Lolita

You were an outcast even among your own people, or rather, you became one just a couple of years ago. The mafioso who controlled the city was now clinging to life himself—darned, cornered, homeless, empireless. The big house with a view of the forest and the lake was burned down. Wealth, money—everything you could desire—was snatched away into someone else's pockets. I survived because they only looked for me dead, and no one believed me alive . I was sitting in a cheap motel on the highway, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and watching the rain drizzle under the tattered curtain. My phone—a disposable handset—vibrated. The number was unfamiliar. I didn't pick it up. The second ring—and a message: "Dad, I know who you are. I ran away from Mom. She's not mine. Meet me at the old train station, if there's anything human left . " I hadn't slept for three days. I checked, cleared my tracks, drove in circles. At the train station at three in the morning, there was a girl of about nine, skinny, with a backpack and eyes I recognized immediately—mine. I didn't give my pregnant wife anything, thinking it was a trap. She gave birth to a child, but named it something else, sending it to a boarding school "temporarily." My daughter grew up without me, without her, without anyone else.