Psychotic Love (a mafia love story)

Chapter 60

ECHO'S POV

I sit on the couch wrapped in a blanket, eating a bowl of rice and beans. Luca says eating these types of foods will help me put on weight. I need to, badly. I was weighed before leaving the hospital and was shocked to see ninety-eight pounds on the scale. I didn't think I was that underweight. I can't wait until I feel like myself again.

After four large bites of my meal, I start to feel nauseous. My stomach wants to regurgitate all of what it's consumed. Luca said that's normal after being deprived of food for so long. He also says I should also take things slow.

He leans over the back of the couch kissing me on the cheek.

"Victoria will be here in a bit. She still doesn't know all of what happened to you, are you up for telling her? If you don't want to talk about it, I'll do it."

"It's okay Luca. If she doesn't hear it from me, she won't believe it."

Luca walks around to sit next to me. He pulls me into his arms. "I uh...I made an appointment for you to speak with a therapist. Is that something you want right now?"

"Yes, thank you, Luca."

I look out the window to see a bright white covering the backyard.

"Luca, do you think we could decorate for Christmas? I never got to do it as a kid, and it would be something to take my mind off things."

"Yeah, we could. I've never decorated for Christmas before, either. Never even had a Christmas tree, or got gifts."

That's a surprise. I never got much of anything because of money, and half the time my dad would find an excuse to not get me anything. He'd say I was too disobedient that year, or I didn't deserve anything because I was a horrible daughter.

"Why? Didn't you grow up with money? Why didn't you get gifts?"

"My pa always told me it was a waste of time. Instead of being a normal six-year-old opening gifts and having fun with family, I was making my first kill."

"And you remember it, your first kill?"

"Like it was yesterday. I didn't want to do it. Cried for hours. My papa left me in the room with a guy. He'd come back every 20 minutes or so. If I hadn't killed the guy, he'd beat me and threaten to kill me. The process repeated over and over again. eventually, I got tired of it, so I just killed him. To stop my own pain and suffering, I killed him. "Kill or be killed" is what my papa used to say."

I realize something. Maybe Luca wasn't born a monster. He was raised to be one. "I'm sorry, you had to go through that."

"It's fine. I can't blame him for my actions now, I grew to love it all on my own. It became my outlet. When I felt anger build inside me, I'd kill to let it out. The feeling of having someone's life in my hands has always been...euphoric. I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but it's built into my life. I can't stop it. If I'm being honest, I don't want to. It's who I am."

I know I should probably be freaked out and disgusted, but I'm not. I love Luca, and I accept him, his deadly flaws and all. I can't change him. I wish I could in that aspect, but I can't. As he said, it's built into his life. It's built into his work.

My love for Luca feels funny, wrong even. It's strange when you've seen someone at their absolute worst. When you've seen and know the things they are capable of, when you know they're not a good person but you love them anyway.  There's something tremendously wrong with me, and I'm not entirely sure I want to fix it.

"I think about the words you said to me the day I pulled you out of that basement. Maybe you were right, princess. I am the devil. Sometimes I find myself realizing just how fucked up I am, and for some reason, it doesn't really faze me. But still, I wonder what it would be like to be...normal."