All Chapters of To Love A Monster: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Valentina"Wait!" I call out, but he's already halfway to the house, and I'm not sure he hears me because he's laughing at something Anya said. "Cielo, wait!" I crane my neck, my back against the wall, my elbows up outside the pool edge holding me up. "Cielo!" But he goes inside without looking back.I take a deep breath in and close my eyes. I can do this. It's fine. He'll be right back. All I have to do is turn around and I can climb out. It's easy, I can do it.Swallowing hard, I open my eyes and I don't let myself look down. That's always when the panic hits. When I can see how deep the water goes.I'm shaking, and I taste the salt of a tear as I try to get myself to move. One tiny movement followed by another and another. I can do this.But when I manage to turn, my panic intensifies because I can't not look down. Frozen, I cling to the wall by my fingertips and close my eyes and try not to hyperventilate.I can't do this. I can't."Cielo?" I try calling out, but my voice is chok

NicholasPastSweet SixteenAt twenty-one, I still live in the cottage on the Riccis' property. I realize I'm too old to be living with my mommy, but I have three very good reasons for staying.Sly Ricci, Mira Ricci, and Cielo Ricci.Sly is just an asshole, and I never know when he'll attack. Mira hates my mother because she is the young, beautiful maid her then-fiancé—very original—took up with and, to everyone's surprise, fathered a child with.Fathered is a very big word. He deposited sperm.Cielo doesn't so much hate her as he hates me. I get it. Ever since he was a tiny little tyke, Mira has been filling his ear with poison about my mother and me, making sure he understands the difference between the staff and himself. Making sure he knows that no matter my parentage, I am not his equal.For a long time, I didn't understand my mother's choice to stay because it was her choice. The Riccis would all have been happiest if she'd disappeared with her bastard son, and Ricci had offered

NicholasPastI'm reclining in a pool chair drinking a beer when the Riccis return from their wining and dining night out with Mr. Russo and whoever's money they're trying to get. Mom's asleep. I didn't tell her what happened tonight, what I did to Cielo. I lost my cool with the kid, although he's not a fucking kid. Eighteen is legally an adult, to use his logic.But I'm still three years older and a hell of a lot bigger.There will be consequences.I hear the sliding glass door open and finish the last of my beer before standing to face Sly Ricci.Mira and Cielo wait in the doorway, Mira with her arm around her boy, her eyes shiny with what might be tears if she were human. Cielo is just wearing his usual I'm an asshole smirk."Mind telling me what the fuck you think you're doing raising a hand to my boy in my own house?""I'm your boy too, remember?"He stalks toward me, but I hold my ground. "Don't fucking start with your goddamned smart mouth, Nicholas."I'm not scared of Sullivan

ValentinaA few days after my dinner with the Riccis, I decide I'm going to see my father whether he wants me there or not. I can't put off telling him about the engagement any longer. Invitations will begin going out within the week, and beyond that, I need him to explain his letter telling me to stay away.I walk into the prison, hearing the sounds of guards calling out, of heavy metal doors clanging open or closed. The smell of the place is stale, like body odor and old food, and the thought that my father will spend the next ten years in here is too much.I wait at the small table the guard had pointed to, jittery, anxiously bouncing my leg. At least he's in a federal prison so the offenders aren't violent. Or at least not as violent as they could be? I don't know. It looks pretty bad from my perspective.A door opens, and a guard walks into the visiting room. Following him is my father.He stops short because he was expecting his lawyer, not me.I stand up."Tina?" My father take

ValentinaThe noise stops for a moment, people seeming to freeze mid-sentence as he and I take each other in. His back is to the wall, a group of maybe a dozen men and women, all well dressed, sitting around him. Several bottles of champagne are turned down in their buckets and a waiter is serving what I guess to be espresso martinis to all but Nicholas, in front of whom the waitress sets what I guess to be a tumbler of whiskey.I haven't seen Nicholas Hendrick in over a year. He and his mother moved out of the Ricci cottage soon after he graduated college. They went to Atlanta, as far as I knew. I've only seen Nicholas in the news a few times since. I remember Mr. Ricci's surprised and irritated reaction when an investment firm had hired Nicholas. When he'd received his first promotion just two years later, Mr. Ricci had been outright angry.Actually, the whole of the Ricci family was not pleased, to say the least. The company Nicholas had found work with was run by a man Sly conside