LOGINMy brother is ruthless when it comes to his family. Or anything in general. No one has read his heart yet. And I wonder if anyone ever will. He’s worse than a puzzle, deeper than oceans and darker than space’s dark matter.So, when I say every face in the crowd tenses, I mean it. Everyone does. Including my parents. Mama seem to just look at him with this strange emotions in her eyes. Judas doesn’t talk to Mama, no one knows the reason. Anya guess it’s something that happens in childhood, but I believe it must be the day he killed that beautiful canary she gifted him. Papochka says that was normal, but we all know nothing about skinning a little bird alive is normal.Maybe he said that because he believed my brother was redeemable, he still believes that, the difference is, he believes Judas can still be saved by love, while the rest of us have learned to fear him instead.Not fear him, but his unpredictability.Papochka holds onto this fragile hope like it’s a prayer stitched into hi
His breath brushes my ear, hot and heavy, branding me.“If you so much twitch this out of you,” Massimo growls low. “I’ll fuck you in the middle of the ballroom. In front of your family. In front of the fucking president. Make them all watch how filthy you are under that pretty dress, bambina.”My pulse jackknife. No.He wouldn’t.He would.The thoughts is like a drug. A sickness that blooms inside me.I stumble forward as he pushes me toward the ballroom, my thighs pressed together, the hidden mask inside me scraping against the most sensitive parts of me. Every step feels wrong and tastes like shame.Even if I close my eyes, I’d still see him. Shut out every sound, and I’d still hear that depth of his voice. I could lose my legs and still, somehow, I’d find a way to follow him.I could be stripped of my voice, yet his name would still rise inside me, desperate to reach him.The door of the balcony open, and the world explodes into sound.Laughter. Music. Crystal clinking. Perfume a
I 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







