CHAPTER 02

But… How did everything start? Some years had already gone by since the first betrayal, yet she never gave up, yet she knew there was someone next to her who was always going to need her and it was for that little person that she decided to go on… Maybe, luck was going to smile on her soon. 

Friday night, the same routine that never let go of her since she started that new life. It was exactly the kind of life she had never expected to live, but it was always better than knowing her little miracle was going to bed with an empty stomach. She didn’t care about who she was in the past or who she was married to before his damn betrayal, none of that mattered now because the only thing that occupied her mind was knowing she was well hidden so the bastard who did that to her would never find her.  

Friday night and nothing changed. The loud noises, the music that she couldn't tolerate and its obscene lyrics, the young women who had to wear those black short skirts and white blouse with three buttons down that showed off her curves and which was the uniform of that place along with all those men who were always going to have fun and have a good time for a moment while she had to tolerate them for the money they paid her for the mere fact of being her who brought the drinks to those who were always over-drunk.

No matter how long she’d been working in places like that one, she was never going to get used to the smell that drunk men gave off along with those lewd glances that undressed her. It had been more than three years since the day she realized that she was always going to earn two times more as a waitress at midnight than cleaning bathrooms and floors of a more decent company. But nothing of that mattered as long as she had her little miracle by her side, that was how she called him, her little miracle since his birth was a total miracle. The eclipse of love.  

Once again the smell of cigarettes, as it was every weekend, entered the lungs of that woman who had been breathing the same smell for years. Maybe one day her luck would change, she really hoped so before her son could know the reason why she had to disappear at nights and never be with him to watch over his sleep as any other mother would do at that time of the night. 

The tables began to fill up, some came and some went in the company of friends, groups of friends and work colleagues who were just looking to de-stress a little after such a hard week of work.

April sighed when she saw more and more men coming into the bar. Surely, it was going to be a long night. 

“What’s up, April?” The woman with the rebellious blonde hair asked as she watched the way her friend leaned against the same bar and then rested her head in her hands. Her name was Adela and she’d been the only good friend that had turned up into April’s life.  

The night was just beginning and April seemed to have already lost all the energy she had saved in all those days waiting for the weekend. That bar only opened its doors from Friday to Sunday, but the days that were between her hell and her paradise were never enough to psyche out about the destiny that was coming every weekend. 

April just raised her head in a stressed way. It was unbelievable what the woman in front was asking her when it was already more than obvious the answer she was going to give her.

“I’m exhausted. And this fucking skirt that doesn’t help,” April complained as she stretched her skirt down, trying to cover more that the skirt should.

Adela laughed. “Do you want me to bring the religious dress?” 

April gave her her worst look. “Hahaha, very funny. Adela, I’m dying to go home.”   

“It's too early for you to say it, you know perfectly well that the night is just beginning and the bills are about to fall so suck it up.”

“I hate the way those fucking teenagers are looking at me every time I bend down to get their drinks,” April pointed at one of the tables where four young men were drinking and laughing. “I’m a mother! I wonder if they’d look at me in the same way if they knew that I have a five-year-old waiting for me at home.”  

Adela laughed again. 

“I can't stand the damn stare of so many of them. I don’t know what I’m doing here.” 

“Really? Do you want me to remind you the reason why you are here?”

April just looked at her friend and then took her tray with the next round of drinks for the young men who surely were going to leave her some bills if she was willing to bend down a little more. 

It was going to be a long night as her friend had already told her, April only hoped that in the end there would be more bills to count than drunken men staring at her.

But what no one knew was that our destinies can change any second, any day of the week. 

******

Friday night and nothing changed. It was past midnight when the underworld opened its gates to let the son of Hades to come out of his world and play with the reality of others. He was tired of the same routine and it was after a couple of years that he dared to make a visit to that bar. 00:23, that was the time he read on the watch on his wrist which, surely, was worth the price of the car where he was travelling around the city. 

With slight movements, the view could be described as the one we see when a scene is shown on television in slow motion. A black suit, legs slightly apart from each other, shoes well polished, one of his arms resting on the frame of the glass through which the man looked while in the other hand he had that cell phone that would not stop ringing unless he turned it off. The tie around his neck was wine-colored along with the white shirt. Not much could be appreciated but the image was as perfect as that well worked masculine physique. On the neck, one of the veins stood out, as well as on the hands. A man was arriving at the bar that had not been open long.

Anyone who saw him traveling in that van, dressed in a way that made the women who knew him go crazy, would know that he was a mysterious man, a man who didn't talk more than he should. A man who was hiding so much more than his identity because that man in the black van was hiding his second life.  

And if mysteries could be brought to life, they would surely say that they would have taken the body of that mysterious man as if he were the son of the devil. The same one described as the most handsome and powerful young man. What could be his name? If only they could imagine that the name of that one could be the most handsome and powerful young man. By day one and by night another.  

Meanwhile some were falling into a pool full of money, there were others who were struggling to get out of there with a couple of additional bills to buy something for their little miracles and draw a curve line on their lips. 

With his amber eyes, Lucian looked through the glass. The loud music reaching his ears, making him smile in a lopsided way. The bar seemed to be working as the other 10 he owned. 

“Go very slowly,” he said to his personal driver, “it is said that things are better seen when there is no hurry.” That masculine tone of voice that would sick countless women echoed in the space of that van. There was nothing that was missing in him. There was nothing that he could envy of other men when the truth was that he had everything on his side, ready to be used when he wanted at the time he felt like. 

And just like that, a black car with tinted windows approached the bar.

A secret to discover, a lover to meet, a heart to change its course and two destinies that were about to become one. How small the world was when it came to conspire against us! April, the young April and the one who was a naive girl in the past, was to realize too late that there are secrets that were better not to keep. 

April, the name of a woman who obtained everything just by proposing it. 

Son of Hades, a two-faced man who knew nothing.