I don’t look back as I walk inside and climb the stairs to my room. Every step is heavy with agony. By the time I close the door to my room and drop to my knees, it feels like I have exerted myself to the point of having no strength left.
Breathing heavily, I repeat to myself. “Only a few more days. Only a few more days. You can do this.”
He doesn’t want me.
Farewell, my unrequited love.
I tried and failed.
I gambled and lost.
Sobs rip out of me, and I barely make it to the bed where I curl into myself, wanting the world to disappear until I heal what can’t be healed.
8
MIKAIL
She shut me out—completely. This is not ignoring or punishing me, but it’s like mynosnubbed her life essence. To be the reason butchers me. Her misery caused by me. Once again.
It’s been three hellish days where the moment she would see me, she would turn around, walking away from me. I won’t survive this torment.
I have memorized her routine. She swims, goes for a drive, plays for hours, and then locks herself in her room where she plays some more. I thought I knew what torture was, but her cutting me off fucking kills me. Agonizingly. Slowly.
I swear it’s like my men sense the deadly vibe I emanate because both the organization and the business have gone smoothly—too smoothly for my liking because I need a reason to go off. All I’ve done is fight and work. On repeat. In vain.
I crave her reaction. Something, anything or I will go mad. I rake a hand through my hair, wanting to rip it out. I function on pure agony and lack of sleep.
Tonight, she has a concert, and I watch the live feed of the cameras at the compound on my laptop. Dressed in a blacksilk dress reaching her ankles, she wears sandals with spiky golden heels. Red paints her lips, her black hair straightened to perfection and falling down her back. She wears her pain like the queen she is.
Lorenzo, the head of security at the compound, opens the door to her Porsche, and she offers him a small smile before she gets behind the wheel, two cars flanking her. My best men trail her because she’s my reason, my purpose—my fucking life.
I had a lot of time to think. Strangely, what heartache achieves—resurrection of the fucking corpse in my chest I thought I buried.
My life flashes before my eyes, stuck on repeat on her eighteenth birthday.
One day, she was a sweet girl, the next, a firecracker of a teenager, and then she became my dream woman. A few years completed the transformation meant to undo me.
I didn’t lie. I wasn’t truthful either.
I wasn’t surprised when she asked me to kiss her. Caught off guard, yes. But surprised? No. Suddenly, she wasn’t untouchable, and it fucked with my head. I convinced myself she’s forbidden being my best friend’s little sister, then I latched onto the age difference.
Imagining what would have happened if I had kissed her is for people who don’t control their lives.
I lost my fucking mind searching for her, losing hours while my father drove her away.
And when he called me, none of those excuses mattered. I would get to her and make her mine.
I always considered her mine—mine to protect, mine to spoil, mine to love.
My initial plan was obliterated when I had to listen to my father recount the story of who was behind my mother andsister’s death. Igor was too far gone, and I made him believe I entertained his revenge plans.
By then, my entire heart belonged to the girl shivering in a corner and crying for me more than for herself, and my complete loyalty belonged to my brother, who would never have done what his father did.
Enzo and I have prided ourselves on being honorable men. Our bond is the only true thing in our lives. Our credo and guideline—not to betray the other.
But I’ve been betraying my brother for the last four years.
I’ve betrayed my heart too.
