“I’ll see you at the academy,” she says coldly. “Unfortunately.”
She strides towards her waiting car.
I don’t let her leave alone.
The door barely closes before I am inside, sliding onto the seat beside her. She shoots me an unimpressed look, then turns to the driver.
“It’s fine,” she says. “Just drive.”
The car pulls away.
She doesn’t look at me once. Her eyes stay fixed outside, somewhere far away from me.
I barely stop myself from taking her chin and forcing her to look in my direction. She should be watching me, thinking about me, breathing me in instead of whatever sky soaked thoughts she is hiding behind those eyes.
But I don’t.
She needs the distance. I feel it in my bones, even if I don’t understand it.
And look at me, showing restraint.
She has definitely ruined me.
Twisted something fundamental inside my head, rewired instincts I never questioned before. I don’t analyse it, and I don’t resist it.
I let it fucking consume me.
Chapter 19
Octavia
The man keeps following me around.
Nothing new.
Everywhere I go, he is there. I cannot escape him.
He is driving me crazy, and I can’t even release this pent up anger anywhere, because Adriano has not found any men since that eventful night.
And the people who attacked me are long dead, but whoever ordered them still walks free, I have no idea who that is, and it gnaws at me more than I like.
I keep turning that attack over in my mind, again and again, but it leads nowhere.
Adriano was furious with me, probably still is, and I don’t understand why.
I mean… I wasn’t the one who shot him.
And yet somehow he blames me, says the psycho I have managed to get myself entangled with is too deranged, that because of me and my stupid Instagram picture Markev put a bullet in his hand.
Or hands I should say.
Anyway, he was fine. Markev didn’t hit anything important, so there was no lasting damage.
If I didn’t know better, I would almost say he did it on purpose. Knowing I will have his head for hurting Adriano badly.
So here I am, back at the academy, trying to make the most of my final year without any more bullshit thrown my way, and now I can’t even do that. With the attack, everything feels tainted.
Adriano is looking into it with my men, but for now there is nothing.
