8. Ottavia
EIGHT
Ottavia
P ain coils through me like barbed wire, digging deep, cutting sharp. Every movement burns. Every breath is a battle. But nothing compares to the filth clinging to me, sinking into my skin, poisoning the deepest parts of me.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” Vincenzo murmurs, voice raw.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Ottavia—”
“No one can know about this. Not my family, not yours.”
His jaw tightens. “You think I give a fuck about them right now?”
“Please. Promise me,” I plead, needing him to understand. “Bury the bodies. We’ll clean this mess…and it’ll be like it never happened.”
He shakes his head. “No?—”
“Yes. It has to. If anyone finds out about this, we don’t know what kind of war we’re inviting into both our families.” My voice is small, breaking apart at the edges. “We take this to the grave, Vincenzo. Promise me.”
“You…” He swallows. “You don’t want to know who they are? Why they did…why they did this?”
I heard what they said about their sister, and I can put two and two together, but none of that matters now. “Your past is your past, Vincenzo. All I ask is your future…and a promise that no one will ever know. About her. Or what happened here tonight.”
His face twists, something breaking in his icy blue eyes, the battle clear. But he nods, his throat bobbing as he swallows hard. “I swear on my life.”
“Thank you,” I breathe. “Can you…can you help me clean them off me?” My voice cracks, a sob slipping free.
He growls low in his throat, agony vibrating up his chest. “I got you.”
Vincenzo lifts me carefully, like I’m something delicate, something already fractured, as if one wrong move might break me further. He carries me to the bathroom, flicks on the light, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
I look ruined. Torn fabric. Streaks of blood. My skin marred with bruises. Lips cracked from biting back my screams.
My gaze flickers to Vincenzo’s reflection. His face is just as wrecked—blood smeared along his jaw, shadows deep beneath his eyes.
He turns to me, hesitating. “Let me.”
I don’t flinch when he peels away my ruined dress. His breath is ragged as his gaze skims over the bruises covering my skin, but he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move.
Then, slowly, he strips off his own bloodied clothes and steps under the spray with me.
The water is scorching, but I don’t feel it. Not really. Not past the numbness swallowing me whole.
Vincenzo lathers soap in his hands, running them over my arms, my shoulders, my back. Reverent. Worshipful. As if trying to erase what they did.
“Will you ever forgive me?” he asks quietly.
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Don’t do that.” He pulls me close, placing his forehead against mine. “Don’t act like I did nothing wrong. I made your life hell the past few weeks. And now…this.”
“Stop.” My palms press against his chest, feeling the erratic beat of his heart beneath my fingertips. “The day you saved that bird, you showed me kindness that can last a lifetime….a lifetime that starts now. With us.”
He doesn’t argue. Instead, he cups my face, tilting it up, his lips brushing over mine—soft, hesitant. As if he’s afraid to push, afraid I’ll break. But I don’t. I lean in, letting his warmth seep into my bones.
He parts our lips and drops to his knees, washing me, hands mapping my body with slow, careful strokes—never pushing, never taking, just giving. When he reaches my thighs, his jaw clenches, fingers trembling as they trace over the bruised skin.
A soft whimper escapes me when he presses his lips to the marks. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make this right.” Another kiss. “I will love you like you’re the only thing in the world that keeps me breathing.”
My heart swells, love trickling in, moving, covering every bit of ugliness this night has caused. His words take me back to the day he stole my heart. Back to when I was a little girl who believed in happily ever after.
But I need him to lock it in. I need him to erase the pain before it takes everything beautiful from me.
“Vincenzo?”
He stills, placing a kiss on my hipbone. “Yeah?”
I suck my lower lip into my mouth before saying, “Make love to me.”
His body locks, and he gazes up at me. “Ottavia?—”
“Please.”
He exhales sharply. “No. You’re hurt. You’re?—”
“I need you to erase them. I need to feel you. Not them. You.”
He pulls me out of the shower, hands shaking as he cups my face, thumbs tracing the hollows beneath my eyes. “You don’t have to do this.”
“But I want to. I want my first time to be with you—not them. Erase them. Take back what they stole.”
“Jesus Christ, Ottavia.” He drags a hand through his wet hair. “I can’t do?—”
“I need you to heal my wing, Vincenzo…or I’ll never fly again.”
The war in his eyes rages. It hurts, the desperation. Hurts more than the pain inside my body. With everything in me, I know there is no other way.
Reluctance mars his features, but still, he reaches for me. Lifts me. Carries me to our bed.
He lays me down gently, his fingers trembling against my skin, torment burning behind his gaze.
He kisses me—not like he owns me, but like he’s offering himself to me. Like he’s giving me everything in this moment.
My mind is a battlefield, struggling between their touches and his. What if this doesn’t work? What if I still feel them after? The doubt creeps in, slithering like a shadow at the edge of my mind.
Then Vincenzo touches me—gently, reverently—and the shadow recedes.
It has to work. It will.
His hands explore me with care, with worship. His fingers slide between my thighs, easing me open, preparing me. I arch into him, clinging to the memory of a starling’s flight, of blue-green feathers catching the sun.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” he murmurs.
“I won’t.”
He presses against my entrance, slow, carefully. “What if I hurt you further?”
“You won’t. It’s okay,” I assure him, and his eyes gleam.
“I love you, Ottavia.”
I gasp as he pushes inside, stretching me. The burn is sharp, then sweet, then consuming. A good pain. A real one. One I chose.
“I’ve loved you since the day you took my hand while watching that bird fly away.”
He’s sheathed inside me, buried to the hilt, and keeps it there, kissing me, touching me, whispering words of affection, making sure I stay with him. That he has my body…and my mind.
His movements are slow, controlled, his eyes on me—always on me—wiping away their filth with each loving stroke.
It’s bittersweet, to have him inside me, completing me, erasing their hurts and shadows.
I reach up, my hand running through his hair, in a plea to continue. To never stop. This is a cleansing we both need. One that will bind us together forever.
He holds me close, moving inside me, like he’s memorizing every second, like he’s carving himself into me.
His lips trace my temple, my jaw, my throat. “You’re mine. No one else. Just me.”
“Just you,” I breathe, my body wrapping around him, my nails digging into his back, anchoring myself to him as he pushes me higher, deeper, until I unravel in his arms, gasping his name as pleasure crashes through me, washing away every touch before his.
He follows, burying himself inside me one last time before he groans into my neck, his body shuddering as he comes, filling me, his shoulders pulled taut.
I don’t even know I’m crying when he flips onto his back, pulling me against him, clutching me so damn tight. The sobs wreck me, splitting me apart. I don’t know how long we lay there before silence settles, before his fingers begin tracing soothing circles on my back.
His lips press to my hair. “No one will ever hurt you again. That’s a promise I’ll carve into the bones of those who try.”
That was the moment the rest of our lives started.
And a few years later I give birth to our sons. Twins.
Nicoli…and Alexius.
The END.
Vincenzo’s legacy is only the beginning.
The true reign of the Del Rossa family starts with his heir, Alexius.
Dive into the Dark Sovereign world now.