He held her for as long as he could while his father and Tehila kept watch. She fell asleep in his arms, the toll her grief had taken on her body finally causing it to shut down. Cole looked up at his father as he stepped forwards to take his wife. As he carried her about to go up the stairs, he turned to Cole and said.
"I'm in pain son, more than you can ever know, and I want justice. Your mother wants justice, you know what kind of family we are, we do not take slights easily. But this….. this is hard, I want someone to pay so bad and so does she, but we don't want to see our children fighting each other, you two are all we have let.
Its hard that your brother had died for nothing but sibling rivalry, and its hard about all the things you went through. But in the end what can we do...He's my son…..Cole he's Your Brother! There's no coming back from that, so think carefully about how you want to approach this situation and consider the hell you would be living in…..and consider also the fact that your brother is already living in it."
with that said and done, Cole and Tehilla Left the house to go do what was neccesary for their futures.
Driving through downtown Abuja was insane…. or was it Nasarawa. Both states had major towns right next to each other. So sometimes they were referred to as one and the same at their borders, unless you went a little deeper. Never the less this neighborhood was almost completely abandoned.
There were dozens of high rise apartment complexes that made up the neighbourhood after the old one was leveled some time around a hundred years ago. This place used to be called Jikwoyi, which stretched a bit towards Mararaba. A town that was close to where Cole had spent three years of his life with Sarah. This was the edge, a true no man's land.
The apartment complexes here was an ambitious project aimed at reducing the amount of homeless in the city and also to reduce the amount of people that immigrated out of the country every year. A majority of them choosing to go find their fortune in other countries or better yet out in the cosmos nestled among the stars. It was a failed project, and it was a project that had resulted in the displacement of thousands of people.
In the end the government ended up making more homeless than it had set out to do in the first place. This place was now the slums and it was just a black spot in an otherwise pristine city. But it was also a cesspool of crime, drugs, prostitution and the perfect place to dump a body. There were enough abandoned buildings filled with rats that would chew a body down to the bone in days around here.
It was here at the tender age of eight, Cole had seen his grandfather kill a man for the first time. This place was the city's dumping ground. But as he passed through, driving by himself for the first time in a while, Cole could see construction workers and construction bots all hard at work trying to fix the neighbourhood up. Honestly it had taken pretty much all of Cole's recently acquired fortune to start up this project.
Never the less he had already made the commitment and would very unlike himself not to see it through to the end. Through out the drive he had been pretty silent, He had said nothing and neither had Tehila who had chosen to come with him in order to avoid an awkward situation with his parents. Their lives were already too complicates as it is, and she did not want to complicate things any further.
But Cole had not said anything throughout the entire drive, he had been too occupied with his own thoughts, and even though they were both capable of feeling the others emotion, but how to deal and approach it was something neither one of them could do. And considering they had seen each other naked, it was weird. But eventually someone had to break.
"Do you want to talk? We're getting close to the center of the neighborhood, if there's anything you need to say, you can say it now. You know I'll listen to you Cole." in response though Cole sighed as he turned to her, before shifting his attention back on the road.
"I don't know what to do Tehila. Everything is so messed up and nothing makes sense. Everyone is hurting, everyone! There's not a single member of this family that is not currently feeling pain in some form or the other, I don't know much about my grandmother, but her greed aside I think she's also not happy about the way things have turned out.
The wort part about it all was that we did this to ourselves. Nobody came out from nowhere and forced all of this betrayal and grief onto us….. we all made that choice, and the rest of us reacted to that choice and made even larger mistakes.
This is not some novel that someone can get fully away with killing a person, much less a member of the family. Prison might not be an option for now, but causing pain to your family, whether you are close or not is an event that breaks you. And now even after I thought that I was free and complete, I find myself a lot more broken than before. And ultimately while I'm here sitting down with you and having everything going right for me I find myself asking the question….did I do the right thing?"
Cole fell silent, as he turned to Tehila, she stretched her hand over and placed it at the back of his neck, softly running her hand through his hair. Somehow it made him extremely calm as the car finally came to a stop at their destination. Tehila took a deep breath, she was not sure what was the right thing to say, but she had to try her best and be there for Cole, to be the voice of reason when there's a storm of emotions.
And to be the rock he needed whenever he needed someone to keep him grounded. It was hard if she had to be honest, she might not fully be a part of this family…..seeing as she just married into it. But their fuck ups had also stretched to touch her. It had messed up her life and left her living like a cripple for a while three years. She had her own demons too, but Cole was the man she had chosen to lead, the man she had chosen to make the tough choices on her behalf and look after her. She need to make sure he remains strong.
"I understand your pain baby, and I honestly don't know what to tell you that would make this better. But you are building something that your family would never be able to. Things they would never be able to understand or do or ever come close to achieving. You are not the perfect man, and you are still human Cole, forget the fact you and I are very much different than the way we first started.
You still are human, a very emotional being and one that is driven by it. And Raens are even worse, were not just emotional we can feel it, we can sense it. It is a very important part of who we are. So I know it is hard and you are beset on all sides by doubts wondering if perhaps there was a better way to have done this. I don't know what to tell you baby, but look how far you have come, and look how far you are going.
If you have made mistakes make up for it, if this rivalry, this darkness is turning your family inside out then master it, as you have mastered everything that has been thrown your way. Never ever give up and hold yourself back. Make up for your mistakes and do better. Your ex is pregnant with your brother's kid, I don't need her to say it to me for me to know that girl is in way over her head as has a lot more mistakes than you could possibly have.
But that kid in her is innocent. And if you want to make up for it, then look to the future. You have your first brother's kids to ,look after, you fight for them just as much as you fight for yourself. So fight for the future, that can be a way to make up for it. don't let the darkness swallow you up Cole…..you are supposed to be it's master…..supposed to be the Lord Of Chaos. If you ask me id say that sounds like a bad guy... bad guys don't doubt themselves….they are the most stout people in their convictions… so keep fighting. And win!"
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