เข้าสู่ระบบAURORAIf I had a dollar for every time a shitstorm had hit the Romano household, I’d be a rich woman. Not that I was not rich now, but you get my point.I felt bad for Lilliana, but I had very few words to console her. So, when I figured that I’d be of no help there, I decided to take up a long-promised coffee with Simon. Weirdly, this man was always available. I could call him at 3 am and he’d still pick up the phone on the second or third ring.The café Simon chose was small, quaint, but delicious.The coffee had gone cold somewhere between Simon's story about his latest disastrous date and my half-hearted attempts to convince him that maybe, just maybe, he was the problem. He disagreed, naturally. According to him,
AURORAI was a little tired of the Romano mansion, and I needed a place to crash. Knowing full well that Marco was away with Dominic, I needed access to his special stash of alcohol because it was one of those days when alcohol kept with happy.A few weeks had passed since Viktor announced the engagement between Dominic and Lilliana, and the entire household was still adjusting to the idea. It was very rare for a celebration at the Romano mansion, but in a way, it was nice…and normal. Mia was pretending she wasn’t secretly orchestrating every security detail, and Viktor was looking ten years older, trying to hold the family’s reputation together.And me? I was just trying to stay out of it.Love wasn’t something I believed in anymore. Not i
MARCOThree weeks later.The door to Ralph’s room was ajar, as always. He never believed in locking when he slept with a gun under his pillow and one eye open. His reflexes were his superpower, and to date, I would not know how he fired a bullet with his eyes closed and still got a bull’s eye.And when men like him got injured, they refused to believe that they should be resting or at least stay away from danger.It has been almost three weeks since he got injured, and it has been more than fifteen times that I had to change his nurse because Ralph refused to listen to anyone. Lilliana had been of some help at least, but after she was shot, she was practic
AURORAThat was the thing about Marco. He knew; he always knew, and I was not in any mood to back down either.I lifted my chin and looked him dead in the eye, which was difficult, on account of the towel. On account of all the naked torso between me and any thought I'd planned on having. Water still gleamed on his shoulders. His hair hung over his forehead in dark strands, and the dim light made him look like a sin I'd already committed and was about to repeat on purpose."Answer the question," he said. "What are you doing in my bedroom?""I…uh…I was passing through."He took a step closer, and the room contracted around him like it always did, like the laws of physics had signed something with him privately. "Aurora. The honest version, please. I'll know if it's wrong. I always know. That's the tragedy of your life, sweetheart: you were trained by the one man you can't lie to."Sweetheart. Two letters of endearment, and he deployed them like artillery, and I hated that my pulse answ
AURORAThe world hadn’t stopped spinning since the night Dominic pulled me out of the street.Sometimes, I still heard the screech of tires when everything went quiet. Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I saw the girl’s face again…the one I thought was her.But it wasn’t.It was no one. Just a stranger with the same hair, the same walk, the same ghost I couldn’t stop chasing.“You have officially gone insane,” Dominic told me that day, and for a split second, I actually thought maybe I did. My obsession with this girl had gone on far too long for anyone to categorize it as normal. But did I care? Hell, no. I shook it off the moment I was over it and pretended that everything was fine, and that everything was normal, and that I was not cracking anywhere. The next morning, I went to visit Ralph with a bottle of his favorite wine. He was not exactly a patient who’d appreciate flowers or a ‘get well soon’ card because, well, he is Ralph Alessi. “Am I on fucking house arrest?” he asked t
AURORASomething in me always snapped when I saw Lilliana. It was like a fuse blowing. My blood would burn, and reason would vanish as if it had never existed.She wasn’t like the monsters we’d faced before. No, Lilliana was something else entirely…a quiet kind of chaos that ruined everything she touched. The storm she brought left wreckage in its wake, and the names on her list of casualties were far too close to home: Dominic, Ralph… and Sammy. That last name cut the deepest, a wound I still couldn’t put into words.And now, with the storm finally over, there she stood, untouched, unharmed, like she’d walked through hell and come out gilded. It made my fury crawl beneath my skin. Because Lilliana never seemed to lose. She came out of every disaster with more power, more sympathy, while the rest of us were left bleeding in her shadow, expected to handle her like some fragile, untouchable thing.I had avoided going to Marco’s, but I had no other choice because Ralph was there. And no







