I Was Abandoned, I’ll Take Back My Life

Chapter 3

A week before my eighteenth birthday, Yuri called me into his office.

“Rules of the Kovalenko family,” he said. “Once a shadow member turns eighteen, you either get sent to the front lines, or you undergo the family’s initiation to become a full-fledged member.”

He paused, those gray eyes of his probing in a way I couldn’t read. “Which one do you choose”

I didn’t answer right away.

“There’s a third option,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”

“I leave.”

The air froze.

The two bodyguards at the office door instinctively reached for their holsters.

Yuri lifted a hand, signaling them to stay put. Slowly, he stood, walked over, towering over me. “Vivian, do you know what you’re saying”

“I do.”

“You were raised by me,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “Your life belongs to me.”

“I’m giving you back a life,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “Ten years ago, you saved me from the Lawrence family. Today, I’m returning one life the Kovalenko family needs.”

Silence filled the office. You could hear your own heartbeat.

Yuri stared at me for a long moment.

Then he laughed. Madly.

“Interesting,” he murmured. “The Lawrence blood… always produces monsters.”

He turned, retrieved a folder from his desk, and tossed it at my feet. “Sign it.”

I bent down to pick it up.

A three-year employment contract.

Term three years.

Assignment Act as a “business representative” of the Kovalenko family in New York.

Objective Infiltrate the Lawrence family’s core and gather internal intelligence.

I scanned the fine print at the bottom “If the mission fails, burial expenses will be covered by the family.”

“What is this” I asked. “A test”

“Consider it an opportunity,” Yuri said, returning to his sofa. “Three years. Survive three years, and you’re free.”

“And if I die”

“Then Lawrence blood proves weaker than Kovalenko blood.”

I clenched the pen in my hand.

That night, Marina walked me to the gate.

She handed me an old suitcase with a change of clothes, a fake passport, and a small silver pendant.

“I took this from Don Kovalenko years ago,” she said. “He told me to keep it, and if I ever met his family, give it to them.”

I looked down at the pendant a two-headed eagle with wings spread, clutching a dagger in its talons.

“Marina,” I asked, looking up, “who are you really”

She smiled, wrinkles at her eyes crinkling like a dried flower. “Just an old woman who’s lived too long.”

I turned to the waiting black SUV.

The driver was a young man I didn’t know, sunglasses hiding his expression.

“Miss Lawrence,” he said, his accent faint, “welcome home.”

I didn’t reply.

I simply tucked the pendant deep into my clothes.

The moment the SUV emerged from the underground tunnel, New York’s neon lights stabbed at my eyes.

Three years.

The Lawrence family.

And the “twin sister” supposedly waiting in the ICU for my bone marrow.

I pressed against the window and closed my eyes.

Vivian Lawrence.

A name I hadn’t spoken in ten years.