Chapter 2
Loriana
The champagne fizzes and pops at my feet like dying fireworks, each bubble bursting with the finality of dreams destroyed.
Flavio stands there wrapped in my Egyptian cotton towel, the one I bought specifically for tonight, his dark eyes already calculating damage control.
Behind him, Astrid clutches my white sheets to her chest like they might protect her from the reckoning she knows is coming.
“Well?” I cross my arms over my chest, the movement sharp enough to cut glass. “I’m waiting for this miraculous explanation of how my boyfriend fucking my best friend in my bed isn’t exactly what it looks like.”
Flavio’s jaw tightens at my language. Good. Let him be uncomfortable. Let him squirm.
“Bambina, you’re being dramatic. It was just—”
“Don’t.” The word cracks through the air like a whip. “Don’t you dare call me that. Not after what I just witnessed.”
He takes a step toward me, glass crunching under his bare feet, but he doesn’t even flinch. The man who claimed to love my vulnerability, my innocence, doesn’t feel the pain of walking through the shattered remains of my trust.
“Loriana, listen to me.” His voice drops to that smooth, practiced tone that used to make my knees weak. Now it just makes me sick. “This meant nothing. She threw herself at me, and I was drunk, and—”
“And what? Your dick accidentally fell into her waiting pussy?” I laugh, the sound hollow and bitter. “How clumsy of you.”
Astrid finally finds her voice from behind him. “Lori, I can explain—”
“Oh, this should be rich.” I turn my attention to the woman I’ve shared secrets with for years, the woman who helped me pick out lingerie for the very man she’s been screwing. “Please, enlighten me. What’s your excuse? Did you slip and fall pussy-first onto my boyfriend?”
Her face flames red, and for a moment, I see a flicker of the shame she should be drowning in. But then her chin lifts with that familiar stubborn tilt I used to admire.
“You’re acting like a child,” she says, and the condescension in her voice makes my vision blur with rage. “It’s just sex, Lori. It’s not like you were using him anyway.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. I stagger back a step, my heel catching on a piece of crystal, and the sharp pain that shoots through my foot feels like justice.
“Just sex,” I repeat slowly, letting the words roll around my tongue like poison. “Is that what this was to you, Flavio? Just sex?”
His eyes dart between me and Astrid, and I can see him weighing his options, trying to figure out which answer will get him out of this hole.
“No, of course not. She’s lying. She seduced me, told me you didn’t care about me, that you were just stringing me along—”
“So now it’s her fault?” I gesture wildly at Astrid, who has the decency to look uncomfortable. “First, it meant nothing; now she’s the evil temptress who corrupted your pure heart?”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“No, Flavio. You’re twisting reality.” I step closer, ignoring the glass biting into my feet. “Here’s what actually happened: you got tired of waiting for me to spread my legs, so you found someone who would. Someone who’s supposed to be my best friend.”
Astrid flinches at that, but she doesn’t deny it.
“And you know what the really sick part is?” My voice drops to a whisper that somehow carries more venom than screaming. “I was ready tonight. I bought champagne. I bought lingerie. I closed my bar hours early because I finally decided you were worth giving my virginity to.”
Something flickers across Flavio’s face—surprise, maybe even regret—but it’s gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
“Loriana—”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get. Out.” I enunciate each word like I’m speaking to a child. “Both of you. Get your clothes, get your lies, and get the fuck out of my home.”
Flavio’s expression hardens, and for the first time tonight, I see something that looks like his uncle’s influence bleeding through his charming mask.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Try me.”
He takes another step forward, and suddenly the air in the room feels different. Dangerous. “You’re upset. You’re not thinking clearly. We can work this out.”
“There’s nothing to work out. We’re done.”
“No.” The word is flat, final. “We’re not done. I’ve invested too much time in you to let you throw a tantrum and ruin everything.”
Invested time. Like I’m a business venture. Like six months of patience was just an elaborate long-term strategy.
“Listen to yourself,” I breathe. “This is who you really are, isn’t it? When the charm doesn’t work, when you can’t manipulate me into giving you what you want, this is what’s left.”
His mask slips further. “I’m trying to be reasonable here, Loriana. You caught me in a moment of weakness, and instead of talking about it like adults, you’re acting like a hysterical teenager.”
“Hysterical?” The word comes out as a laugh that sounds nothing like humor. “You fuck my best friend in my bed on your birthday, the same night I planned to give you my virginity, and I’m hysterical for being upset?”
“You should have given it to me months ago,” he snaps, and there it is. The truth underneath all his patient, respectful bullshit. “What kind of woman makes a man wait six months like some kind of eunuch? I have needs, Loriana.”
Behind him, Astrid shifts uncomfortably, finally seeming to realize she’s not the injured party here.
“Then you should have broken up with me,” I say quietly. “Instead of lying to my face while you fucked your way through your ‘needs.’”
“It was just Astrid. And it was just tonight. You’re making this into something bigger than—”
“Just tonight?” I whip around to face my former best friend. “Was this just tonight, Astrid?”
Her silence is answer enough.
“How long?” My voice cracks despite my best efforts to keep it steady.
She looks at Flavio, and he shakes his head slightly. A warning.
“How. Long?”
“Five months,” she whispers, and the words hit me like individual bullets. “It started five months ago.”
Five fucking months.
All this time and yet, she was still helping me plan tonight, listening to me worry about whether I was ready, assuring me that Flavio cared about me enough to wait. Five months of looking me in the eye while she knew exactly why he was so patient with my boundaries.
Because he wasn’t patient, he was just getting satisfied elsewhere.
“Get out,” I repeat, but my voice has no strength left. “Both of you. Now.”
Flavio’s expression shifts again, back to that calculated charm. “Bambina, please. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when you’ve calmed down—”
“I said, get out!”
“You don’t want to do this,” he says, and now his voice carries something that makes the hair on my arms stand up. “Think about what you’re throwing away. Think about who you’re making an enemy of.”
And there it is. The threat wrapped in soft words, the reminder of exactly whose nephew I’m dealing with.
“Is that supposed to scare me?” I laugh, and this time it sounds genuinely amused. “You think I’m afraid of you? Of your uncle? I run a bar in this neighborhood, Flavio. I deal with dangerous men every night. You’re nothing special.”
His eyes narrow. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” I move toward my bedroom, stepping carefully around the broken glass to avoid more cuts. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know shit about dangerous men. But I know plenty about pathetic ones.”
I grab the first thing I can reach from beside my bed—a Louisville Slugger that Clay insisted I keep for protection. The weight of the baseball bat feels good in my hands, solid and real in a way nothing else has tonight.
“Loriana.” Flavio’s voice is sharp now, all pretense of charm abandoned. “Put that down.”
“Or what?” I grip the bat tighter, drawing strength from its familiar weight. “You’ll call your uncle? Tell him the mean lady won’t let you finish fucking her friend in her bed?”
“You’re being crazy.”
“Am I?” I take a practice swing, the bat cutting through the air with a satisfying whoosh. “Because I’m thinking I’m being remarkably sane. For the first time in six months, actually.”
Astrid scrambles to grab her clothes from my floor, her earlier bravado completely evaporated. “Flavio, maybe we should just go.”
“We’re not going anywhere until she apologizes,” he says, and the entitlement in his voice makes me want to swing this bat at his head.
“Apologizes?” I repeat. “For what, exactly?”
“For overreacting. For making a scene. For being unreasonable about a simple misunderstanding.”
I stare at this man I thought I loved, and wonder how I could have been so spectacularly wrong about someone. Six months of my life wasted on a lie wrapped in pretty words and patient kisses.
“You want an apology?” I adjust my grip on the bat.
“Here’s my apology: I’m sorry I wasted six months of my life on a spoiled fuckboy-child who thinks his uncle’s reputation makes him untouchable.
I’m sorry I trusted a woman who would sell out her best friend for a few minutes with someone else’s boyfriend.
And I’m sorry I’m about to redecorate my apartment with your blood if you don’t get out in the next thirty seconds. ”
Flavio’s face twists with rage, and for a moment, I think he might actually try to take the bat from me. But then Astrid touches his arm.
“Flavio, please. Let’s just go. This isn’t worth it.”
He looks from her to me, and I can see him calculating whether I’m serious about the bat. Smart money says yes, and apparently, he reaches the same conclusion.
“This isn’t over, Loriana,” he says as he backs toward the door. “You don’t get to embarrass me like this and walk away clean.”
“Is that another threat?”
“It’s a promise.”
They gather their clothes in humiliated silence while I stand guard with my bat, watching every move. When Flavio tries to stop in front of me, I raise the Louisville Slugger to shoulder height.
“Move along, birthday boy. Party’s over.”
He glares at me, and in that moment, I see something that chills me to the bone. Not anger—I could handle anger. This is something colder, more sinister. Something that whispers of the cold killer blood that runs within his veins.
Finally, they leave my apartment, the door slamming behind them with enough force to rattle the windows. I slide the chain lock into place and lean back against the door, the bat still clutched in my hands.
The apartment falls silent except for the sound of champagne still fizzing on the hardwood floor. The smell of Dom Pérignon and shattered dreams fills my nose, mixing with the lingering scent of sex and betrayal.
I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor, catching sight of my black dress pooling on the floor like spilled ink. The red lace peeking out from beneath it is a reminder of the gift I’d planned to give tonight, now as worthless as everything else I’d believed about my life.
Six months. Six months of careful dating, of building what I thought was something real, of believing that maybe, just maybe, I’d found someone who understood that trust was earned, not demanded.
The tears come then, scalding tracks down my cheeks that taste of fury and humiliation.
I cry for the innocence I almost threw away on a man who saw it as an inconvenience.
I cry for six years of friendship incinerated in one night of betrayal.
I cry for being foolish enough to believe that bad boys can genuinely fall in love, that monsters can learn to love instead of devour.
But mostly, I cry because I’m alone again. Completely, utterly alone in a world that keeps teaching me the same brutal lesson: the only person you can trust is yourself.
The sound of my phone buzzing interrupts my misery. A text message, probably from Flavio, already trying to manipulate me into forgiveness, or Astrid with some pathetic excuse for her betrayal.
I was right, the text is from Flavio.
This isn’t over, Bambina. You and I aren’t done. I’ll see you when you cool down.
I’m done with men like Flavio. Pretending that his twisted sense of logic, charm, or his family’s influence makes him worth wasting another moment of my life on is deceiving myself. No, I’m done letting dangerous men shape my world and manipulate my choices.
And while I can’t erase tonight, I can sure as hell make sure it never happens again.