The Way you want me (SERIX)

Selena Foster's perspective [ Facing a captivating dark view from her balcony on a bitterly cold night] The city looks almost unreal from my balcony at night, as if it belongs to another universe entirely—one where people live without fear, without secrets, without blood staining their dreams. New York stretches endlessly before me, dark and towering, vast enough to swallow every scream I have ever held back. The lights shimmer like distant stars, but they offer no warmth, no reassurance. I stand there anyway, barefoot against the cold marble, letting the bitter air sting my skin, as though pain might anchor me, as though the sharp chill could quiet the chaos raging inside my chest. “Don’t be careless standing outside in such a chill atmosphere.” I flinch violently, my body reacting before my mind can catch up. My mother’s voice cuts through the silence, sharper than the winter wind itself. She almost yells, and the suddenness of it sends my heart slamming painfully against my ribs, as if it is trying to escape the cage of my chest. “Ugh. You could have been a little more gentle, Mom,” I mutter in a disgruntled tone, deliberately forcing irritation into my voice. It is easier for her to hear annoyance than the devastation curling inside me. “What are you even doing there? Get inside.” An order. Always an order. Always concern disguised as command. This habit of mine—staring at tall buildings, tracing constellations, losing myself in distant lights—has followed me since childhood. Whenever something inside me becomes too heavy to carry, I look outward, as if the vastness of the world might swallow my pain whole. My mother knows this. She has always known, even when she pretends not to. “Just looking at the constellations,” I reply softly. It isn’t a lie. Still, I don’t have the strength to turn around and face her, to let her see how hollow my eyes must look. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you sad now?” “Nothing big. You can go.” She doesn’t leave. Of course she doesn’t. She never does when something feels wrong. “Are you telling me,” she continues firmly, “or do I need to tell your dad about this? He’s not here for a week, but he made it very clear I should inform him if anything goes wrong. And you know you are our priority.” My stubborn mother. My loving mother. The woman who would break if she knew the truth. “Being a surgeon is making my whole life a terrible, f****d-up mess,” I snap, the words spilling out before I can stop them. “Are you happy now?” Yes, surgery has made me cry countless times. I have cried in locker rooms, in empty stairwells, in silent cars parked far from home. But this time, the tears have nothing to do with the profession itself. I am broken. Broken from sleepless nights that blur into mornings, from skipped meals that leave me dizzy, from ambitions buried alive beneath responsibility. And all of it feels meaningless when, in the end, the patient doesn’t respond positively. In my case, that patient is my father. Every attempt I make to talk to my mother about his condition ends the same way—with words trapped behind my teeth, with fear choking me into silence. Tonight, I lied instead. Amazing. I feel like I am never enough for them. Not enough as a daughter. Not enough as a doctor. Not enough as a protector. “Come on, honey,” she says gently, stepping toward me, her voice softening. “It’s normal to feel this way in the medical field. Just take a break. Don’t go to the hospital for a day or two. Get some rest.” “Mom… please don’t come near me. Please.” My voice fades, dissolving into barely a whisper, fragile and thin. I don’t want her to see me like this. If she does, she’ll know this pain isn’t professional exhaustion—it’s something far darker, something rooted in fear and inevitability. “Don’t you want dinner?” she asks softly. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat together.” “I’ll be eating out tonight.” She sighs quietly. “Okay. Never mind. Just be safe.” A pause stretches between us. “And sweetheart… don’t bump into problematic people. You understand what I mean, right?” “Yeah,” I reply, forcing calm into my voice. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” As she turns away, panic grips me like a vice. “Mom.” “Yes?” “Please don’t talk to Dad about this,” I say carefully, my voice steady despite the tears threatening to spill. “I won’t,” she replies, then hesitates. “But I think you should consider consulting a psychologist.” The irony almost breaks me. Once, I dreamed of becoming one. Once, I wanted to heal minds instead of cutting open bodies. And now, here I am—too fractured to even heal myself. We nod, pretending this conversation has solved something. Later, when the door closes, loneliness crashes into me again, heavy and suffocating. Life has two sides—good and bad—so that when darkness comes, we remember light, and when happiness finds us, we learn to cherish it. Right now, I cling desperately to memories of better days just to survive the present. I wanted to heal minds. Instead, I heal bodies. And every life I save feels like atonement for the sins my mafia-blooded family committed long before I had a choice. Maybe I was born to pay for them. My father inspired me to become a surgeon. His heart disease is incurable. I know it now. I may lose him any day, any moment, without warning. And when he dies, death will circle all of us—my mother, my sister, and me. His mafia has already killed me mentally, emotionally, spiritually. The only thing it hasn’t taken yet is my physical body. The New York breeze keeps me breathing. It is the only thing that still feels gentle, the only thing that doesn’t demand anything from me. Eventually, I leave the apartment. I drive without thinking, letting instinct guide me. I go to the beach. When I arrive, guards take their places immediately. Bodyguards follow every step I take, shadows in the dark. This life never allows me to be alone, never allows me to breathe freely. Ten years ago, we were middle-class. Happy. Uncomplicated. My brother and I ran barefoot across this very sand, laughing, chasing each other, believing the world was harmless. I close my eyes and let those memories crash over me like waves. The breeze carries echoes of laughter I can almost hear. The sand absorbs my grief, as if trying to pull it out of me grain by grain. God, what a miserable creature I have become. Tears fall without my permission, hot and relentless. Ana arrives soon after, just as she always does. Happy birthday, my brother. If I had known dreaming of wealth would cost me you, I would have burned every single dream without hesitation. A bark behind me nearly stops my heart. It’s Ana, grinning despite the sadness in her eyes. She hugs me tightly, her arms grounding me when everything else feels unreal. “You miss him, don’t you?” she whispers. I nod, unable to speak. Then I see him. A man dressed entirely in black stands on the edge of my private beach, far too close, watching us from the corner of his eye. His presence feels wrong, invasive, heavy. There is no way he passed security unless he belongs to my father’s world. Anger rises sharply in my chest, mixing with disgust. But before I can say anything, before I can even take a step— Three gunshots tear through the night. The sound freezes my blood. It is the same sound that took my brother away. The man collapses into the sand, his body jerking violently before going still, the darkness swallowing him. Time fractures. Ana and I draw our guns instinctively, muscle memory kicking in before thought. “She’s still my little sister,” I remind myself. “She is my responsibility.” “Go home,” I command sharply, my voice cutting through the chaos. “Text me when you reach. I’ll take him to the hospital.” She hesitates, eyes wide, torn between fear and trust. Then she nods and runs. I rush to the fallen man, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it might tear me apart from the inside. Blood coats his hands. Warm. Slippery. Too familiar. My chest tightens violently as memory crashes into me—my brother’s hand reaching out, trembling, desperate. I hadn’t been there for him. I couldn’t save him. I wasn’t allowed to. I drop to my knees beside this stranger, gripping his blood-soaked fingers as if holding on might somehow rewrite the past. This is wrong. This is dangerous. This man belongs to the world that destroyed my family. And yet— I am a surgeon. Saving lives is what I do. It is what defines me. It is the only thing that keeps me sane. If I let him die, I become no better than the people I hate. If I save him, I risk dragging more blood into my life, more chaos, more danger. My hands shake as I press against his wounds, my medical instincts warring violently with my hatred, my fear, my grief. Why him? Why tonight? Why on my brother’s birthday? I look into his eyes. They are open. Barely. Struggling. The same color as my brother’s. My breath catches painfully in my throat. I brush his face back gently, my fingers trembling, my heart screaming at me to stop, to walk away, to protect myself. And then I see it. Behind his right ear. A tattoo, carved deeply into his skin, unmistakable even in the dim light. ERIX. The world tilts violently beneath me. The waves crash louder. The wind howls harder. My heart pounds wildly, erratically, as if it no longer remembers how to beat normally. This is not coincidence. This is not fate being kind. This is my past and my future colliding in the worst possible way. If I save him, nothing will ever be the same again. If I don’t, I will lose what little remains of myself. And standing there, kneeling in blood and memory, I realize with terrifying clarity— No matter what choice I make tonight, I am already doomed. Selena Foster’s Perspective “Get away from him, or we will shoot you.” The words sliced through the night like a jagged blade, chilling me to the bone. I had assumed they were his protectors, shadows meant to shield him from the world, but even as my thoughts raced, reality struck me like a punch to the gut—one of them was Mason. Mason Gray. “Mason?” I croaked, the disbelief and relief intertwining into something almost painful. “Get away,” he snapped, his voice sharp, taut with authority. “I am not trying to hurt him,” I gasped, the panic catching in my throat. “My hospital is only seven kilometres away. We can save him there. We have to be quick, Mason, or he will bleed out. He may die if we delay even a minute.” The other man, tall and silent until now, interjected. “Only if you don’t take this matter to the cops.” “No,” I said, my voice steady despite the thundering in my chest. “I will not. I am Aaron Foster’s daughter—the New York mafia leader—and Mason knows me.” The man glanced toward Mason for confirmation. Mason’s eyes met his, a slight nod affirming my words. I swallowed hard, the weight of the moment pressing on my chest. My life had always been a mess, but dying here tonight was not an option. They might not want this handled legally, but I knew mafias had their ways of bending law, of shaping reality to their will. And I had just revealed my identity to a stranger in this darkness. What a stupid, reckless thing to do. “We already know that,” Mason said, his tone clipped, carrying an edge that brooked no argument. “Do not waste our time.” My heart fluttered violently. They trusted me in this moment. And in some strange, convoluted way, that trust was both comforting and terrifying. It meant I was helping my father’s world, a world I had always tried to stay far from. Yet here I was, immersed in it, my hands trembling as adrenaline coursed through me. I took a deep breath, trying to steady the storm of emotions surging inside me: the terror, the flashbacks, the suffocating sense of responsibility. Witnessing the gunshot, recalling the blackest day of my life, seeing Erix after all these years—and now, here I was, his only chance at survival. I had to save him. But part of me screamed that I shouldn’t. That he belonged to this world, to a life that was not meant for me. I was his savior tonight, yet he could destroy me in ways I could not yet comprehend. I forced myself forward. Erix Gray’s Perspective Pain. All-consuming, unrelenting, and so blinding I could not think beyond it. My body refused to obey me, every limb locked in silent rebellion. Opening my eyes should have been impossible, yet the world forced itself into focus. Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound made my head pound. The sterile brightness above made me wince. I could feel it—the knives, the cold metal, the raw reality of being operated on. Why am I awake? Shouldn’t the anaesthesia keep me under? My stomach turned violently as I tried to process the chaos around me. Every movement of the girl in the room—Selena—pushed my mind further into panic. She was running, checking monitors, shouting instructions, moving as if my life depended on it. Because it did. And for some reason, it mattered to her. Why did it matter to her? Her face, streaked with sweat and determination, made something strange stir in me. Not anger. Not annoyance. Something far more uncomfortable—recognition, perhaps even admiration, though I hated to admit it. She was good. Too good. Not even an angel would have taken such care with someone like me. And yet, she was frantically, desperately, trying to keep me alive. Why did I care about that? I tried to push the thought away, but it lingered. Ana and memories of my father, the mafia, the betrayals—they all collided in my mind. And yet she—Selena—was a bright, stubborn light in all this darkness.