Made For You

Ch. 26: Chaos & Crowns

Gabriel

I thrive on patience.

It is a habit particularly hard to form but once done, patience is the best weapon one can have. Especially, when it comes to dealing with shitheads.

Don't get me wrong. I have chaos inside me too.

Chaos feeds in my brain, chaos doesn't let me sleep, chaos has built itself so deep, spreading like a virus that won't go. Chaos is the reason my eyes always carry those dark patches underneath, chaos is the reason why every person who speaks irritates me, chaos is the reason why I can't breathe in peace.

Chaos dies when she is with me.

With Sofia, I can let the chaos sit in the back of my mind for a while. She gives me something else to consume. She brings her own set of chaos—desires, thoughts, feelings that I don't remember existing in me.

A fiancée wasn't meant to be a distraction. She was meant to be a good fuck, a womb to impregnate and be done with, someone to be tucked away safely in the mansion while I fought the world.

She is none of that. I can't even bring myself to touch her without the need to savor her. And if I savor her, I would be doing her a disadvantage. Her heart is still another's. She doesn't give a damn about me. Sure, she can give a mind-blowing blowjob but other than that, I don't see even an ounce of admiration for me in those emerald pupils.

She scares the fuck out of me. She is a sickness, an itch I can't scratch away. She is a wound festering inside my mind.

She lets my chaos die and becomes the only chaos I get impatient to conquer.

She eats at me like a riddle I keep trying to solve. I aim to find the answer to her at random times.

Like now, when her thoughts zone away Isiah's words for me before I can shove her away and focus on the tablet he slides across me.

"Robert Anderson, age twenty-seven, a journalist for PC media," Isiah says, tapping the screen with a grave expression mirrored over all my capos' faces. "He has been targeting our private properties—calling them out for being acquired illegally."

I let the constant click of my retractable pen die as I zoom in on the picture, sweeping my glance at a man with a pair of crooked white teeth, dressed in a long coat that doesn't fit him well, and glasses as huge as a raccoon's eyes perched up his nose.

"You want me to fear a man who looks like he forgets he owns five cats and eats last week's takeouts for dinner?" I ask, trying to keep my humor down because all I want to do is click delete.

If you are dangerous, you gotta look dangerous. This man is anything but.

"He may look that way but he is backed up by Julian Fallon," Diego's cringing voice adds. "You sure know that one, Signore."

He gives me a smirk that says he is trying to push buttons like he did the last time. Diego has always been a piece of shit, the worst one among them. If Marino is the definition of loyalty, Diego is the opposite. He thinks I don't know the activities he is indulging in behind my back, ensuring his wealth stays intact by participating in a profession outside of our limits.

He still thinks his Columbia's sex-trafficking ring was busted by the law when in truth, it was me who let the cops know about it.

I would have taken more action against him but I still need to know what other dirt he is hiding which the Conclave can't be connected to. I want my slate clean before I clean the world off him.

I close the screen, pushing the tablet back towards Isiah. "Send someone to keep an eye on both of them. Update me about anything suspicious."

"Si, Signore."