1. THE BEGINNING OF A RECKONING.
Sitting by the window of a quiet café nestled just across from the towering glass and steel structure of Anderson Tower, I slowly stirred my lukewarm cappuccino, watching the swirl of foaming collapse into a murky spiral. The clouds above mirrored my thoughts, slow, heavy, and grey with a certain inevitability. I was waiting… for both a friend and a reckoning.
Outside, the city’s pulse carried on chauffeurs parking polished cars, interns rushing with takeaway coffee trays, and executives vanishing behind glass doors that bore Zain Anderson’s name. The man himself was probably in his office already, seated in one of those leather chairs I had once only imagined, overlooking the skyline with that calm, unreadable gaze of his. My fingers gripped the handle of the cup just a little tighter.
The clatter of heels on tile brought me back. A waitress approached, her pad in hand, wearing the polite, practiced smile of someone used to dealing with people far too absorbed in themselves to notice her effort.
“Ma’am, may I get you anything else?” she asked gently. “I noticed you’ve been here a while.”
I offered her a faint smile, tired, maybe a little sad, and shook my head. “No, thank you. I’m waiting for someone. My guest should be arriving soon.”
She nodded with the quiet understanding of someone who’d seen all types walk in and out of this café hopeful, heartbroken, and those hanging by threads too thin to see. As she walked away, her manner stirred something in me. A memory.
There was a time I stood where she stood pad in hand, apron tied, back aching from long shifts that ended only when my legs felt numb. I remembered learning how to smile like that and how to soften my voice when a customer seemed on edge. Teen years spent juggling trays and spilled drinks while pretending everything was fine at home. We were taught to serve like we owed the world something.
And maybe I did.
I leaned back against the cushioned seat and exhaled slowly, my eyes wandering again toward the tower. Anderson Tower. It’s funny how I used to pronounce that name like it was sacred Zain Anderson. My childhood crush. My bittersweet memory. My almost.
He had been everything I wasn’t privileged, protected, and powerful. And still, for reasons that even now I couldn’t explain, I believed we saw each other more clearly than the world ever allowed. But that was then.
Today, I was not a girl with a ribbon in her hair, dreaming from a window.
Today, I had plans.
Trixie should’ve been here by now. We’d agreed to meet here before I walked into the moment that might change everything. I glanced at my phone again, tapping the screen to check the time. Still nothing. I figured she was probably still trying to find the right words to excuse herself from Raphael. He worried endlessly about her these days understandably so. She was full-term, visibly exhausted, and glowing with that strange mixture of excitement and fear that came with being close to delivery. Any moment now, she could go into labor. Still, she’d insisted on coming today for me.To confirm my existence, to see if it is real or made up because i was supposed to be dead, to be six feets underground.
I looked out the window once more, this time not at the people but beyond them.
Sometimes, when you’re about to change your life, it doesn’t feel grand, right!!!!!. It feels quiet very silent. It feels like waiting in a café with your heart locked behind your ribs ready to explode and your coffee slowly cooling beside you. It feels like regret laced with boldness and hatred. Like something is beginning… again.
I closed my eyes. And in the dark behind my lids, I drifted.
To the real beginning.
To the part of the story where I first met him.
To the summer of mistakes, secrets, and stolen glances.
To the moment my life truly began…from the very first time i saw him at the Sinclair’s reside, till the day i went missing or let’s say the day i was murdered
…and the chain of moments that would lead me right back here
To the shadow of Zain Anderson himself
To the shadow of Zain Anderson’s families
To the shadow of Zain Anderson’s tower.
To the shadow of the murdered Alina- to the Sinclairs
To the shadow of everything surrounding her story
And now to the woman I had become today.
To the new me- Elly Morgan the precious daughter one of the great man in malta Don Lucio, the feared mafia in Europe.
flash back! flash back!! flash back!!!
