything else in this world.
"You are going to the campus, aren't you?" I asked.
Alena let out a heavy sigh. "I'm so envious of you for getting winter break a day earlier."
I chuckled and said, "I still have to go to the office, though." I had started my internship at Storm Dynamics, where I would be taking over as the CEO in one and a half years.
"Whatever." She stuck out her tongue at me and grabbed her bag of books and said, "I'm off then. I'll see you later tonight."
"Okay. Be safe." I waved at her from the bed as she walked out of my bedroom.
I was left with an eerie feeling like always. I missed her already. It was an irritable fact that we were always in a hurry in the morningâunable to even have breakfast together.
As awesome as this year had been, it was busy for Alena and me. We were only together with each other during the night, not even on weekends. Because she had her part-time jobs in the morning and I had my mafia duties. But we always managed to work well with our schedules. Except sometimes.
I sighed and got up from the bed to freshen up and start my day. But I had an irking feeling that today was not going to end well.
###
"Elian, can you come to meet me in the office?"
I looked up at my dad from the presentation I was working on and groaned, "Please don't tell me it's to discuss what the Christmas party theme this year should be."
Dad chuckled and patted my shoulder. "Lance isn't here yet. When he comes, I'll discuss it with the three of you together."
I groaned once more.
"Now come with me." His tone turned serious.
Feeling the urgency, I nodded and shut my laptop before following my dad to his cabin.
"So what is it?" I asked.
Dad sat on his leather chair and stated, "You picked up a fight with the XS gang."
I stiffened, suddenly feeling nervous. "Yes. What about it?" I asked, trying to pretend to be nonchalant and confident.
"All I want to know is why."
"I have my reasons." The reason was Alena's safety, but I couldn't tell that to Dad. Because over a stupid argument, I had told Alena that I would never tell my family about her as long as she didn't tell hers. I had too much pride, and it was an awful curse. So I hadn't uttered a word about our relationship.
"You know, Elian, I want to trust your decision," Dad said calmly. "You have always been the perfect eldest child one could ask for. I just can't for the love of God figure out why you would do this."
"Look, I tried to negotiate with them nicely. But they just wouldn't listen to me. So I punched them in the guts by stealing millions worth of drugs from them. What's wrong with that?" I had gotten what I wanted from them now; their business was now shifted to a smaller and more remote area.
"You sparked a war with them, son," he said sternly, his eyes narrowed on me.
"Yes, so? We can take them on any day."
"You don't get it. You're still young and naive. They will come after you in ways that you can't even dream of," he tried to explain.
"Whatever. I don't care. They can come after me with all they have. They won't touch a single hair of mine."
Dad sighed. "Okay, let's drop it. I don't want to bitter our relationship over this. I just hope you know what you are doing."
"I do," I assured him. "Trust me."
###
"Hey, what are you up to?" I asked when I found Alena gathering some of her stuff from my bedroom.
"Welcome back, baby," she said absent-mindedly while putting her things in a duffle bag.
"Are you going somewhere?" I inquired in confusion, discarding my suit over a chair.
"Yes. I told you I was going to Georgia over the break."
"What? You didn't tell me you were going tomorrowâthe first day of winter break," I pointed out, feeling triggered.
"Well, you know, I always go on the first day. That's the promise I made to my parents."
"And you also know I hate it."
Alena stopped packing her things and turned to me for the first time since I came back. Her expression was hard. "You know what my situation is like."
"And you could have lied to them that you didn't get the ticket. You always just ghost me over the breaks."
"They booked the tickets, okay? I didn't," she reasoned. "And I don't ghost you."
"Oh, really?" I let out a mocking laugh, remembering the last spring and summer break. "Leaving my texts unseen for days and not receiving any calls from me isn't ghosting?"
"I'm surrounded by my parents. They cannot know about you. You don't understand how it is for me there."
"That same old bullshit."
Here I was picking up fights with gangs to keep her safe and she could not even try to tell her parents about me.
"What did you say?" Alena asked, her face now a mask to try to conceal her anger.
I took a slow breath to keep my boiling emotions under control, but it was hard. My temper was badâhorrible, in fact. I was already irritable the entire day after the conversation with my dad, and now this.
"Please postpone your flight," I said calmly.
"You don't make that decision for me, Elian."
"I think you missed hearing the please."
"Oh, I heard it, alright. But it didn't sound like a request," she retorted.
I bit my bottom lip to keep myself calm and tried to explain myself, "Don't go, okay? We haven't spent enough time with each other for months. Whenever I think we can spend time over vacations, you always go back to Georgia, forgetting all about me."
"Because I have no choice."
"When there's a will, there's a way," I told her. "I try to make time for you all the time, but I almost never see the same effort coming from you," I let my true feelings slip out.
She scoffed. "Elian, don't you realize that unlike you, I don't have everything readied for me on a silver platter? Unlike you, I don't have a company waiting to be taken over by me. I have to work hard to score a good company that would hire me. For that, I need to work hard."
"You are a career-oriented person, and I love that about you. You have big dreams, Alena. I know that, and I support you with everything. I want you to achieve those dreams from the bottom of my heart. But what I don't want is for you to push me to the sidelines."
"I'm not doing that to youâ"
"Oh, really?" There came out the pent-up anger. I was done putting the lid over my feelings. "You know why you don't notice what you are doing to meâhow you are hurting me over and over again?"
She stayed silent, staring at me in disbelief.
"Because I always come second to everything else in your life." I didn't raise my voice; I didn't have to. Because my words hurt her all the same.
Anger was such a venomous feeling. It made you spit out words that you didn't even mean. But it was hard to stop. It was hard to coil back. I couldn't do it, either.
"Your parents, your studies, your part-time job, your dreams, every goddamn thing comes before me. If anything comes up, it's always 'I'm sorry, baby, can we do this another time?' and it's never 'I'm sorry, I'm with my boyfriend right now, maybe later?' You take me for granted. As if my feelings don't matter."
Her eyes filled with hurt, and guilt appeared on her face.
"I put you above everything else. Whatever you ask for, I'm there for you. I don't care if it's the middle of the night or whether I'm in class. I'm not asking for the moon here. All I wanted was just for you to give a little of your time and make me your priority once in a while so that I have the assurance of how much I mean to you.
"But I can see why you wouldn't do that. Because you don't love me like I love you," I blurted out. "You love your parents. You love your studies. You love your dreams. But you don't love me, and that is the reason you don't stop to think about me."
Everything I said, she didn't say a word in reply.
I even ended up saying I love you for the first time, and yet, she didn't reply.
What else could I interpret from that?
So I turned around and left.
As I slammed the main door on my way out and started walking, the weight on my feet grew heavier.
I had been swallowing my anger until now, never complaining, repressing it so hard that now it had grown in my belly and came out as hot as a dragon... on one of the people I loved the most. I couldn't forget her eyes, how my boiling anger burned her.
I knew that somewhere in her heart she loved me too and none of what she did was intentional, but I didn't know if what I had done inside there was something our relationship could handle.