There is an image that has haunted me since I was a child: me, standing above everyone, smiling as if I owned the world.
That night, the subway train rattled through the dark tunnel, carrying me home. Home was my parents' house, and my parents had been dead for ten years. They died the same year I turned twenty.
Now I was thirty. And I had gotten nowhere.
That afternoon, my boss had presented my report to the board. Three sleepless nights, every figure checked twice, every chart redone until it was perfect. He put his own name on the first slide. When he finished, the directors applauded, and he rested a hand on my shoulder in front of everyone.
"Thanks for the support, Lucas."
I smiled and said, "That's what I'm here for." Then I went back to my desk and kept working.
The train slowed with a long metallic screech. The doors opened, and I stepped onto the platform with the rest of the tired crowd.
My body moved on its own. My mind did not.
There it was again, the image: me, high above everyone, looking down at them with a crooked smile, the smile of a man who thought he was better than all of them.
Why did I always think like this?
To understand it, I had to go back to the day it all began.
I was five years old when I learned how the world worked.
It was a Saturday, and my father had taken me to the market, like every week. I held his hand, rough and warm, and walked through the crowd with wide eyes. There were mountains of oranges, shining pots, and a man selling sweets that smelled of burnt sugar.
My father was a quiet man with cracked hands, who worked long hours and never complained.
We stopped at the fruit stall on the corner. The vendor, a heavyset man with a booming voice, was already shouting.
"You still owe me for last week! Pay up or don't come back!"
My father lowered his head.
"Tomorrow. I promise. Tomorrow I'll have it."
I felt his hand tighten around mine. It was the first time I had ever seen him look small.
Then a long black car stopped in the middle of the street.
The whole market went silent. A man stepped out in an immaculate gray suit and gleaming shoes. He didn't look at anyone. He walked as if the street had been built for him alone.
And the vendor, the same man who had been shouting a second ago, ran to him with an enormous smile.
"Sir! What an honor! Please, take whatever you like. It's on the house!"
He filled a basket with the best fruit and handed it over, bowing again and again. The man in the suit took it without a word, without even a nod, and climbed back into his car.
The crowd parted for him like water. Even my father stepped aside and lowered his eyes.
When the car drove away, the noise returned to the market as if nothing had happened.
"Dad," I whispered. "Who was that man?"
My father sighed.
"Someone with connections, son."
"What's that?"
"It means doors open for him. He doesn't wait in line. He doesn't pay full price. People bow before he even asks." He smiled wearily. "That's just how the world is. Some people are born up there, and we're down here."
I stared at the empty street where the black car had been. I said nothing, but something small and hot began to stir in my chest.
That night, the kitchen was warm.
My mother set a bowl of steaming soup in front of me, with a thick slice of bread beside it. My father told a joke, and my mother laughed so hard she had to put down her spoon. The little house smelled of garlic and home.
I knew I was loved. I knew my plate was never empty and that no one in that house ever went to bed without a hug.
But I couldn't stop staring at my soup, thinking about the man in the gray suit.
"Eat, son," my father said gently. "We have everything we need."
I looked up, with a seriousness far too heavy for a five-year-old.
"I don't want what we need," I said. "I want more."
My mother smiled.
"More soup?"
"No." I shook my head. "More of everything."
My parents laughed, thinking it was a child's joke. I didn't laugh.
I looked at my small hands on the table and made a silent promise. One day, people would step aside to let me pass. One day, doors would open before I touched them. One day, I would have the black car, the gray suit, the bowed heads.
And not just that. I would have everything.
That fire never went out. It only grew, and with nothing to feed it, it slowly began to burn me from the inside.
Now, twenty-five years later, that hunger was still there.
I walked the quiet streets with my hands in my pockets and my shoulders heavy. I had never made it to the top. I had never even come close.
I never fell in love, either. It wasn't that I hadn't tried. But the women I met wanted a quiet life, a steady job, a small apartment, a calm future. There was nothing wrong with that. But every time I looked into their eyes, I couldn't find that same hunger, and I couldn't love someone who wasn't able to understand me.
I was alone, just like my ambitions.
The streetlamp near my parents' house flickered as I arrived. I took out my keys... and froze.
The front door was open.
Not wide open, only a few inches. But the wood around the lock was splintered, and the door hung crooked on its hinges, as if someone had forced it.
I stood perfectly still. From inside came a faint sound: a drawer sliding, the soft clink of something metal.
Someone was in there.
The sensible thing was to call the police. I knew that. But this house was all I had left of my parents. Every wall, every crack in the floor, every smell was theirs.
Something hot rose in my chest. Anger, or courage, or maybe just the old fire.
I pushed the door open slowly and slipped inside without a sound.
The living room was dark, lit only by the streetlamp through the window. A man in a black hood stood by the old dresser, his back to me. In his hands was a small wooden box, the box where my mother kept her jewelry. The only valuables she had ever owned.
My fingers curled into fists.
"Put it down," I said.
The thief spun around. A blade flashed in his hand.
For a second, neither of us moved. My heart hammered against my ribs. I knew I should run. I knew I wasn't a fighter.
But for the first time in years, I felt alive.
I lunged forward.
We collided and tumbled over the coffee table. Wood cracked. The box flew from the thief's hand and hit the floor, scattering my mother's cheap rings across the carpet.
I caught his wrist with both hands. The blade trembled between us, inches from my face. Under the hood, I saw frightened eyes, the eyes of someone who hadn't expected to find anyone home.
I felt the cold before the pain: a strange pressure under my ribs, clean, almost polite. I looked down. The knife was buried in my side to the hilt.
The thief let go of the handle as if it had burned him.
"No... I didn't mean to..." he stammered. He backed away with his hands up, tripped over the rings, and went for the door.
I should have let him go. I should have dropped to the floor, called for help, clung to whatever little life I had left.
But something inside me snapped.
It wasn't pain. It was like a door flying open. Thirty years of "yes, boss," of "excuse me," of swallowing my rage in silence like swallowing glass... and suddenly there was nothing left to hold it back.
I grabbed his ankle and dragged him to the floor. He turned to beg, and I drove my fist into his face. Once. Twice. My knuckles split open and I felt nothing. Three. Four. His voice faded and his body went slack, but my arm kept rising and falling, and every blow was a relief so pure that my chest shook.
So this was what I had been keeping inside all this time.
When I finally stopped, the thief wasn't moving. My hands were red to the wrists, and I was breathing like I had just come up from underwater.
And then I realized something: I was smiling.
The same crooked smile from my visions. The smile of a man who thinks he owns the world.
Now I knew why I had always thought like that. That smile was mine. It had always been mine.
My legs gave out. I fell to my knees, then onto my back, right there on the floor of my parents' living room. The warmth seeped from my side between my fingers.
The ceiling above me had the same crack it had always had, the one my father always promised to fix.
So this is how it ends, I thought.
Not at the top. Not above everyone. Just on the floor of a small house, on a quiet street, with dirty hands and a smile no one could see.
My fingers found one of my mother's rings on the carpet, and I held it weakly.
I thought of my father's rough hand. Of my mother's laugh. Of the little boy who had stared at a bowl of soup and promised the world he would have everything. And I wondered what they would have thought of me in that moment.
"I wanted... everything," I whispered.
The smile was still on my lips when the fire in my chest flickered and, slowly, silently, went out.