mine to keep

marek valkross

She is completely shattered, and I want to comfort her, yet I do not know how.

Grief has a language of its own, and I do not speak it well.

What she needs is not advice or questions, but presence. Someone patient enough to sit beside her, to talk when she is ready and to stay quiet when she is not.

For now,

I arranged for an older woman to look after her, someone gentle and steady, someone who knows how to care for wounds that cannot be seen. She is still young. There is too much life ahead of her, too many things she has not yet learned, for her to be left alone in this state.

Yesterday, after I brought her to my place, I tried to speak to her. I chose my words carefully, as if softness alone could pull her back.

But she did not respond. Not once. No nod, no shake of the head, not even a glance in my direction. She simply sat there, still and silent, as though the world had paused inside her.

Her mother's death had hollowed her out, leaving only shock behind. Silence wrapped around her like a second skin.

Her mother owed me money.

It is an ugly fact, but a true one. At one point, desperate and afraid, she offered her own child as payment. I refused immediately.

I told her I would never take a human life in exchange for money. No debt is heavy enough to justify that. She begged, her voice breaking, but I pushed the idea away every time it surfaced. Some lines cannot be crossed, no matter the cost.

Yesterday, I went to her house to collect what I was owed, or at least to understand what had been left behind. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. When I knocked again, the door swung open on its own.

Inside, the house was in chaos. Things were scattered across the floor as if a storm had passed through the rooms. Chairs were out of place. Drawers stood open.

The air felt abandoned. There was no sign of anyone. The entire house was quiet, completely empty, and painfully still.

I stepped back and let my driver take the car onto the main roads. Outside, the city moved as it always did. People walked quickly, shoulders close together, voices overlapping, each of them heading somewhere important. Most of them had families waiting for them, or at least someone expecting their return.

They looked hurried, connected, whole. I have never truly experienced what a family feels like.

Not the warmth, not the closeness. But it is not something I seek. At least, that is what I tell myself.

Later, I went to a mall to buy sweaters and winter clothes. The cold here grows heavier each day, thick and biting, and soon the city will be buried under snow. I bought three sets quickly, without much thought.

I do not like spending time on things longer than necessary. Once the purchase was done, I left the mall at once. Lingering has never been one of my habits.

I was about to head home, but I wanted my money back first. I told my men to keep an eye on the woman and instructed the driver to take my usual route.

Halfway down the road, traffic slowed. A crowd had gathered. Something was wrong.

I stepped out of the car.

A body lay on the flat stretch of road, soaked in blood. An ambulance had arrived, and paramedics were trying to revive a woman, pressing defibrillator pads against her chest as she fought for her life.

Then they stopped.

When I moved closer, my breath caught. I recognized her.

She was the same woman I had met only days ago. The one who had offered her own child in place of the money she owed me. The same woman whose house I had visited not long before.

It was unbelievable how fast everything had ended. She was gone without ever paying back a single cent. Reckless.

Absurdly reckless.

I forced myself to look away.

That was when I saw the child.

A girl knelt on the ground a short distance away, wrapped in a thin blanket.

Her clothes were torn, her hands stained with blood. She wasn't close enough to touch the body, but close enough to see it. Too close for someone so young.

She looked lifeless. Silent.

I remembered her now. I had seen her walking beside the woman a few days ago.

This must be her daughter.

The girl who had been offered to me.

She was young, beautiful, with striking blue eyes that caught the light. Yet there was something unbearably heavy in her gaze, as if she was carrying a weight far too large for her fragile frame.

I went closer to her and wrapped her in the sweaters I had brought earlier. Just as I was about to ask something, she closed her eyes and collapsed into my arms. I lifted her in a bridal carry, placed her inside the car, and took her to my house.

I wanted to keep her safe, not as an exchange for money, but because something about her drew my attention.

I don’t know why I feel this way, yet there’s something in her that makes me want to protect her and give her a happy life. I have so many questions I want to ask her, but not now. Soon.