LOGINI am rendered motionless and speechless as I momentarily forget about the tie in his hand.His fingers brush lightly over the pulse at my wrist, like a ghost of a touch, almost too tender. I freeze. He doesn’t seize me yet. He waits and I do too. Let me feel the inevitable and the inescapable.I can feel the heat of his body, the possessive weight of his stare. My breath stutters. Only then, only when the fear blooms in my chest like a flower, does he move. He grabs my wrist and yanks it behind my back.I gasp, and before the second gasp leaves me, he loops it around my wrists and pulls it taut. His eyes flicker with hunger I can’t deny as his grip is unrelenting before he brings me with his own brand of command.I jerk back instinctively. “Massimo, don’t!”I struggle. If only for show, my heart thrumming wildly in my chest, but my body betrays me, inching closer to him, instinctively leaning into the heat of his presence.There’s no escape. He knows it. I know it.He chuckles and sna
There’s always a split second, right before something unholy appears. When your body knows before your mind registers. Your breath betrays you, and your skin tightens over the bones before your heart drops like a coin into the fountain of wishes.I feel him before I hear him.A pulse at the back of my neck. A whisper in the air. A star went into collision.Massimo Bianchi.His name tastes like smoke and sin on my tongue. His shadow touches skin before his body does. And my thighs clench as instinct wars with memory.He’s standing just behind me, isn’t he?Because Papochka’s face goes tight. That vein on his temple throbs like it’s holding back every bad thing he wants to do.The way his jaw ticks? That’s not diplomacy. That’s fury with a leash.But Massimo is immune to tension.He thrives in it. He wears it like silk he can so easily take off me.“Rara,” he says, greeting Mama with the audacity of a man who thinks he belongs. Stepping from behind me as I follow him with my eyes.I can
The say children owe their parents everything. Gratitude for life, obedience for love. And if we dare defy them, there’s guilt. Curling in the pit of the stomach like smoke that chokes you. You displease them, and it stays with you, like a soft scar only you can feel but not see.So we nod.Smile.Show up.Pretend.Because to say no feels like betrayal, and I’ve never been brave enough for that.So here I am. Getting ready.Since I’ve changed my wardrobe, purged the nun-like dresses Anya always mocked, I’m left with scraps of impulse. Dresses bought on a whim, coaxed into my hands by Veronica’s persuasive charm and a need to feel something other than invisible.My eyes land on the emerald one and the memory is instant. The way it clung to me and how the night unravelled. The look in Massimo’s eyes and the feeling of losing and wanting all at once.A spark runs through me, tingling where I shouldn’t still feel him.I shake it off like a guilty pleasure.Sighing, I reach for something safe
I wake up to sunlight bleeding through sheer curtains I regret having. It’s too soft and golden, too gentle for the war waging inside me.My throat is dry and my body aches. It doesn’t justify the fact why my heart feels like it’s caged and clawing. And it’s downright raging how my first morning thought is Massimo Bianchi.Of all the things I could think of, my mind decides to offer me him, on a silver platter. Again. As if he’s my favourite poison. There’s a pit in my stomach and it’s not hunger. It’s dread, shame and embarrassment I endure last night. Strangely, with it, comes another segment I am trying not to acknowledge.The silence in my room is haunting and suddenly everything is too clean. It doesn’t match the mess in my head.I sit up slowly, and wince at the soreness as if I’ve danced with a demon and lost. I pull the sheets around me even though I’m fully dressed now in different clothes. Kyle must’ve sent Christa with clothes while I cried myself to sleep.He didn’t tell J
He left.The night air is quiet but I can hear it. The silence louder than any slap and any curse I threw at him. It howls in my ears as is stand there, alone on the roadside, his taillights bleeding into the dark as he drove away.My breaths comes in fractured pieces, and the sobs clawing their way up my throat like they were starved for attention.And then the tears fall, hot and helpless as I wipe them with trembling fingers, realising no one’s coming to do it for me. No warm shoulders I can cry on, no whispered ‘it’s okay, you’re safe now.’ Just the echoes of his words. And the lustful touches like I was both his canvas and his crime.My heels scrap against the concrete as I turn back toward the wrought iron gates of our estate. It’s cold and ornate, fit for a princess in a prison Massimo claims me to be.The guards shift as they spot me, upright but broken, my hair tangled mess and my thighs trembling from shame. I don’t raise my head. I don’t need to. I can feel them judging me.
His blood is on my hands and so is her lipstick. The combination is art.I stare at the steering wheel, knuckles still burning from the impact, adrenaline still jerking in my veins like a live electricity. She’s besides me, clutching onto her clothes like her life depends upon it. Like an wounded animal, exactly how I feel.And I haven’t moved.Not for the last ten minutes. Not even looked at her.Because if I look at her, I’ll ruin her again. I’ll fuck her. I’ll make her cry again. And I don’t know if that’s a warning or a promise.She’s silent, not crying anymore. Breathing too softly, afraid the sound might provoke the monster.Me.I light a cigarette with hands though should be in cuffs. I never force women. Fuck. Why does she have this affect on me?The smoke curls in my lungs like penance.Because I can’t look at her right now. I don’t want to remember the way her soft lips split when I pressed too hard. The way her legs trembled when I made her take all of me, even when she b







