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ONCE UPON A NEVER HAPPY EVER AFTER

Naomiwrites
14
chs / week
The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 14 chs / week.
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Synopsis
BOOK 2: FUTURISTIC MAFIA STORY. 105 days to live. Three worlds in one. One underground Mafia base. Violet Griffin is diagnosed with cancer again, and she has 105 days left to live. Violet rules out a bucket list, and her first goal is to tell her crush, Ethan Reed, about her feelings for him, but things don't go as planned when Ethan ignores her efforts to talk to him. She throws away her bucket list, and Ethan sees it. Having lost someone dear to him to cancer, Ethan makes it his priority to make her dreams come true. He offers her a job to be his tutor. As they spend time together, Violet gets interwoven in Ethan's dark underground world.  Then she realizes the people she hated the most were around her all along. NOTE: YOU CAN STILL READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE FIRST, BUT FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING, YOU CAN READ ' DIVORCED IN LOVE FIRST' IT'S WON'T SHOW AS OTHER BOOKS I'VE WRITTEN BUT YOU CAN SEARCH IT UP. THE ONE WITH THE GREEN COVER PHOTO, IS THE UPDATED VERSION.
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Chapter 1 - 1- NEVER: WILL I BURN TODAY?

ETHAN'S POV

I am fire but I am freezing.

Water but I am wilting.

Air but I am choking.

I can not breathe. I can not breathe yet I am unable to get out of this bathtub.

The water is close to forty-two degrees Celsius yet I feel so cold. I do not know if it is the scars that make me unable to move or maybe, just maybe, I am finally ready to die.

Just ten seconds and I will leave this shithole.

Ten.

I am in the ring and a man the size of a bull is standing in front of me.

Nine.

Everyone is cheering.

Eight.

He is telling me to punch him and I am unable to because I have never hit a man before.

Six.

Alejandro is outside the ring holding Emily and Mum's picture to a blow torch.

Three.

That was four years ago.

" Ethan, did you see my— Oh my shit!"

I sit up so quickly I think I must have broken my ribs for the hundredth time.

My hands smoothen my hair backward, and I spit off water from my mouth.

I do not move from the bathtub. I am staring out the window and there is a bit of relief in me.

No rain today. No one will be burning.

" Ethan, how the hell is your bathtub in the middle of your bedroom?" Emily sounds surprised and I do not know why.

I get out of the bathtub and look at her. She begins to scream. She covers her eyes and turns away from me quickly.

I look down at my lower body and realize I am completely naked. I quickly grab a towel and wrap it around my waist. I feel sorry for making her see that.

" You are disgusting, Ethan!" I think she is about to vomit and I feel completely offended. " Oh God, mum, help!" She screamed. " I just saw Ethan's baby maker."

She is too dramatic and it grinds on my nerves.

" You came into my room without knocking." I manage to say before the pain in my jaw hits me. I wince.

I need to fix that.

" I'll do as I please and your three hundred thousand page rule book can't stop me." She says hyperbolically.

" Why have you come here?"

" Did you take my curling iron?"

" Get out of my room." I hissed in no mood for her tantrums.

She peeks at me. A sigh escapes her lips before she turns to look at me completely.

She is frowning, unhappy, and completely different from what she is at school. She is never happy at home. Never happy when she is around me.

I know I have built these walls between us but it is what I have to do to protect her.

She has grown more beautiful over the years. She no longer wears her hair childishly, she does not wear long covering dresses. She puts on makeup, which Mum hates.

She had changed so much in just nine years and I do not blame her because I have also. Everyone has. The world has too.

" I don't want to argue with you, Ethan; I have a date by seven thirty tonight. Where is my curling iron?"

" It is dangerous going out after seven and you will destroy your hair if you keep using that thing on it every time."

She prefers curly hair because Carolina tells her guys will like her a thousand times more with curls. I do not know why she believes what Carolina says when she is ineffably beautiful with her natural hair.

I am afraid of what she would become sometimes.

She opens her mouth to speak but stops when she notices the scars on my body. Her hard gaze softens as her eyes graze around my body. I want to walk away.

" What happened to you…" She gasps and reaches to touch me but I am quick to hold her hand.

" I said get out of my room." I snarl.

" Ethan, did you get into a fight?" She gasps again. " You have a tattoo —"

" If you do not get out I will leave." My tone is the exact opposite of what I'm feeling.

As if touching a hot iron rod, Emily snatches her hand away from mine and she is frowning and hating me all over again.

I am wilting.

" I don't know why I bothered to care," She walks out of the door and glances at me. She is crying.

I am choking.

" I know you took my curling iron so I wouldn't go on my date because you hate me so much. I hope you are happy. Just wait till I tell Mum you skipped school and got yourself into a fight."

She is gone.

There is no denying taking her curling iron. She does not understand what the world is capable of doing to her. She cannot see what those boys want from her. They would sleep with and break her heart and I will never allow any boy to make her cry.

Mum works at a cyber càfe a few blocks away and she returns home at five. It is three twenty-seven; I have approximately one hour and thirty-three minutes to get myself ready to endure her chiding.

I manage to put my almost useless body to use as I decide to take a walk.

As soon as I step out of my house, my phone is buzzing.

It is about time. I was worried when he did not call the minute the first period ended.

" Did you go to the Utopic world today?" Ashton says in three seconds.

" I did not."

He gasps. " You went to the base?!"

I stare at the blue, grey, and green skyscrapers blocking the dim sunlight. They are all arranged in a particular section of the country, separated from the bigger Dystopic world by a large impenetrable metal gate and guarded by armed men recruited by Antonio.

Every country has been separated into two 'worlds' and beneath these worlds is the cause of the separation.

A place I have been bound to and can not free myself from till I am taken from existence.

"Leonardo says he wanted to be entertained."

I can not help but remember the mirthful look on his face as he watched me destroy a man's life. I wish to rip off his face with my bare hands one day but I am held back by chains of cowardice— No! I am held back by fear.

" That son of a—" Ashton stops before he can sign a death wish with his mouth.

It was hard to tell if you were being monitored or not. A man had been killed a year ago for describing the Mafia with a negative adjective. His corpse was hung in a shop in the only market standing in Seattle. Everyone was mortified by what they had done to him but I have seen worse to have been surprised.

" I'm coming over." Ashton finally speaks again.

" Do not bother, I am taking a walk now."

I know part of the reason he wants to come is to see Emily.

Although he is the only closest thing to a friend in my life, I am happy he has feelings for my sister. He treats her right but she is ignorant to it. She does not give him a chance in her heart. Sometimes I feel she is too much for him. She breaks his heart a million times without knowing it.

He is the only one I know working for the Mafia who refused to submit his heart and refused to believe life will never be the same again.

I fear he will learn the hard way.

" Make it quick, I can see lightning in the sky."

Maybe I would finally die.

" Okay, I will see you in school tomorrow."

" I hope." He says in a mirthful tone and I am sure he is sneering. I want to smile but I remember quickly I can never smile again when a sharp pain hits my jaw.

My jaw had been broken thirty-five times, just like most parts of my body, thirty in my first year at the base and five when Leonardo wanted to be entertained. I have had twenty-five surgeries in the Utopic hospital; the healing is quick since technology has evolved over the years. Eventually, I got tired of the surgeries because I knew it was only killing me more. Sometimes, Ashton helps me, but most times, I heal myself.

I see lightning and my heart becomes a maze runner.

Will I burn today?

I am standing in front of the only existing hospital in Seattle. We are lucky we still have a hospital even though it costs a fortune to get treated.

There is no government. No president. No ruler. I do not know how the world changed so quickly. We are being ruled by the Mafias; their word is power, and they call the shots.

Taxes are so high that people kill themselves to avoid it. Everyone above twelve is subjected to pay taxes even though we are starving and dying at every moment.

Antonio said we should count ourselves lucky now because what is to come will be a great destruction to those who refuse to be part of his people.

" Give it three years and the world will be fully ours." He once told Alejandro, his brother.

There is a sudden movement in my stomach and I want it to go away.

She is heading for the transparent glass door. She is the reason I have made it my hobby to come here every Wednesday.

I can see the paleness of her skin; she is becoming leaner every day. Her long black hair had been cut to brush her shoulder. She is clutching a clipboard to her heaving chest.

I am tempted to walk to her and say hi for once but I know that is not possible. I am a walking threat.

She has been visiting the hospital for a month now but I do not understand why.

She is not the same person she was in school anymore. She used to talk to everyone at school except me and was high up the school's social ladder, but one day, she stopped talking, and her bright clothes were replaced with grim-colored ones. She speaks to no one.

I wonder if she remembers me.

She stops as soon as she exits the hospital. She holds her knee for support as she crouches. I can see the veins bulging on her neck as she struggles to breathe. The clipboard falls to the concrete ground and I want to help her pick it up.

I do not know why she comes to the hospital frequently. Mum said she had been free from cancer since eight years ago. She walks with a robotic leg because the cancer paralyzed her. It looks exactly like the human leg; the only thing that gives it off are the wires that are supposed to be veins peeking out of her legs.

Violet remains that way for a minute before she straightens. She looks at the sky for some time before she looks away.

Her eyes are turning towards my direction and adrenaline takes me captive. I want to know what it feels like to look into her gray eyes. What is it like studying a part of her? Knowing her. Her fears. Her weakness. Her desires.

She never maintains eye contact with me probably because she is scared of me like everyone else.

Before her eyes can meet mine, I am walking away.