His Little Lamb || bxb

26.0

| Milan |

"You don't have to come with me if you don't want you know. I'd understand if you changed your mind," Val said to me in the back of the car as we were just about to take off to get to court.

"We're already on the way," I simply replied back.

"We're not there yet though. You can go back if that's what you want."

"No, it's okay."

When we got there, there was a crowd outside and we had to be helped inside by security and our own bodyguards that Val had hired to come with us for the day. The mob of people surrounding us made me feel like I was thrown right into a lion's den, and it made my anxiety skyrocket. I knew there were going to be a lot of people here and I knew there would be reporters and paparazzi taking photos and trying to talk to me, but I didn't realise how suffocating it would feel in the moment. I never had a problem with claustrophobia before but now it felt like I was being crushed alive by the encompassing wall of human limbs and flashing lights.

"Milan! How does it feel to be datinga world renowned billionaire?"

"Is Mr Osiris really part of a mafia family?"

"What really happened the night he was shot?"

"How did you two start dating?"

The millions of questions were driving me nuts and I wanted so badly to scream at them to leave me alone.

It feels fucking amazing to date a millionaire and I especially love it when he spanks me with a paddle that probably cost hundreds of pounds - is that what they wanted to hear? Or yes, he's in a mafia or the night he was shot he killed a man and he enjoyed it, or we started dating when he offered to pay me a huge sum every week to stop me from seeing other people because I was selling my body for money. Were those the answer all the press desired? All the juicy private details that they wanted to plaster on every front page of every news site they owned.

I decided the best course of action was to ignore all the nosy bastards and simply walk inside with Valencio who was hurrying us along as quick as he could manage. It was a lot easier when we got inside the building. A few reporters were permitted inside but not too many and they backed off when they realised, they clearly weren't going to get an answer out of me or Val.

A few moments later we were met by Katarina and her Husband and Vienno and his wife who had all come to court to support Val as I had. Pietro was here as well of course as he was acting as one of our bodyguards today. I liked knowing that Val had a good support base behind him. He had gotten a call from his father earlier as well and he had laughed at something his dad said and the wholesome smile on his face made everything feel more real. It was eerie how he could feel so at ease after killing a man and now having to try and prove his innocence in court. But maybe there was something eerie about me too, because every day that went past made me fear it all less and less.

If Val was the one, my forever, which I was started to suspect he might be, then this would be my life too. The intensity would be my burden too to bare but despite the challenges or the constant prodding at my morality, I too was starting to feel at ease. The reporters were annoying, and the paparazzi may follow me around wherever I went, but the feel of Valencio Osiris' hand as it engulfed my own had the power of an otherworldly God tying me to his will – a will I was quite freely willing to submit to.

The court session started, and I tried to pay attention to what was being said but my eyes were glued on the jury. When León was at court, I found myself doing the same thing whenever anyone, but my brother was talking. I would stare at each individual person and imagine what their lives must have been and what they thought when they looked at my twin or in this case my boyfriend. Would they believe him when he said he didn't intend to kill anyone? And it was then that it dawned on me how similar the situations were. Val and León had both killed someone and while it could very easily be argued to be self-defence, there was also definite intent to harm there. Val said so himself and León... I saw the look in his eyes that night and he just kept stabbing when once would have sufficed. It was on the borderline of being one too many for the jury to decide that it was more than just self-defence which the prosecutor had very much tried to convince everyone off.

There was one man in the jury, a boy really rather than a man, who particularly caught my eye. He must have just hit 18. And when the sun hit his face at a certain angle from the spring, almost summer, sun, there was a moment where time stood still, and I saw León in his features with his blonde hair falling into his eyes.

The rest of the day felt like a fever dream. A glitch in reality. The court session broke off and reconvened at various occasions throughout the day, desperate to wrap things up as quickly as possible. I think things were going well for Val with the snippets of conversation I caught from others.

"-they believe it was Fabio's gun, I'm sure of it"

"-he's been charming but respectful all day. I'm sure the judge loved it"

"-those women in the jury definitely couldn't keep their eyes off him, hopefully that's a good sign that they'll want to go easy on him"

I was happy for Val. I really was. I was sure he would win his case. I felt like he could win anything. But I didn't feel all here anymore. I kept thinking I saw León in every face I saw, and I couldn't rely on my boyfriend to comfort me right now because he had more important things to think about. I just had to tell myself that León floated away with his lantern, and it helped a little.

Last night had maybe been one of the nicest, most caring thing anyone had done for me and I felt grateful that I had such a man in my life. But, while I know Val wanted it to give me closure, closure was not what it gave. I knew there was only one way I would ever truly get this desired closure that I was so clearly missing out on and so, I excused myself to the bathroom to sort myself out.

It wasn't really a big thing that I did, but it felt massive to me but the second I hit 'send' I felt a wave of relief run over me. And when I looked in the mirror, for the first time in a long time, I saw my own face and not my brothers. My own blue eyes and my own blonde hair and my own little scar on my forehead from when León once pushed me as a kid, and I landed face first on a rock.

"Hi hun. You, okay?" Mirabella asked. Vienno's wife, who had handed me cocktail after cocktail the night I first met her at the club.

"Yeah, I'm great."

"Good." She smiled. "C'mon, your boyfriend's about to go back in and hopefully we should get a verdict. And then Kat will probably sentence him to a beating anyway. She's pretty mad that she didn't find out you were officially boyfriends the second it happened."

I chuckled feeling more pressures shed my skin and allowed Mirabella to guide me back. And then, Valencio was let go free of charge and Katarina did indeed beat him lightly in the car and then we all opened a bottle of champagne back at Val's gigantic house.

"Were you okay today?" Val asked me when the sun had set, and everyone had fallen asleep on the sofas.

"Yeah. I don't think I was at first, but I got through it."

"Yeah, you seemed a little quiet. But I'm glad you got through it," he said putting his arm around me. "Now, I'm afraid to say we might have to start telling Katarina every time we so much as kiss because that woman is scary when she's mad and honestly I'm a little traumatised after that beating I just took."

"She hit you twice on the head," I scoffed. "And El calls me dramatic."

We laughed and we kissed and no, we didn't tell Kat about it because we decided it felt kind of fun it being our own dirty little secret. I realised maybe this was what life was meant to be: stolen kisses in dim lighting, Minnow perched on my shoulder and not interrupting, and Azure eyes that I never failed to get lost in.

~~~~~~~~~

I have spotted an inconsistency in the previous chapter where Milan describes how León died which had now been corrected :)

🤍💜🤍