Chapter 1 THE BEGINNING OF THE SLAVE THAT BECAME A KING

PROLOGUE

***

LOVE… The rubbish people deceive themselves with, to blind themselves to reality. Its only use is to sell novels and sell out movies and groom weak, delusional people. I was deluded once, thinking love conquered all. My family was dirt poor, but it didn’t matter to me as long as they loved me and we had each other. But I was just ten when I was sold like I was a piece of bread. That was just the beginning of my torment, the rest would come on my journey across the ocean to a strange land. The end, well, It would be my retribution to the world for turning their backs on me.

***HAKAN***

Filth, blood, piss, tears, and death. The stench was so thick in the air, it was impossible to separate one from another. I was in a container with about a hundred other children of varying ages, being transported to an unknown place. Some of them had been kidnapped, but some like me had been sold by parents, relatives or friends. There was no way to tell time inside the air tight container, and breathing was a chore with so many others in here and so little air to go around.

Lack of air wasn’t our only problem, we were hardly fed while being transported and water was a scarce commodity. Our captors didn’t care if we lived or died, whichever one of us was still breathing when we finally arrived would be taken and the corpses would be dumped into the ocean. They couldn’t risk their illegal business being discovered by naval authorities.

The boy seated next to me was seconds away from dying and I was so hungry that I contemplated feeding on his flesh when he finally died. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, maybe I would die either way. Maybe it was better than whatever fate awaited me if I lived. I closed my eyes and the same scene I had been reliving for hours, replayed in my head.

~

“Mama! Don’t let them take me!” I pleaded with tears in my eyes as a big man tried to take me away.

“You have to go, Hakan. You have to go. We can’t take care of you anymore. Stop crying, be a man.” My father said to me with a frown while my mother cried beside him.

“It’s okay, Kan.” My mother said as she rushed forward to embrace me.

“Please, I don’t want to go.” I pleaded as I looked up at her.

“They promised to take you to a better place. They will take care of you. Be brave for Mama, okay. Some other children from the village are going too, if they see you crying they will laugh at you. They will return you back to me, your father assured me of it.” She used her clothes to clean my face.

“But you’re crying too, Mama.”

“I…”

“Leave him, he doesn’t need your tears, woman.”

Mama immediately stood and walked back to stand beside father. As I looked up at him, I realised that Mama didn’t want me to go, it was father that was giving me to these men.

“Go back home, let the men handle business.” Father said to her and she walked away.

I hated how he treated her, how he spoke to her. I was a child, but I still understood that it was wrong. Just the same way I understood that I wasn’t being given to these men when my father was given some money. I was being sold and my mother had been lied to, they would never return me. I bit the hand of the man holding me and ran forward but before I could get far, I got caught by my father and he slapped me so hard that my ears began to ring.

“You better behave and be thankful that I finally found a use for you. Your mother won't be there to protect you if you misbehave. Your sister would have brought me more profit, but I have two more sons to replace you and she is the only daughter. The drought has killed our crops and we need to feed one way or the other.”

I didn’t understand what my father meant by drought, but when he mentioned the crops I knew he was lying. Our farm didn’t do so well this year, I knew that, but we still had something to live on for now. And we had already started preparing to plant more in the part of it that had already been harvested. My siblings and I no longer went to school, so there was nothing else to pay for.

He just wanted to use the money to drink and play games at the joint that was close to the market. That was why he didn’t want Mama to know that he received money for me, and also because she would have never agreed to let me go if she knew.

“Put him with the others.” A short man with beards told the man that had been holding me and I was put into the back of a truck with some other children from my village.

The last thing I saw was my father’s happy face as he counted the money he had been given before I inhaled a gas that made me fall asleep. When I woke up, I was in the container with more children than had been in the truck.

~

I heard the exact moment that the boy beside me took his last breath, and I closed my eyes. My mother’s face was the last thing I wanted to see before death took me too so I tried to remember her smile, her scent, her voice. I remembered her scolding me when I injured myself while also soothing my wounds. I remembered her singing to me and my siblings. I heard a loud noise and the container shook so hard that all of us were thrown about. A child from the corner began to cry and I wondered how the person had the strength to do more than breathe at this point.

There was a creaking sound as the container door opened, and the first thing I did was take a deep breath of fresh air right before a gun was pointed at my face.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello dear readers. Welcome to my corner of the storyverse. As you read, please don't forget to drop your comments so I'll know your thoughts, I love to hear from my readers

P.S: This chapter is like a flashback, Hakan's backstory will continue later on in the story.

Keep reading!