The address was in one of those old, run-down neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. A neighborhood I had never set foot in. Gray, peeling blocks of flats, dangling wires and sad, dusty gardens. It felt like I was in another world. My heart was beating wildly as I searched for the block number. It was an old, paneled building with broken windows at the entrance and the smell of damp and old age.
I climbed the worn stairs to the third floor. I found the door. The paint was chipped, and instead of a bell, two wires were sticking out. I hesitated for a moment. What was I doing here? I was invading her personal space. Maybe she had just found a better job and wanted nothing to do with her old life and a lonely old man. But something stronger than reason made me knock.
I knocked once, twice. Slow, dragging footsteps were heard from inside. The door opened with a pitiful creak. Lilia stood on the threshold.
But not the Lilia I knew. Her smile was gone. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying. She looked exhausted, devastated. She was wearing an old, worn-out vest over a house dress. When she saw me, a mixture of shock, shame, and despair appeared in her eyes.
“Mr. Asen? What… what are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Lily, I was worried. He disappeared suddenly. Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. She just opened the door wider and took a step back, silently inviting me to come in. I entered a small, dark hallway. The air was heavy, smelling of medicine and illness. A strangled cough could be heard from the room to the left. I looked at Lilia questioningly. She lowered her eyes.
“Come,” she whispered, leading me to the room.
I stepped on the threshold and froze. My whole being froze. Time seemed to stand still. In the room, on a bed by the window, lay an old man. He was thin, gaunt, his skin was waxy pale. He was breathing heavily, with wheezing. But that wasn’t what shocked me.
I was shocked by his face. Although ruined by illness and age, it was a face I knew. A face that had haunted me in my nightmares for the past thirty years.
The man on the bed was Naum. My first and only friend. My partner. The man I had betrayed in the most cruel way to build my empire. The man I had left with nothing.
Lilia looked at me, and in her eyes there was no longer a trace of that warmth that had drawn me to the café. There was only an icy, silent pain.
It turned out that she was… his granddaughter. And I, without knowing it, was drinking coffee every day served by the descendant of the man whose life I had ruined.
Chapter 2: The Ghosts of Empire
The room spun around me. The walls, with their faded wallpaper and damp stains, seemed to shrink, threatening to crush me. The sound of Naum’s ragged breathing was the only sound in the deafening silence that followed the revelation. He lay with his eyes closed, perhaps asleep, perhaps simply too weak to react. But I knew that even unconscious, his presence was a judgment.
I looked at Lilia. Her face was an impenetrable mask of grief and weariness. “He is… my grandfather,” she whispered, as if pronouncing a sentence. Her words rang in my head like a bell tolling the end.
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