Teach Me How To Fly

22. Annalise

22

ANNALISE

M aksen held my hand during the whole trip back to my house. It was quiet and the only sound filling the car was our steady breaths. He didn’t push me to talk about what happened during the time I spent with Sylvian, and I appreciated that. He just kept holding my hand, hoping to take away the pain that didn’t even leave me.

No matter what he would’ve done, he couldn’t have changed a thing for me. I thought about everything Sylvian told me, and I couldn’t deny that it changed my life for good. If I ever thought that I was living a beautiful life, I was fucking wrong.

I wasn’t even mad at myself for only swearing in my mind because I had all the right to do it loudly, as everything around me was being destroyed.

The car stopped and I heard Maksen taking a deep breath in as I instantly opened the door and jumped out of the car. He followed me and the moment I turned on my heels to look him in the eyes, I saw the confusion creeping onto his face as my lips stretched into a soft smile.

“No worries, I can handle this. You just have to be with me,” I said, fixing a strand of hair behind my ear.

“You’re scaring me, Anna, so when you’re ready to talk about what happened in there, know that I’m here to listen, and I’ll try to give you the distance you need, but it’s eating me alive. I just can’t stop worrying,” he quickly replied, narrowing his eyes and glancing at me attentively.

I know who your real parents are and I don’t fucking have the courage to tell you. You would ask me why, and I would tell you that I’m afraid you would harm yourself even more when you’re alone, so until I figure out a way to heal you and make you stop cutting yourself, I have to keep this secret for me.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. Let’s go,” I quickly answered after having a whole conversation with him in my head.

He didn’t take his gaze off of me, just walked behind me as I moved my feet to the house.

The moment I opened the door, the familiar smell of my house hit my senses, and I felt the mixed feelings engulfing me. With each step I took, I knew I was going to bump into my father and have to face him.

The moment I turned to the right to walk into the living room, I was almost pushed to the ground by a pair of tiny arms. The perfume that met my senses made me instantly realize it was Katya.

She was sobbing as she hugged me tighter than she ever had, and for a few seconds, I didn’t know how to react. I hugged her back and somehow enjoyed how it felt. She had never hugged me before, or even showed me any act of love.

“You’re back. Finally, you came back,” she mumbled between my hair strands, then she moved a few inches away from me and pulled me closer to her again.

It was shocking for me to see her behaving like this, but I guess there were more things for me to discover.

“Yes, I am back,” I whispered as I caressed her back.

When she stepped away from me, I noticed she had been crying considering how swollen her eyes were. She gave me a comforting smile, then looked at me closely and moved her attention somewhere behind me. I knew he had come.

I turned on my heels and the moment I met his gaze, my knees turned into jelly. My body almost hit the ground but he took me in his arms and hugged me with so much force that I let out a vague sound in my mouth.

“Annalise,” he whispered, his chest rising and falling at an alarming rate.

“I need to talk to you, Lukyan.”

The moment I called him by his name, he released me, and I noticed how shattered he was hearing me calling him like that.

For the first time in my life, I could really see real pain showing on his face, and to my own surprise, I was kind of upset too. It was devastating to call the man whom you thought of as your father by his name. It really hurt.

“Come with me,” he said as he looked back at Maksen and Katya.

Without hesitating, I followed him as he started walking towards his office. I missed this house and all the things that made me feel at home, but these last couple of days, I realized that it shouldn’t have been the house that made me feel at home, but the people in it.

Strangely, I missed Katya, and maybe I missed Lukyan too, but I was too afraid to accept it as it was. I was scared that if I admitted my feelings and truly let myself feel them, everything was going to be destroyed again, so I had to wear this mask of indifference and live with it as much as I could.

Lukyan opened the door and let me enter the office. He closed it as I sat down on the armchair in front of his mahogany desk, trying to ignore the strong smell of tobacco and fine cognac I knew he always liked to drink.

He sat down on his chair, then put his elbows on the edge of the desk and pinned me with his eyes. He was waiting for me to talk first, but considering how much he tried to keep his mouth in a straight line, he had things to tell me too.

I hadn’t seen him like this ever in my life, and by this, I meant silent. He always made sure to control each discussion he had, to point out his arguments and convince the person he was talking to that he was always right. Yet he didn’t do any of those now. He was just waiting for me to talk.

I sucked in a deep breath and moved a little in the armchair, looking him deeply in the eyes.

“Firstly, why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t want to lie to you, Anna,” he lowered his voice. “I just didn’t find the right moment to tell you and to be honest, no father out there could ever find the right moment to tell his daughter that she’s adopted,” he added, a glistening of tears showing in his eyes.

“Yet you could tell Katya this with such ease that it didn’t make me think it was that hard for you to speak the truth,” I said, keeping my face straight.

He looked at me and gulped without saying anything. His gaze fell somewhere on the ground, and I noticed how uneasy he was feeling now.

“Secondly, did you forbid me from leaving the house because you were afraid I might find out I was adopted?”

“No,” he quickly answered. “I did all of that to protect you. I thought it was better this way for you.”

“Why didn’t you do the same with Katya?”

He remained silent for a few moments, weighing his words, and then I saw a sudden change in his eyes as if anger was the only thing running inside his veins now.

“Because she didn’t need to be as protected as you did and still do.”

His voice came out loudly this time.

“And why do I need to be so protected? This doesn’t make any sense because she should be the one who needs the most protection considering she’s your real daughter and not me!”

I was angry.

But he was angrier.

He stood up from his chair and hit the desk, as his lips started trembling.

“She didn’t go through what you went through, Annalise! Don’t fucking make me say it!”

He knew about Sylvian and what he had done to me. He knew about it.

My mouth fell open as I tried to search for the right words to say now that we hit the most vulnerable part of our discussion. Should I say something about it to make him say everything he knew?

“I won’t make you say it, but it wasn’t fair for me. I—I didn’t remember anything until —”

Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that.

“Until what?”

He pinned me with his eyes and I felt defeated, even though I didn’t want to.

“Until I saw a picture of him, and I remembered everything.”

If he could light the entire place up in a fire, he would’ve done it without any hesitation.

“Where did you see the picture?”

“I found it.”

“You’ve been to Lydia’s house all this time, haven’t you?”

He knew the truth, he only wanted me to say it. And I couldn’t lie anymore, so all I could do was say the truth and play with it in my favor.

“Yes, I’ve been there because she was the only person I could feel at home with when neither of the people I called family could be there for me.”

Considering how his entire facial expression changed, I knew I hit where I needed to.

Annalise 1. Lukyan 0.

He remained silent and sat back on his chair, trying so hard not to look at me. The entire situation was making me uneasy.

“I—I didn’t know what to do better when I found out, Anna. I noticed you were acting differently, and Maksen was always around you as if he was trying to protect you. I noticed everything was odd at that point, and with each day you were spending there with him, you were changing into the child I wasn’t recognizing anymore,” he explained, his voice shattering with each word he spoke.

“H-How did you find out?”

I was scared of his answer, but he seemed like he was scared to say it too. He just sighed and gripped the edge of the table between his fingers, trying so hard not to hit it again.

“He told me, and it was Lydia who managed to calm me down so I didn’t kill him at that exact moment.”

I was shocked to hear that Sylvian had the courage to tell his own brother that he abused his daughter — well, not daughter, but adoptive daughter.

“I—I’m sorry,” I mumbled, regretting now that I’d judged him so harshly.

He was a bad man, maybe even a bad father, but considering his own brother told him that he took advantage of his daughter, he did a pretty good job with protecting me. People reacted differently in certain situations, and Lukyan chose the most extreme way to do it.

“You don’t have to be sorry for anything, moye solntse, “ he whispered, eyeing me and I saw a glistening of tears in his irises. “I have to say sorry to you, for all these years you thought I was the enemy when all I was trying to do was to protect you. Maybe I was wrong to want to keep you locked up here, depriving you of everything you wanted, but I wanted to avoid the situation where you would remember everything.”

“You couldn’t ever avoid this situation,” I whispered, feeling how tears were forming behind my eyes. “I remember everything now, and it’s even harder to accept it.”

“I know, but I can’t change a thing, only to say that I’m sorry and that I would do anything to see you happy.”

I wasn’t prepared to meet this peacemaker side of Lukyan. I didn’t even know he had one in the first place. I looked at him and tried to break through the mask he had, but it was impenetrable. I thought he said those things just to win me over and make me forget what he did, and I was shocked that he was managing to do all that so well.

“Give me freedom. Let me apply to the University I’m dreaming of, let me go out and make friends,” I briefly said and he raised his eyes to glance at me.

His lips parted, and his eyebrows drew together in a serious frown. He rubbed his bearded chin without breaking our eye contact, then he nodded and let his gaze fall somewhere on the ground.

“That’s all you truly want?” he said with a lower tone of voice.

“No,” I added, and I felt my heart starting to beat faster than ever. “I want you to give me a chance to be with Maksen.”

The next moment, all I knew was how he shape-shifted into the man I was always afraid of. He looked at me deeply in my eyes and looked almost ready to rip my head off at any second. That was the moment I truly felt afraid of him. I tried to snuggle into the chair I was sitting on, but there wasn’t any space left for me to hide in.

“I’ll let you apply to the university, Annalise, but under no circumstance will you have Maksen as your lover. That man is cruel,” he burst out, standing up from the chair and towering over me once he started walking in circles in the office.

“Cruel?”

I would’ve used cruel to describe him, not Maksen, but I knew he was trying to use everything he had so he could convince me that his beliefs were the right ones. But if he would’ve described Maksen as cruel, then why would he make Katya marry him?

“He’s a human trafficker and a killer, Anna. Where do you think all his money comes from?”

“Exactly from where your money comes from too, Lukyan.”

I knew he was an assassin, but I didn’t know he was also a human trafficker and this thought sent shivers down my spine. I had to make him talk about that with me. Actually, I had to make him tell me everything about what he was actually doing because I wanted to know whom I would give my love to, even though I wasn’t allowed to do it.

Wait.

Love?

“Katya is marrying him in exactly four months. Get out of the office now.”

The Lukyan that was trying to show me compassion and make me believe how hard it was for him all this time disappeared and was replaced by the Lukyan I knew very well.

I knew I shouldn’t have cared about what he said, but somehow, I hoped that maybe everything he did was just his wrong way of showing me that he loved me. However, things weren’t like this.

Without saying any other word, I stood up from the chair, eyed him for the last time, and left the office.

I felt overwhelmed, but also angry at the entire situation. I came back home hoping to have a normal talk with the one whom I called my father all this time.

While I was walking down the hallway, I tried to figure out why Lukyan was insisting so much on making Katya marry Maksen. I knew she was his real daughter, but there had to be a real reason behind it, and I didn’t know how to find it.

The reason had to be something that would unveil darker truths if he would risk marrying his only daughter to an assassin and human trafficker — I hated that I had to call Maksen that.

Olivia had an affair with your father’s biggest enemy.

The possibility existed that Lukyan’s enemy didn’t know he had a son.

What if marrying his daughter with the son of his enemy was his sweet revenge?

No, I have to stop this.