WILD HEART

Prologue II

I am Zayan Orsini, the person who saw his father withering away day by day. I saw how his once bright eyes started getting hollow, there wasn't the same brightness in them. The wrinkles that adorned his once young and fresh face, the beard that concealed his features. My father wasn't the same person, it was like someone sucked the life out of his body. 

Wasn't it true and that person was none other than Layla Orsini. I started getting concerned for my father but he shrugged it off saying that he was growing old, I refused to believe that. How can you grow ten years older within the span of three years? 

The empty look on his face on different occasions, the tears that littered his face when he thought no one was looking at him but I did because I would go searching for him during nighttime when I wouldn't find him in the room sleeping next to me. I used to find him in the garden looking at the sky with a painful expression and glossy eyes, but one thing that remained constant was his love for me and Zayem. I loved that smile on his face whenever he was playing with us, when he was reading me stories, telling me anecdotes. 

Sometimes my heart is filled with hatred and pain, residing deep inside but sometimes it comes up to my mouth. It wraps my heart like a deep stain. I used to be a happy person despite everything because I had my father with me and only that mattered. I used to sing songs, admire the nature around me, the oceans, the gardens, my father's vineyards, the changing seasons until one disastrous day.

I am the same ten year old boy who watched his father being buried six feet under the ground. My father, my light, died. I wanted to cry out in sorrow so much that the sky would start raining to match my cry. I wanted to die that day, I wanted the world to be flooded in my tears because I wouldn't be able to say that bright smile, that deep eyes of my father that only held affection and warmth for us. What appeared in my heart that day was more than the agony and pain, it was the pain when someone crushed every single one of your bones.

I wasn't ready to accept this vision of life, to let go of the affectionate embrace of my father, I knew his heart was broken but the autopsy report confirmed that he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. I wasn't even able to see him for the last time, to tell him how much I loved him, it etched a deep regret In my heart. The day my father died my heart built ineffable hatred and disdain for her, she was the reason he died at the younger age of thirty six. 

She was supposed to be the one dead and burning in hell. That day was like a day of judgment for me but I was wrong to forget that a bitch was still present in our life. The bitch who was shedding crocodile tears for the world with my fathers arch rival or should I say her boyfriend was standing behind her.

They say you get cautious of everything around you when you fall in life, maybe my father also get a hem of our mother's intentions for us because months before his death he pulled some strings and changed his property status transferring fifty per cent of his shares under my name and forty per cent under Zayem's name and only ten per cent was given to our mother. 

It made me happy to see her screaming and yelling that day, it suited her. Say that bad luck was on our side at that time because we were only able to get that inheritance once we both turned sixteen until then our mother was our guardian and had the right to that property.

My doom started when I saw an evil glint in her eyes. Obviously, she didn't like us but she couldn't kill us either. After all, she was a money-hungry person. She locked us in the basement and continued to live her life. 

"Have you ever imagined being locked up in a nasty basement with dim light let alone with your year-old sibling and suffering from nyctophobia?" I lived that life for six years with only a pair of clothes and food every two days just to keep us alive. At so many times, I wanted to kill myself but then a little figure beside me would make me survive, my brother. He out of all people didn't deserve this life, without our fathers love and locked up in a basement without any basic facility. 

Imagine a ten year old child taking care of his year old sibling without any knowledge of how to. I would cry when he would start crying either from darkness or starving. I myself was scared and spent countless nights keeping my eyes open in fear.

That bitch would come once in a while eyeing us, her own children with disgust and I did the same.  Saying how unfair our father was to leave her with baggage, how we were a nuisance and obstacle in her life, a sword that was hanging above her head. How my father was a fool to believe in her facade.

I lost my sanity when she talked about my father and slapped her only to get beaten by her boyfriend ten times worse. 

From that day I became his punching bag. Occasionally he will come and let out his frustrations on me and I will have to endure it because first I didn't have an option and secondly I had to protect Zayem. Growing up I took his beatings as well. I lost all the hope in life, I thought we would end up dying in that scary and awful place.

Maybe God had mercy on us because one day someone came there and I recognised him as our butler who was very close to our father. (Joshua Noel) At first, I was scared and hid Zayem behind me but then I saw him crying seeing our state and told me that he was helpless because our mother was in our power. He promised us that he will help us get through this in any possible way he could, saying my father did a lot of favours for him.

He kept to his word, bringing us old clothes and giving us enough food every night. Two days a week, he would give me lessons and teach me with the help of his son's books. Saying that I needed to prepare myself to fight for our rights and our father. He would bring Zayem toys and many things teaching him as well, making our life as normal as possible in that hell and I was beyond grateful for that.

He would bandage my cuts whenever that bastard beat me and was mindful of never being caught. I would have to hide Zayem's and my belongings in the little safe or should I say space he built for us behind the wall because God knows what she would have done if he ever found out about it. Joshua got tired of me getting beaten, he would cry seeing my wounds and how helpless he was. 

I would smile his way and tell him that it was written in our destiny but he would always convince me to build my own destiny.

The most difficult thing there was to see Zayem crying and hiding in the corner whenever I was beaten, to see his eyes filled with uncountable questions, things which I didn't know how to explain to his innocent mind.

With time I stopped crying, even when my mother insulted me and that bastard punched me because the more you cry, the more people take pleasure in hurting you. I focused on my studies and Zayem, playing with him with the little toys we had, telling him stories about our father, the world outside. Seeing him smile motivated me to keep going. I chanted those words, again and again, to fight for what I, what we both lost and make them pay for every cruelty and avenge them for my father's misery.

Because I am Zayan Orsini, I inherited courage and power from my bloodline. I lost my heart and emotions the day I saw my father getting buried, my eyes saw no one but him, my eyes are a witness of his misery. I am a witness of how love snatches everything from you leaving you with nothing but a broken heart and I swear to never fall in love. I am the person who lost his loved one and innocence to the cruelty of the world, who suffered a thousand times in one day.

No fire will be able to burn me now because I am the fire myself.