Niko’s Eye

Chapter 22.

"Commencement de la Fin."

Aisha.

The pathway into evil begins as small acts of cold heartedness, yet as with any journey those small steps become more significant as they add up. Evil is born of emotional indifference, and this is why we are commanded to love.

I’m immortal. You can’t take me out like that. I faked my own death and now some people will have to pay for trying to blot me out of the book of life as if they were God.

She closed her eyes and thought of what her mother once said to her.

Revenge is not a dish to serve cold, it’s a knife with rusty edges kept by one with blood on their hands. It is a disfigurement of shame that has been hidden from the self. It is a close cycle of emotional immaturity and underdeveloped emotional intelligence. It is the logic that if they feel pain there must be a person whom deserves punishment for it. It is childish. Love and hate are from the same part of the brain, and so those who never developed a healthy capacity for letting go, can become the prisoners of revenge. You can come up with all the justifications you want for revenge, yet it will always be the work of an inner tantrum and therefore could never be the representation of your best or what you could have been capable of. Revenge is chains, and a positive sense of direction and mission, is your liberation. Revenge will trap your soul in bitterness, moving on is your rebirth. Are you setting the scene for a good future or cold retribution? For one builds your capacity for love and creativity, for real intelligence, the other is a pathway to emotional indifference, ever the sever swap of evil deeds. Revenge is an ugly thing my child. You better run, run from the devil.

She smirked at the remembrance of her mother’s "loving words."

I am the devil, in the flesh.

As she stood in front of the house that was once hers, her memory trailed back to two nights ago.

The night she was supposedly killed.

She had just gotten off the phone with Sergio because that was one person she knew would help her make her comeback.

She just didn’t understand why it took him so long to answer his phone.

Aisha knew he was a man of business and was constantly waiting hand-and-foot on his cellphone, just in case mayoral duties also called in.

But, one thing people didn’t know about Aisha, was that she was extremely well-connected.

The paramedics and officers that had arrived that day were all her acquaintances.

She had tipped off the paramedics as they came to examine her, so they would falsely pronounce her to be dead.

Those paramedics had in turn, tipped off the police.

Hence, no investigation was ever carried out and no claims were ever made.

And to her advantage, things were made easier for her because none of her family members were interested in verifying that she was truly deceased.

Their hatred towards me, has worked in my favour. They couldn’t even gather enough heart to make sure that I was dead.

She managed to be carried out into the ambulance, alive.

The knife had only grazed her lower shoulder, very close to her heart.

Her funeral had been a farce.

She snickered at how preposterously stupid her mother and her ’so-called’ daughter had been.

She smirked at the thought.

You intellectually-challenged fools.

She was a survivor. The Christian scoundrel. In full glory.

She looked up at the house that now had a ’For Sale’ banner knocked into the ground and swore that vengeance was not of the Lord, but was hers.

Alejandro.

Fuck-s**t.

Alejandro didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think this moment to be so intense.

It was so intense that he couldn’t even think.

His receptive cells were blinking.

He tried to open his mouth but he was choking. The words just wouldn’t come out.

As he took in the form of the beast, that was Isis, from the half-light of the encroaching room, his eyes widened and his voice was not able to articulate a single sound.

His brain froze, offering no course of action for his now trembling limbs to take.

He looked at Isis, still wide-eyed, as she sprinted towards him with a fricken pen in her hand.

Really? Ball-point?

His mouth opened in a silent scream and his unblinking eyes popped like an old-fashioned toy doll.

A bead of cool sweat dripped down his forehead and his skin became as pale as the silver pen that flashed before him.

It was ridiculous but he found himself running out of his study like a little boy who was afraid of chastisement.

Alejandro was a fighter. A killer, for heavens sake.

So why was he running?

He got to his elevator and the doors had immediately opened up.

Thank God for sensors.

His mind was buzzing with a million questions and he didn’t know what would happen to him as soon as the elevator doors opened up again, but he found himself praying.

He tried to declutter his mind, while praying and also trying to listen for Isis’ footsteps.

He didn’t even know what he was running from.

There is nothing scarier than an eternity on your own, nothing and nobody to talk to. You’d ask for pain just to feel something. Countless years of that and one would be more scary than I am. No compassion, no remorse, your soul turned to the dark side without a hope of recovery. So why not join the dark side?

He thought of how dark Isis was becoming...Especially with her having went through all the family drama that she had undergone.

He didn’t know if she was serious about wanting to kill him and would actually do it. Or if she was just letting her emotions play out and then when it came to the actual deed, she would cower away?

So why live in-between the light and the dark?

At times, she was down to earth and sublte. And other times, she was aggressive and harsh.

He was frightened by her.

Alejandro’s thoughts drifted to himself.

What is there to be afraid of when you are the monster?

He listened to his heart beat fast.

My heart can beat all it wants from the running I’ve been doing but I know that it also beats for Isis. I have to face her. Dear God, give me the strength. History has been as a narrow flashlight in a darkened room, only allowing sight of some artefacts, hiding others. In this age of international healing and reconciliation, I need to turn all the lights on, I need to allow plain sight of the good, the bad and the ugly so that I can learn from it, grow and mature as a human being. All good relationships need honesty, trust and real love.

He heard her charging down the stairs and counted the last 5 that she had to step on before she could arrive on the floor that he pressed the elevator button for.

He took a deep breath and waited.

But he didn’t hear her last 5 footsteps. Instead, he heard a loud thud.

What the hell?

Isis.

Isis knew that Alejandro’s silence for over 15 seconds, meant that he was guilty as charged.

She started towards him, trembling in anger and confusion.

He began to back away and almost tripped over himself.

She ignored the urge to laugh.

You’re a psychopath for feeling the need to laugh at a time like this.

She threw her gaze back at Alejandro’s desk and grabbed a pen, before running and lifting up the pen towards him.

"I’m going to kill you with this pen that you had probably used to sign my father’s life away!"

Alejandro ran out of the office, pleading with Isis, while trying to catch his breath.

He was pretty fast.

She ran down the stairs after him as he had already entered the elevator.

She wasn’t sure which floor he was going to land on and she didn’t have time to wait for the elevator to indicate where he had gotten off so she carried on charging after him.

Isis ran through her thoughts at the same pace as the speed of her legs.

She felt like she would not like what she would see if ever she had to look in the picture mirror.

She felt like what she was threatening to do to Alejandro wouldn’t make the world a better place.

You should’ve given him a chance to explain. I’m sure there’s an explanation to all of this. God, I’m so belligerent and repulsive.

Her father taught her better than this. She felt like she had let him down.

She felt like she had let God down.

Her thoughts blurred her objective.

Just as she was about to descend the last flight of stairs, Isis misplaced her foot, twisted it and went flying down the steps, all the way to the bottom, head first.