❝I would burn for all eternity to feel your touch once more.❞
Former mafia member now turned barista, Lorenzo Castello, is running away from his family to grieve a sudden loss when he meets a paramedic with no impulse control that turns his world up...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
GRIEF HIT HIM like a tow truck. He felt like he was drowning, no idea as to how to swim above the water. His lungs weren't filled with air, his breathing becoming rapid as he tried to provide himself with the oxygen his body sought. He fell on the ground, his elbows placed on his knees as his hands were over his eyes as if he wanted to hide away the fact that he was crying from someone.
But there was no one there.
He was alone, he had left his brother and father at the burning house where the corpses of the rest of their family were still on fire because he couldn't take it anymore. He had walked all the way from the outskirts of Rome to downtown where he owned a hotel – it was the only thing he had that hadn't yet been touched by his father. He wanted nothing to do with that man anymore. A scream escaped his chapped from crying lips as he thought back to the Facinellis arguing with them and then, the bomb going off.
How did he not see that coming before?
But then again, their body language and what they were saying didn't give him a hint of a bomb or anything like that.
He had been thinking about the what-ifs while walking there and all he could come up with was more blame – this was on him; he should have just pulled the trigger and all of that would have been over. But just like his father had told him, he was soft and weak. He was no mafia don but the thing was that he didn't want to be a mobster. He wanted nothing with that whole operation, especially since all of that took his family from him.
He was to blame for not protecting them but his father was to blame for letting that even happen.
That was all on him. He made the deal, he didn't stay true to his word, he sent a boy – a boy for fuck's sake! – to kill the messenger and he was the one to light that fire to his family and burn them alive. To Lorenzo, his father was the one to press the button that set off the bomb.
Not Vitale, definitely not Pietro but Adolfo Castello – his own freaking father.
Every single one of his employees that had seen him come in had asked him if he was okay. However, he didn't have the strength to answer them. He only asked for his suite and he had marched up there using the stairs in order not to run into anyone. Then, he went in, slammed the door shut and never got out.
That was all twelve hours ago.
His phone had been turned off because it kept buzzing every five minutes and it drove him mad. He could hear someone pounding on his door to be let in to talk or to check up on him but he just wanted to be left alone. Why couldn't they just respect that?
Tears had long since they stopped running down his flushed cheeks. His void eyes were focused on the watch on his right arm. He watched as the minute hand moved and he hadn't even realised that the hour one was moving too and with great speed too. His mind was foggy and his throat was still clogged even after twelve hours of crying like the weak man he believed to be.
