I wear his name like a scar.
Alessandro Rossi stole everything from me; my freedom, my future, the lie I told my father to keep him alive. He thinks I'm a tool to be used, a bride to be displayed, a Fraga to be broken. He thinks the ring on my finge...
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Yasenia had fallen for the one man who never should have been hers.
I carried ruin in my wake, My chaos seeped into every room I walked into, yet when her gaze met mine there was something in it that looked dangerously close to love.
I kept telling myself she must see me as some broken thing she thought she could mend, a project she could throw herself into, but when she looked at me it felt deeper than that.
Maybe she believed there was still hope in me, a trace of a man I had long buried.
I often wondered what she saw when she looked at me, because it couldn't be the same thing I saw when I looked in the mirror. I saw a man who carried death in his hands, a man who called the shots when no one else could, a man who knew what it took to end lives, to lead men into battles no one wanted to fight, and to make the kind of decisions that tore families apart.
I wasn't some hero in the wrong story. I wasn't a soul waiting for redemption. I was exactly what I had become, a man who thrived in the wreckage of this life.
And yet her eyes told me a different story. They never judged, they never recoiled. They looked straight into me as though I could still be something else, someone else.
I should have pushed her away before she got pulled too deep into this life, but I didn't. The truth was, I couldn't. I wanted her with a hunger I had no intention of denying.
It might have been twisted, but I was obsessed with her, and the idea that she might still find something worth loving in me was the only comfort I allowed myself to keep.
I knew what this life would cost her. The walls I had built around myself would one day fall and crush everything she thought she knew about me.
She would be hurt, and there was no way around it. That was the truth she would have to face, the truth I already lived with. I wanted to believe I could be the man her eyes made me out to be, but I knew better.
The espresso in front of me had gone lukewarm, but I drank anyway, the bitterness grounding me. My chest ached with every breath, a dull throb that matched the rhythm of my thoughts, but the bruises and broken ribs were the least of my worries.
Revenge sat heavier than any wound. The doctor had told me to rest, but rest had never been in my nature.
"Morning," Luca greeted as he stepped into the room, his voice edged with concern. "Feeling better today?"
I nodded, though I knew the attempt to reassure him lacked conviction.
"You sure? Do you need anything?" His eyes flicked toward the medication scattered on the table. "Did you take those? Should I get you more water?"
