My Brother's Dangerous Best Friend

1 | Luciano Costa

There's this man who I have been in love with for the past five years.

He's also my older brother's best friend.

He was out of bounds, but I couldn't help falling for him ever since that day I met him five years ago.

I still remember that day five years ago when my older brother introduced him to our family. I was fifteen back then, a teenager who had a crush on her older brother's friend.

It was hard not to fall for him when he was constantly in my life.

He became a person who I often saw around. His presence was haunting, but I liked it because I got to be around the guy who I had a crush on.

But why do I have a crush on him?

He always seemed to care about me. He checked in on me. He never made me feel left out because I always felt left out since my older siblings were the apple of my parents' eye.

I had two older siblings, an older brother, Chase, and an older sister, Ciara, who I loved, yet I was extremely envious of them because our parents worshiped them, literally.

It was just something about my older brother's best friend who made him stand out among all the people in my life. He was special to me, kind of like a safe place.

He's somebody who taught me how to drive as I succeeded in getting my driver's license.

He's somebody who took care of me when I broke my ankle during a P.E. lesson.

He's a person who took care of me when I fought with my ex-friend from high school and I cried about it for days, but he brought me Ben he embodied a magnetism that was both intriguing and irresistible, leaving me eager to discover more about the man beneath the captivating exterior.

"Oh right, I want to show you something, Aurelia." My older sister, Ciara, says, as she plays with the tips of her dark blonde hair that was shoulder-length.

Before I left, she had even longer hair than me, but she seemed to have cut it to her shoulders.

"Show me what?" I ask out of confusion while trying to put on my best cheerful face.

I had only come back home from a job I had gotten fired from, and now my older sister was about to share some news.

"Maybe it is better if I give you this." She takes out a card from the black suit jacket that hung on Luciano's chair.

She took out an envelope from Luciano's suit jacket, as he did not bat an eye to her actions when, in reality, I know that he doesn't like strangers touching his personal items.

He only allows people to touch his things if he's close with them, which is only three people in his life, his younger sister, his Nonna, and me.

So, when did Ciara and Luciano grow close?

They have never been close, except when Luciano sponsored a few of Ciara's modeling gigs as she's an up-and-coming supermodel, but that had been my older brother's request.

Chase wanted to help Ciara's career, and a person who could help, a person who's rich and influential, was Luciano Costa

"Here." Ciara handed me the envelope.

I took out the card from the envelope, and I wished that I had received this when I was far away on a cruise ship, in the middle of the sea, and not when ten people were staring at me.

I struggled to keep my hands from trembling as I held onto the wedding invitation.

I was about to lose my mind, because my older sister was going to marry my crush of five years.

The man with whom I never had the courage to cross any boundaries with due to our age gap and because he was my older brother's best friend.

But Ciara was going to marry him exactly in two months, during my birthday, and there was nothing I could do to stop them from getting married.

I felt crushed.