Red Room |18+|

♤Impossible choices♤.

......24.....

Vladislav...

As I watch the beeping machine connected to my brother's heart and that stupid artificial air he needed to survive, my heart squeezes in my chest.

Dimitri has always been the stuck up one, the strict, rule follower. He never misses school or after school lessons. Whenever he felt sick, he would still show up to our gun lessons.
Dad would scold him, and he would square up his shoulders, relentlessly trying to stay healthy throughout the training and I now here he is, fighting for his life. I love my brother, I can kill anyone for him and he would do same for me. Anytime I was in trouble, Dimitri would take blame and take punishment or even plead with my father, to leave me alone.

I was never interested in dad's empire, or the entire Russian Mafia world. I cared about arts, music, books and romance. In high school, I fell in love against the rules my father set for us. In our family tradition, we were instructed to marry royalty or women with as much power as us just to make sure we continued to be powerful. I didn't care, I wanted to have a normal family, a wife, two kids and a dog. Normal. Who was I kidding?

Nothing is normal when you are born into the criminal world and from the moment you are born till you die, the code of secrecy and allegiance binds you. It haunts your identity, it captures and imprisons your soul.

I remember when I fell for the beautiful golden hair Amber. She was pretty by all standards, her long silky golden hair flown down flawlessly to her back, right below her round curvy ass. Her smooth pale skin complimented the brown eyes that held a load of incomprehensible secrets. She always walked down the school halls quietly, trying to avoid everyone's gazes. Oh and her juicy plump lips that was always coloured with cherry lip stick.
The first time I saw her, my heart missed a beat, two beats even. Time didn't even seem to matter when her rose scent wafted through my nose as she passed by, looking over her shoulder for a split second, giving me a soft smile before looking ahead.

I spent days and months thinking about her, wooing her through letters, artworks, music. Her fear for my family held her back from giving me a chance to love her. After sometime of persuasion, she agreed and we became lovers. You could describe it as childish, but I knew what I felt anytime she giggled at my sly remarks, or her full blown snotty laugh. Her cute smile when I wrote her a poem or sang her a song from my George Michael's Make It Big album. She liked it a lot, she liked Careless Whisper the most.

One day, after going to see her at our usual spot, I came back home trying to sneak in through the door that led to the huge kitchen. It was locked and so was every other door. Dad was standing in front of our Beaux-Arts door, his hard glare trained on me as I walked briskly towards him, my head hanging low my chest heaving from the fear and anger coursing through me. Immediately I make my way to the first staircase, he shouts at me to halt.

A real classic Maxim Ivanov move.
He asked his men to seize me, and I tried flight, turning on my heels to disappear but I was caught easily, I struggled to get out their hold, but their strong bodies overpowered my frail adolescent self. As he asked his men to lock me up in the room of doom for falling in love. Dimitri stormed out of the door, defiling my father's orders of staying inside the house.

He bantered words with my father, pleading on my behalf for a lesser punishment. That room was no joke. Scariest place to be as a teenager. All sorts of punishment happened there. Torturous, inhumane activities that went beyond any human comprehension. My father paused, and listened to Dimitri speak, after listening carefully he agreed to let me go in exchange for Amber's dead body.

I lost it, running towards my father and holding his neck in a choke. All his men fought to get me away from him but my anger had blinded my sense of reasoning, I was seeing red and I could taste blood from biting inside the corners of my mouth.
He had the audacity to take the one thing that gave me absolute joy and peace. After struggling, they got me off him, with my father barely recovering his breath.
"it is either you or her. Your choice" he said in a raspy breath, fuelling my rage further. Dimitri spoke to me in our dialect, telling me to use my head and not heart. He said that knowing father, if I chose her, I would die and so will she. He would torment her until she begged for death.

This broke me, I spent the entire night breaking things in my room, cutting myself with all those broken glass, wishing that my father never existed. But for her own good I decided to kill her.
The next morning , I sent a letter to Amber asking her to meet me at another secluded spot because my father had gotten a whiff our affair and I needed her to meet me to talk about it.
I could see the fear in her eyes when she walked into the shed, thinking I was harmed.

The fear was laced with love and worry.
I hugged her immediately I saw her and she did same, tightening her hold around me. After a few minutes, we broke away and I took her lips in mine, my fingers interweaving in her hair. She moaned, opening her mouth so I could deepen the kiss. Before we knew it, we were in bed naked and making love to each other. I can still remember her breathy sighs and moans of pleasure, and even though we were still very young, I know that she was the one.

After having sex, she was lying in bed, sleeping soundly. I sighed and picked up my pillow, covering her face and blocking her nasal cavity. She struggled for air, pushing at my hands and I could feel my chest tighten as I kept pushing the pillow further. She stopped, and the place went silent. For the first time in 18 years I felt like one of them, a monstrous Ivanov.
She was scared and yet I begged her to risk it. Now, there she lay lifeless, killed by love and there I stood crying. And even though her soul was out of her body, it was mine I had caged.

Now as I look at Dimitri, lying cold on this hospital bed, I can't feel any kind of feeling for that princess except for pure hatred and disgust.

Well well well. What do we have here?

Vladislav? A lover guy? Colour me shocked!!!!

And the plot thickens.

What did you guys think about this chapter? How does this revelation contribute to the development of the plot?

I think Vladislav's position was more complicated than we saw and mostly, some of us face similar. I just hope we are making next to the right choices.

Will Dimitri survive this? And what's next?

Please don't forget to vote and comment. Whose your favourite character so far?

Also, I love you all. Byeeee.