11. Valerio
ELEVEN
VALERIO
Valerio had never felt so alive in his life. Maybe that was why despite the fight he had just been in, he still made his way into the gym to burn off the adrenaline that lingered. His knuckles were raw, his body covered in cuts and bruises, including the small one on the outside of his lip, but he didn’t care.
Only one thought kept floating through his head and it had to do with the woman who was going to drive him into the grave. He was positive of it.
One fucking kiss. That was all it took. One kiss to completely destroy him, to bend him to her will. She had initiated it too. The thought shouldn’t have made him as excited as it did, but he couldn’t help himself.
His mind replayed the kiss, every moan and gasp, the taste of her. He groaned, landing another punch against the punching bag. It flew back and forth, on the border of completely falling apart from his abuse.
Valerio caught it, leaning his head against it.
Someone had finally done it. They had finally broken Valerio Vitali. And it was his fiancée of all people. Her first kiss had been him, and his had been her. It was a beautiful sentiment if no one looked too closely into their relationship. All he knew was that he had been deprived for far too long and now his body yearned to make up for past time.
God, he needed a cold shower.
Valerio rolled his shoulders, deciding it was enough for the night. He still wouldn’t be able to sleep no matter how hard he tried, but his body deserved a break before the events tomorrow. He had the house to himself. Allister and Dante were out at some party and Gianna was over at the girls’ apartment. The security cameras at Luna’s apartment building showed she had made it home safely. Despite how much he wished he could see what she was doing, there weren’t cameras in her actual apartment and it was a good thing anyway.
As long as she was safe at home, Valerio didn’t need to worry about shooting some asshole in the legs again. He still couldn’t believe she had exposed herself just to distract him. It worked. Of fucking course it did, but her body wasn’t for anyone else’s eyes. The anger that had rattled him when she lifted her shirt and he realized everyone else could see it too was instantaneous. What the hell was she thinking?
She was perfect, every inch of her. He had always known she was. For years he had dreamed of how her body looked and it was better than he expected. Then the moment was soiled because he was in the middle of beating the shit out of her brother.
But then there was the kiss and the tight fucking leather pants she wore. He sighed, walking upstairs to his room. He needed the coldest shower he had ever had.
Just as the sun was rising, he slipped into sleep, only to be awakened by a phone call from his father demanding he look at some new contracts. From then it was a long workday that only added onto Valerio’s exhaustion.
Every night, he begged his mind and body to go to sleep, but most nights it never came. It had been that way since his mother died. He was haunted by waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a gunshot and then proceeding to find her dead in the bathtub. That moment played through his mind late at night when he lay alone, and it was enough to keep him awake. He buried himself in any work he could do, keeping his mind busy.
His schoolwork was easy, but it was unnecessary. He would be taking over his family business no matter if he got his degree or not. The only reason he really attended was to be close to Luna and get some sort of college experience before he was thrown into the working world completely. It was his last chance to fuck around before then. It wasn’t like Valerio knew how to completely let go anyway. He was always on the lookout, making sure everyone was safe, making sure he was the upstanding heir his father had raised him to be.
He wished he could be careless like Dante and Allister, who got away with everything because they had Valerio to cover for them. But he didn’t get that luxury, and he never would. In his defense, he wasn’t interested in doing the wild shit they did. He had his responsibilities, and at this point in his life, he’d preferred a night in with his Luna over anything else.
Except that was also a complicated shitshow now.
He closed the laptop, giving it a break for the day. Valerio got up, showered, and changed into a black T-shirt and black jeans. He could already hear Dante’s and Allister’s anticipation when he finally got down into the kitchen as the sun was only an hour away from setting.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you this excited before,” Valerio told them.
“Since you’ve missed a couple initiation weekends, you don’t fully understand just how exciting the night is. The adrenaline from running, beating the shit out of people, getting drunk and fucking someone later, that’s the dream,” Dante said. His eyes gleamed.
“I need a fucking night off,” Allister said. He massaged the back of his neck with his hand. “Blair has been driving me up a fucking wall these past couple of weeks.”
“You both would benefit from fucking it out,” Dante said.
“Shut up,” Allister told him.
“I might meet up with you guys later,” Valerio said, unable to listen to this conversation any longer.
“What? You’re not joining us?” Dante asked.
“I have my own chase going on.” He gave them a final smirk before walking out of the house and to his car. He listened to the purr of it for a moment before speeding off into the night to collect what was his.
She’d refused to answer any of his calls or texts all day. He knew she would try to avoid him today after what happened the night before. No doubt she was freaking out about the kiss, struggling to understand why she liked it so much. He could read her like an open book. Her face when Allister walked in told him everything he needed to know. But Valerio wasn’t giving up so easily.
The drive to her apartment was engraved into his memory, and in no time he was pulling into the parking garage. Usually it was blocked by security and only opened for people who lived in the complex, but Valerio had a way in. He even had a spot reserved just for him right by the elevator so Luna wouldn’t have to walk far.
Energy was buzzing through him by the time he entered the elevator. When he looked at the cameras earlier, the other girls had left for some party or maybe they would be attending The Chase themselves. Valerio wasn’t sure and he didn’t care. All he knew was that Luna was home alone, hiding out from him.
The thought made his skin burn. Too bad for her, he would chase her down to the ends of the Earth if he needed to. And knowing Luna, she would make him do it just to spite him.
He found himself in front of her apartment door, taking his key out of his pocket. He’d had one made just in case there was ever an emergency, but also so she wouldn’t be able to keep him out.
He unlocked the door, closing it quietly behind him. He walked slowly through the apartment, taking in the white couch in the center of the room, pink pillows and what seemed like hundreds of blankets covering the thing. Magazines sat on the table with some nail polish, the odor still lingering in the air. He looked at the kitchen table, his heart stopping when he saw a bouquet of flowers still sitting there, looking like they were on their last leg. It was one of the many bouquets he had ordered for her. He was going to need to keep sending her some every week to replace the dying ones.
He continued walking, passing the big windows in the living room that showed off most of the campus. Could his house be seen in the distance? He moved slowly, careful not to make a sound. He was skilled enough to enter completely undetected, but he also didn’t want to give his future wife a heart attack.
He passed several different doors, all decorated to indicate whose door was whose. Luna’s was at the end of the hall on the right side, little moons and gold stars surrounding her name. He opened the door, hearing music coming from the bathroom.
Surely he should have called out to her by now, but he couldn’t stop from taking a moment to surround himself in her space. The entire room smelled like her. He took a deep breath: the perfect combination of coconut and something sweet. Big bookshelves lined one entire wall, books of all genres sitting on them. Her bed was unmade, too many pillows lining the headboard. Small twinkling lights lined the room, casting it in a warm glow. Her room was peaceful and fit her perfectly.
The bathroom door was ajar, so he pushed it open farther, seeing Luna with a towel around her body leaning against the sink and looking into the mirror. She screamed when she saw him standing there. She turned around with wide eyes, clutching the towel closer to her.
“What are you doing here? You scared the shit out of me,” she told him, her chest rising and falling.
“I tried to be quiet to avoid that.” He couldn’t help the way his eyes dragged along her body.
“You could have knocked on the door like a normal person,” she said.
“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked. “Get ready, we have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To the cabin.”
She crossed her arms. “You didn’t win.”
“And whose fault is that? Unfortunately for you, I didn’t lose either.”
“I should have known that bet was too good to be true,” she said.
“You knew I was going to win,” he said.
“I guess we’ll never know for sure,” she muttered. “Now, get out. I need to change.”
The door was slammed in his face before he could come up with some smartass comment. He rolled his eyes, taking a seat on her bed. He continued looking around her room, obsessed with memorizing every inch of it. Once they moved in together, he would let her decorate the house however she deemed fit. As long as every inch of the space felt like her, he wouldn’t mind.
His eyes landed on the nightstand beside the bed. It was a light brown color, scratches and marks covering it. On it lay a book, some kind of romance. The man and woman on the cover held each other passionately. Valerio could only assume what the book was about. He had read a few she purchased at bookstores over the years, wanting to get a better sense of his future wife. All he could say was that she might have been innocent, but her mind was far from it.
There was a picture of her and the other girls, all with big smiles. She even had a picture with her family. Her father wasn’t smiling; neither was her mother or Finn, but Luna kept her smile big. That was the only picture of her family in her entire room. All of the other ones only included the girls or were random prints she had purchased. Beside the small picture frames was a single little rose in a small vase, also on the verge of drying out completely.
He was snapped out of his daze by the door opening. Luna walked out with her hair down, freshly brushed. She wore a big hoodie and gray sweats, her face bare of any makeup. Valerio’s breath hitched. He would never get used to her beauty no matter how many times he stared at her face.
“Hope you don’t mind me going in my worst clothes,” she said sarcastically.
“You’ve never looked more perfect,” he told her, drinking every inch of her.
Her face fell, stunned. “Let’s just go before it gets too late.”
He stood, letting her lead the way. She grabbed her purse and her phone, sliding on a pair of sneakers. They exited the apartment, walking all the way to the elevator and then back to Valerio’s car. He helped her in, closing the door before rushing to the other side. Like a routine they had unconsciously established, he drove quickly through the dark night and she turned on the heat, leaning her head against the window.
Luna had dozed off, but finally woke up when the car came to a complete stop. Valerio turned it off, but she was already ripping off the seat belt and leaving the car before he could say a word. He made his way after her, unlocking the cabin and letting her enter first.
It looked the same as it did last time. The only difference was there were snacks on the counter and new blankets on the couch. Luna made her way to the couch, settling down while Valerio began lighting the fireplace.
“You don’t have to make a big fire,” she told him. “I’m already warm enough under these clothes.”
“You could always remove them,” he said with a smirk. “I wouldn’t want you to overheat.”
“I bet you would like that,” she muttered, crossing her arms.
“What? You overheating or you taking off your clothes?”
She rolled her eyes. “Where did you even find this cabin?”
He lit a match, throwing it into the fire before standing and wiping his hands on his pants. The fire was small, but it lit up the room and warmed it. “I built it.”
“Since when are you a builder?” Luna asked, surprised.
“Since I needed a hobby outside of killing and being terrifying.”
“Does that mean the roof is going to fall in on us?” she asked him.
“If it does, I’ll save you,” he told her.
“When did you build it?”
“A few years after my mom died,” he said, walking over to the kitchen. Luna turned around on the couch, watching as he took out two glasses from the cupboard.
No one ever talked about his mother. After her funeral, not a single thing was whispered about her out of respect, but it didn’t mean they didn’t have questions.
“I can hear your mind working a million miles per minute. If you have questions, just ask them,” he told her, opening the small fridge to pull out some kind of juice.
Luna bit her lip. “How old were you?”
“When what?”
“When you built the cabin?”
“I was sixteen. But I was nine when I found her dead in the bathtub.” He grabbed the two glasses, bringing them over to where Luna was sitting. He placed them on the table, sitting down on the couch. “She shot herself.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he told her. “She made the decision herself.”
“Who else have you brought here?” Her attempt to change the subject wasn’t subtle, but he appreciated it.
“Not a single soul outside of us in this room knows about this cabin,” he told her. “And it’s gonna stay like that.”
She frowned. “Why did you bring me here then?”
“You know why.”
“This feels like too personal of a thing for me to know about,” she told him.
“You’re going to be my wife one day. If anyone is going to know my secrets, it would be you,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be too generous with giving away your secrets,” she warned him. “Things could change.”
“And if they don’t?”
“You know that answer,” she said.
He stared at her for a long minute. She reached for the drink on the table, taking a sip. “Good juice,” she muttered, setting it down.
“What do you want from your life?” he asked out of curiosity.
“That’s a loaded question.”
“Just answer it.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I want to graduate college, travel the world, write some books, fall in love, do anything and everything that would make me happy. I want what all people want in life: true and genuine happiness.”
“Happiness is overrated,” he told her.
She shrugged. “Maybe it is. But that’s what I want from life.”
“And you could never have those things with me?” he asked.
Her breath hitched. These were not the types of questions he was expecting to be asking tonight, but they seemed necessary.
“Men in our world take what they want without caring about who they hurt in the process. They lie, they cheat, and they destroy you until you are just a shell of a person unable to find meaning in life. I’m sorry if it hurts to hear I could never be happy trapped in a life I didn’t choose, but that is my reality,” she said. “It’s time you understood the reality too.”
“Why fight me? Why not fight your father?” Valerio asked.
Luna let out a sardonic laugh. “Do you really think I haven’t? It earned me a slap to the face and a month forced on lockdown. I can’t fight him. I have no power to fight him.” She shook her head. “You’ve seen what this world does to women. How it tears them away from their identity, leaving them with nothing.”
“Is that how you see me? Capable of ever doing something like that to you?” Valerio asked.
“Do you want the truth?”
“Always.”
“Yes,” Luna said. “And maybe it’s because I know my father was capable of forcing me into something I didn’t want, but I didn’t think you were capable of doing the same.”
The silence was suffocating. For the first time in his life, Valerio was at a loss for words. There was the truth—the ugly, horrifying, foul truth.
In her eyes, he had committed the same crime as her father. She equated the two to each other. But whereas her father did it for monetary gain, Valerio did it because he wanted to be with her, to stop her from being with anyone else.
That made him as much of a selfish bastard as any other.
“Don’t ever compare me to your father,” Valerio growled, disgusted at the comparison.
“What does it matter anyway? You’ve proved there’s no way out. You’ll take what you want, kill who you want, and destroy me in the process.” She shook her head. He could finally see the vulnerability in her eyes. “I’m tired of the fighting. It’s not getting me anywhere. It never has.”
That broke Valerio worse than it should have. Suddenly, he was his father and she was his mother forced into a marriage she didn’t want. Would she birth his children just to end her life with a gunshot to her head in the middle of the night? Valerio loved her more than anything, but he didn’t know if loving her could keep history from repeating itself.
If he trapped her and she harmed herself because of it, he would never be able to live with himself. But that was what she had been trying to tell him all along, wasn’t it? That she wouldn’t give him a chance to trap her. She would take any opportunity necessary to escape.
He saw the signs in his own mother once upon a time. She fought and fought, until one day the fighting stopped. And it was the minute that the fighting stopped that he lost his mother forever.
Luna was already there. Her fighting was over, so if the marriage to him was the one thing that could send her over the edge, then he would set her free.
It was no secret that Valerio was an asshole, selfish, and obsessive, but above all that, he loved Luna far too much. More than he loved himself and more than he would ever love anything else, so he wouldn’t do that to her. He loved her.
He stood. “Let’s go.” All the emotion he once held was wiped clean, leaving a shell of the Valerio she knew.
Luna stood along with him. He threw the juice in the fire, leaving it a smoky mess. He stomped to the front door, leaving Luna to follow.
He sped the entire way back, ignoring the way Luna held onto the seat in anxiety. He swerved in front of the apartment building, stopping there instead of going into the garage. It was necessary to cut the routines out now. It would make the transition smoother. Luna grabbed the door handle, pushing it open, only for him to reach over her body and slam it closed.
“Tomorrow morning, the contract will officially be void. You and I are no longer together,” Valerio said, cutting straight to the point like they were talking business. And maybe they were. That was all this could be from now on. “Good luck, Luna. I hope you get everything you want from life.”
Luna stared back at him in shock.
With shaky hands, she opened the door. He could only assume she finally got what she wanted. And when the door closed, he took off down the street, leaving her to stare at the disappearing brake lights.