In The Wilderness

Chapter 36: Stephanos Hatzi

Silas

Savannah was only standing a few feet away from me, and yet I felt like we were in different worlds. It was just a small distance and yet I feel the need to cross it. I feel like I couldn't breathe with her being so near yet so far from me.

She was looking at me with those brown eyes, staring at me with curiosity and in the same breath, with the compassion that I didn't deserve. Her bravery to hear what I have to tell her was written all over her gorgeous face.

It was the same one that I saw when she turned towards me after she slapped Aleksei and kept him in check.

At that moment, I felt so in awe, proud, and had fallen even more for her.

"My father was never in the picture while my mother died when she was giving birth to my sister." I started.

She nodded a little. I inhaled gently before I reached for my back pocket.

I swallowed before I pulled out my wallet and took an old small picture of my sister from a hidden area.

It had been many years since I lost her but getting her picture and looking at it again still feels like pulling a bandage on an old yet still stinging wound. Savannah's sweet scent filled my nose when I stepped closer to her. I had to fight every urge in my body to just stand there and not wrap my arms around her.

Her hand was shaking a little when she accepted the picture.

It was the only image of my sister that I got to keep before the Akti mafia burned our home.

I watched her face soften when she saw the thirteen year old Clio smiling for her school picture. I could vividly remember her hair on pigtails and bright smile.

"That being said, our grandma, who is our only known relative, took care of us in her one bedroom house in Athens. It was made of wood, had a leaky roof and everything but it was our home. I helped with the bills by working in a textile factory in my teenage years, meanwhile Clio went to school. I didn't really have a desire to continue my education after I learned to read, write, and do math. All I knew was that I had to provide for my sister and my grandma.."

Savannah nodded and looked up at me again. Her expression stayed the same, however a deeper compassion was gleaming in her eyes.  Her fingers were carefully enclosed around the old image as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"....working to send my sister to school wasn't a hard task since she liked studying and she was good at it. Our life was simple, I remember my grandma would make us Koulouri or some cheese pie whenever we had extra money. Clio would hang her plaques and medals on the wall. She would tell our grandma that she wanted to become a Pharmacist while she braids her hair. " I smiled at the memory for a moment. Savannah nodded, her lips formed in a gentle smile as well.

"But everything changed when my grandma's smoking habits caught up to her. Her death broke Clio in a way that I-I couldn't have imagined." My voice unexpectedly croaked. "The once bright kid started to spiral down after we buried grandma, her grades were suddenly on an all time low, started to do rebellious things that she has never done before..."

"She would do all these things but at the end of the day she would be at home. But then one night, I went home and it was the first time that she wasn't there, so I had asked around which led me to a club that wasn't very far. It was a different trouble this time because it was a notoriously owned club by the Akti Mafia, they were one of the biggest families in Athens back then. They own the city police, the streets, and small to huge businesses pay them so that they won't mess their businesses..."

".... When I got there to the club, I saw a creep trying to touch my sister when she was clearly uncomfortable."

"H-How old was your sister?" She asked.