Chapter One
The Study is a place where I feel safe and accepted as exactly as I'm in the moment, focused or distracted, confident or unsure. It's where my thoughts are allowed to be half formed, where my mistakes feel temporary and curiosity feels safe.
At fourteen, I was already obsessed with being kind, compassionate and I have always wanted to make the world a better place.
My tutor will always say that "we ought to leave something better than we met it", so the study has always been a place where I can always reflect on my personality.
I know everything in life has a path or trajectory, the way the sun sliced through the velvet curtain at a thirty degree angle, I stood in the corner, my back pressed against a mahogany bookshelf filled with books of structural engineering, classical history, personal development, Psychology biting into my shoulder, I was trying to become a furniture, to disappear from the visible image of someone kneeling and begging, but in the Volkov house nothing remains unseen.
"Nikolai, please," the man sobbed. His name is Marcus,
He is a high level associate with my dad, A man who had sat at our christmas table only months ago, laughing as he handed me a gold plated watch i didn't want , Now he's kneeling in a persian rug which cost more than a suburban house, his face filled with like he was just coming from the shower, his appearance dreads my dad sitting behind a sleek, volcanic glass desk, his face illuminated by the glow of a banker's lamp, he holds a pen as he marks a structural change to a port facility in Odessa.
"Boss please, I can fix the numbers, just give me a week," says Marcus, whose voice trembles as he utters each word with extreme caution.
"A week is seven days of variables I cannot control, Marcus," My father said. His voice is calm, deep, rhythmic. And capable of drowning you. "I have spent forty years eliminating those variables. That's why the VOLKOV name stands. We are the stone. Our enemies are the water".
"I can fix the numbers, the shipment was intercepted by the feds, i didn't know...".
You didn't calculate, "My father interrupted, finally closing in the tip of his pen, "in my world, a blueprint only works if every pillar is solid. You have become a crack in the foundation. And if i don't patch a crack, the entire ceiling eventually falls on my head, knowing this what do you think i should do Rafael".
His eyes fell on me and my legs almost gave up, 'cause I didn't know what they were talking about and how my father could put me in this situation.
"I think we should forgive him and also punish him so he doesn't make any mistake like that again" I mutter.
"I'm glad you see the flaw, Rafael"
I couldn't speak. My throat felt like it was filled with powdered glass. I looked at Marcus, then back at my father. He.... he failed the plan, "I whispered.
"No," Nikolai said, standing up. He's a tall man, his presence expanding to every inch of the room. "He was the plan. And now the plan requires a revision, and you are right, we have to make sure that it doesn't happen anymore.
I signed' feeling relief that the worst is over.
My father looks at me and nods which I saw as a sign that Marcus would be forgiven. All of a sudden I heard a pop. The sound was small. It sounded like a heavy book falling into the carpet. Marcus didn't scream, he simply fell down flat.
I was shocked and my face tightened in ways I didn't choose. Each sob pulls from somewhere sore and tired.
My Father walks around the desk, stepping over the cooling body as if it were nothing more than a discarded blueprint. He placed a heavy, warm hand on my shoulder. A gesture of affection that felt like a threat.
"You are my Legacy, Rafael. One day you will build worlds. You will design the routes the money flows through, the walls that protect our family and the traps that catch our prey. And when a world is built wrong, You must have the courage to tear it down and start again.
He learned down,
his breath smelling of expensive tobacco. "Never love a pillar, son. They are replaceable. Only our Legacy remains." There are things that only you should take into consideration, for the Volkov family is a pillar in which this society stands and as much you must protect it by any means necessary.
He stands up, then gives a wittyful smile as i stare at someone i barely recognize as my father
My sobs silenced and my heart breathed more loudly than a drum realizing that this was my father, who has always protected me and told me that we should always try to do good no matter where the world puts us.
The "one" the people trusted in and made a chancellor, I didn't know what to believe in anymore. A man that could end a life in an instant or his mere words and his deceit to the outside World,
He has always been a role model in my life. Someone that I wanted to become like, to be able to influence people's actions into doing good things, not take people's life.
That was the day I stopped being a child, I realized then that I wasn't being raised to lead a family or society. I was being raised to engineer a nightmare, to be a gangster whose name rings like a sounding warning and a call to self reflection.
As i looked at blood of the body of Marcus as it's being dragged away, I began to draw my first secret blueprint, the one that would lead me away from him for eternity, the one that would end his tyranny and deceitful legacy, his legacy: The VOLKOV LEGACY