“Your little bitch.”
Yes! She is mine. Lina was mine. Ravenna is mine. I have to kill him. I have to save Lina. Lina is my wife. He took her from me. He killed my mother. I killed my mother. Sia, too. He saved Sia. I killed Sia. He saved Lina. I killed Lina. I have to kill him. I have to save her. She deserves to die. She’s the mother of my brother. He deserves a better father. I have to save him. They have to die. It’s not over. It’s never over. One of us has to die.
“Don’t listen to the screams,” she whispered as if she could hear my mind. “Stay here with me.”
Split in two between the twisted peace along the unexpected beautiful chaos staying tangled inside her had brought me and the voices that would never leave me be, I grumbled.
“Fight them, Leo.”
“I can’t.”
“I can help you.”
“No.” I let go of her hair and pulled out, knowing either way I’d lost. “No.”
Her hair whipped around her face as she tilted as far as she could to look at me. My cum mixed with her blood formed a disturbing shade as it slowly pooled out of her. The color of our bond mesmerized me, drawing me in an endless loop of need, as she begged me to stay.
I stepped back and grabbed my clothes. “I have to go.”
“Please, Leo,” she whimpered. “Even if you kill him and take her, she’ll reject you. Again. She’ll never love you, Leo. But I do.” She broke. “I love you.”
I froze for a moment. Then wrath burned under my skin and through my veins. I dropped everything and faced her. My pulse throbbed in my skull. My hand squeezed around her neck. I’d never wanted to hurt her more than I did now. “When do your lies end?”
“I’m…not…lying,” she choked. “Not…now.”
That was far more disturbing than all her lies together. One truth I should have never learned. It was dangerous, and more if I believed it. “You love me? You love a psychopath who is in your definition has no empathy, incapable of love, only obsession,delusions?”
She struggled, her face all red, her wrists rattling the cuffs, her fingers clawing up. “It’s what I was taught but never what I believed.” She wheezed. “I believe what I feel.” Her gasps for air grew weak. “I believe what I see, Leo, and I see you.”
That’s why I have to leave her behind. She sees me. Her own darkness that twisted her makes her see me. Makes her mine. Makes her love me. Makes me—
“Le-o,” she rattled, turning purple, her eyes rolling back. “S-s-top. Le—”
I stared at her, rage coursing through me like my own blood, listening to her wheezing breath and pleas, watching the life leaving her face. Then, as if suddenly out of a trance, I released her before I crushed her windpipe.
I had to get out of here.
“Goodbye, Ravenna.” The whisper flowed out of my mouth without thinking. She probably couldn’t hear me with all her coughing and wild gasps. I grabbed my clothes and turned my back at her.
CHAPTER 17
Ravenna
I’d confessed my love to the man who shattered my last piece of innocence, to the psycho monster that threatened everything. My freedom. My sanity. My soul. My whole life. And he was walking away from me, leaving me in the most humiliating and disgraceful condition, restrained to a dingy bed in an abandoned house, his seed and cruelty staining my flesh. Dirty. A piece of garbage he wouldn’t even bother putting aside.
“I still haven’t told you who put you in that cage!” I yelled after him, biding my time, willing him to stay. How pathetic was that?
He didn’t stop. “I already know.”
“I swear to you it wasn’t Don Bellomo. He wouldn’t let them kill you. He insisted they send you to Filicudi in exile. You have to forgive him. You can’t punish him forever. He, too, lost your mother, that day. He’s been suffering just like you.”
He banged his fist on the wall. “Not another word.”
“Lina ishislifeline. He saved her because he needed to save someone innocent like your mother and unborn sister. He couldn’t save his own so he saved her.” I understood Don Bellomo’s actions toward Lina more than anyone. The need to save someone, anyone, when you couldn’t save your own family. That was why I was desperate to save Leo. I couldn’t save my brother, and my whole family fell apart. Saving Leo, saving someone I loved, could be my absolution.Mylifeline.
“I’ll rip your tongue out of your mouth if you don’t shut up.”
“I don’t care. You have to listen. You have to let go. It’s the only way. You have to stop blaming him for something that was neither his fault…nor yours.”