The cold walls of the orphanage were the only silent witnesses to our stolen childhoods. In those narrow corridors, smelling of cheap soap and suffocating loneliness, our holy trinity was born: Sophia, Alfred, and me. We were like tender branches clinging to one another to face the harsh winds of abandonment that showed no mercy for our youth.
Sophia, with her gentle soul, was the first to offer a sacrifice. I saw the spark of life go out in her eyes as she burned away her youth working as a waitress in crowded restaurants, trading her college dreams for crumbs of bread to keep us alive after we were cast into the harsh reality of the world. She never complained; she hid her exhaustion behind a faint smile, reassuring us that "tomorrow will be better," even though she knew in her heart that tomorrow was merely a repetition of an exhausting today.
Then there was Alfred—our living miracle. To me, Alfred wasn't just a roommate or an adopted brother; he was the reason my heart beat despite its frailty. I remember well the night before we left the orphanage. We were eighteen, and the cold bit into our bones. Alfred took a copper wire found in the yard and twisted it skillfully into a small ring. He placed it on my finger and said with absolute certainty:
"Ayla, I swear to you before these fading stars, I will get you out of this hell. I will study, I will work, and I will make you my wife. Nothing will separate us, not even this rebellious heart in your chest... I will fix it for you, even if the price is my life."
In that moment, I didn't need diamonds or gold; that copper wire encircled my heart before it ever touched my finger. His love was the only medicine the doctors couldn't prescribe.
Years passed, and Alfred kept half his promise. He became a brilliant student, grinding through the rocks of hardship, working three exhausting jobs just to provide me with a single pill. I saw him withering before my eyes; his body grew thin and his eyes sank into shadows, but he always smiled, saying: "We're close, Ayla. I'll finish my studies and buy you the life you deserve."
But fate had other plans. On that evening—one that will never be erased from my memory—I was trying to wash some clothes. Suddenly, it felt as though an icicle had been driven into the center of my chest. The air became my enemy, refusing to enter my lungs. I fell, and the dream shattered under the weight of my collapsing body. The last thing I saw was Alfred's panicked face and his voice calling my name, as if demanding Death stay away from me.
When I opened my eyes in the hospital, whiteness surrounded me like a cold shroud. Sophia was sitting beside me, her eyes swollen, her hand trembling as she held mine.
"Where is Alfred?" I whispered, fear preceding my words.
Sophia burst into tears—a sob unlike any I had ever heard. "He lost his mind, Ayla... When he saw the paramedics carrying you, he ran after the ambulance like a possessed man... He was screaming your name in the rain... He didn't see the speeding truck... It hit him with such force it threw his body meters away."
Time stopped. Alfred—my love, my support, the keeper of the copper promise—lay in the next room at the mercy of machines. A brain hemorrhage required a hundred thousand dollars immediately, or he would be gone before sunrise. A hundred thousand dollars... the price of the life of the man who gave me everything.
I left the hospital with the rain lashing my frail body. There was no time for grief; there was only time for a sale. I went to places I didn't even dare look at in my nightmares. I offered my soul, but everyone refused; I looked "too fragile" and "too pale" for customers seeking pleasure.
I stood in the middle of the street, touching the copper ring on my finger, weeping bitterly. Suddenly, a pitch-black car stopped—an iron beast oozing power and wealth. The glass slid down slowly to reveal the face of Alexander Volkov.
The moment my eyes met his grey ones—which resembled an impending storm—I felt a shiver that wasn't from the cold. There was a terrifying sense of familiarity. I know this man, a voice screamed in the depths of my memory. Those features carved from cold stone, that suffocating aura... I felt as though I had seen him in another life, or in a memory I had buried beneath the rubble of orphanhood.
"I heard your pathetic offer inside," he spoke in a resonant voice, deep and still as ice.
"A hundred thousand dollars... please... my fiancé is dying," I pleaded with shattered dignity.
He stepped out of the car, seeming to swallow the light around me. He approached until I could smell a mysterious fragrance—a blend of tobacco, mystery, and dominance. He lifted my chin with a hand that burned my skin with its coldness, looking into my eyes with a gaze that stripped me of my secrets.
"A hundred thousand dollars is a small price for what you will lose, Ayla," he said my name in a way that made my sick heart flutter. "I will pay the money. Alfred will live. But in return... I will own you completely. You will move to my palace; you will become my shadow, my secret, and my property that no human touches but me. You will forget the name Alfred, and you will forget you have a life outside the walls of my world. Do you accept this servitude in exchange for his life?"
I looked at the copper ring, the symbol of my only love. I felt as if I were stabbing Alfred in the heart just to keep him alive. Slowly, with trembling fingers, I removed the ring and tossed it into the dirty rainwater on the sidewalk.
"I accept," I whispered, feeling my soul leave my body with that word.
He opened the car door for me, and I entered Alexander's dark world. As we moved, I watched him from the corner of my eye, the feeling of familiarity becoming increasingly suffocating. Who is this man? And why does it feel like he was waiting for the moment of my collapse to harvest what remained of me?
I looked out the window at the receding hospital, knowing that the old Ayla had died there, and that mercy had ended, beginning my journey with "Merciless Mercy."
The luxury car door closed behind me, isolating me from the noise of the rain and the smell of the poor street, replaced by a heavy silence smelling of genuine leather and Alexander's scent, which began to seep into my pores. The air here was thick, charged with the aura of this man who sat beside me without looking at me, as if he had bought a piece of furniture rather than a human soul.
He turned toward me slowly. In the darkness of the car, his features looked as if they were carved from cemetery marble—beautiful but dead. He was silent for a long time, examining my paleness, my trembling hands, and finally my finger, where the copper ring had left a faint pink mark.
"You said you would sell anything to save that boy..." his resonant voice spoke, breaking the silence like a stone thrown into a deep well.
I swallowed hard, feeling a lump in my throat. "Yes... anything."
He leaned toward me slightly, and I felt the heat of his breath which contradicted the coldness of his eyes. He asked me in a tone devoid of emotion, a question that made the blood drain completely from my face:
"Are you a virgin, Ayla?"
I froze. The question was like a hard slap to my face. I felt humiliation gnawing at my pride, but I remembered Alfred's face, drenched in blood in the ICU. I closed my eyes tightly and whispered in a voice barely audible:
"Yes."
"Look at me while you answer," he commanded with a firmness that could melt iron.
I raised my tear-filled eyes to meet his grey ones. That strange tremor shook my heart again—that terrifying feeling that I know these eyes, that I have seen this coldness before. "Yes... I am."
He ran his thumb over my trembling lower lip; his touch was cold enough to burn. "Good. Because I do not accept used goods. One hundred thousand dollars will be transferred now to the hospital account in Alfred's name. He has survived because of you... but you have perished because of him."
He took out his phone and, with one touch, ended the nightmare of money that was choking us. "It is done. Alfred will undergo surgery now. And now... you are mine."
Entering the Forbidden Fortress
The car moved like a black ghost through the city streets, reaching the suburbs where tall trees began to block out the moonlight. The car stopped before a massive iron gate that opened automatically, like the mouth of a beast swallowing its prey.
The palace emerged from behind the fog—a black Gothic structure with high windows that looked like eyes watching those who arrived. It wasn't a home; it was a fortified castle reflecting the soul of its owner.
Alexander got out and didn't wait for me; he walked with confident steps toward the grand entrance. I stumbled behind him in my wet dress, feeling as though I were entering my tomb of my own free will. At the entrance, the servants lined up with bowed heads; their stillness was haunting.
Alexander stopped suddenly and turned to me. "This is your new world, Ayla. Here, there is no Alfred, and there is no Sophia. Here, there is only my command and my word. The East Wing is your luxury prison; you do not leave it without my permission."
He approached me again, whispering near my ear until a chill ran down my spine:
"You're wondering why you feel like you know me, aren't you?"
My eyes widened in shock. How did he read my thoughts?
He smiled a mysterious smile, then continued: "You will know the answer in due time. For now... go and cleanse yourself of the smell of poverty that fills your clothes. I want my new possession to shine like a diamond."
A maid with a stoic expression was called to escort me. I walked behind her, looking at my hand, bare of the copper ring, and I felt my sick heart begin to beat with a new rhythm... a rhythm set not by God, but by Alexander Volkov.