Chapter 16
LUCA
I had no clue why Alexandrea Wellington turned me into a fucking psychopath. But she did. Beneath all of our hatred, there was a burning desire.
The first time I saw her, I wanted to kiss her pretty pink lips. I also wanted to wrap my fingers around her throat and choke the fucking life out of her.
I hated the way she made me feel.
Like I was losing control.
Falling headfirst off a cliff.
Even as a child, I knew I was not normal.
My need for blood, hidden beneath the rage and doused in years of pain and suffering at my father’s hands, had turned me into a sick fuck.
I had one good thing in my life—my mother.
She was a famous painter, the most incredible woman to grace this shithole planet, and the only person who grounded me.
I lost everything the day my mother died.
My soul. My humanity.
Every. Fucking. Thing.
Until I met her.
Alexandrea Wellington.
The beautiful blonde balanced out the darkest parts of my soul while feeding them. Like my mother, she was an artist, a free spirit who reminded me of everything I had ever loved and lost.
That was the problem.
I leaned back in the leather executive chair with my phone in one hand, my cock as hard as fucking steel as I watched Alex from the security feed in her bedroom.
She slept with her face mashed into the pillow and her curvy but toned ass sticking up in the air.
It had been too long since I’d last seen her in that exact position, her fingers gripping the sheets and screaming my name.
I fucked up with Alex. But wasn’t that how shit went down with us? Whenever I tried to pull her closer, I only pushed her away.
I never once envied Marcello, not for a second of my life. But rage bubbled up inside me when I noticed my younger brother sitting in the corner by the window, his eyes on my sleeping queen. He licked his lips and adjusted his dick.
Fucking asshole.
Light from the French doors floated into the room, splashing across her face. She looked ethereal when the sun hit her cheek just right. Alex was so fucking beautiful, perfect in every way. I saw the way every man looked at her, and I wanted to kill them for having dirty thoughts.
Alex was mine.
She probably thought the cameras in her room were because I was a possessive dickhead who needed to control everything.
And she would have been right. But the cameras were for her protection.
My enemies had almost gotten to her a few weeks ago.
If Marcello hadn’t been there to intercept the threat, Alex would have been halfway around the world by now and in the hands of human traffickers.
I was a dangerous man. She was a good girl who was only bad for me. My business often overflowed into my personal life, but none of that mattered until they discovered my obsession with Alex.
I’d kept her away for a reason. I made her hate me because it was necessary. And now, there was only one way to keep her safe. Dangerous men knew she was my weakness… and they wanted to take her from me.