Chapter 28 – Drake
DRAKE
Most days, Olivia barely glanced in my direction. She still worked as my assistant but kept things to professional conversation. We were like two ships passing in the night. All the love she proclaimed to have for me was gone.
She hated me.
I hated me.
How could I blame her?
One night at dinner, she cried into her soup and told me I had killed her brother and ruined her life.
She was right.
My paranoia had gotten the best of me, and so had my nightmares. I didn’t want anyone at the office to see me falling apart. Cole handled things at Battle Industries, while Olivia and I stayed home.
We were safer here.
The men who kidnapped us hadn’t reached out. I hadn’t heard a single word for almost two months. Not even on the dark web. I had alerts set up for whenever anyone mentioned me, Olivia, The Devil’s Knights, Battle Industries, or Lovelace.
Radio silence.
What was the point of putting us through hell?
They got nothing from me.
Was the point to break me?
If so, they succeeded with flying colors. On the outside, I looked the same, but losing my brother changed me. I had plans for Tate and me. Plans that had involved Olivia before all this shit had gone down.
Mark Ruben still hadn’t popped up. He flew to Paris and disappeared off the map.
Not a single trace. The Lucaya Group was protecting him from me and The Devil’s Knights.
Deep down, I knew that was the reason for his unexplained absence from Titan Tech.
His board of directors named his co-founder the interim CEO during his unexplained absence.
To distract myself from all the dark thoughts, I invited Marcello to the house. He wanted to learn more about coding, just in case he had to take my place again. I was the brains of The Devil’s Knights. While I was gone, Marcello had to rely on the limited knowledge he had of my systems.
We sat at a desk in Battle Cave, where I had spent most of my time lately. Some days, I didn’t even leave to eat. The staff—and sometimes Olivia—sent my meals down the elevator.
I preferred it this way.
Hidden beneath the house’s ground level, I clicked a few buttons on the mouse and then tilted the screen for Marcello to see. I had dozens of computers and monitors lining the tops of desks and even more gadgets on shelves.
“If you miss this line,” I said, pointing at the screen, “you’ll get an error.”
Marcello tugged at the ends of his black hair and smirked. “So make sure I don’t miss it. Got it, Battle.”
Having my best friend here made me feel whole again. It would have been Tate if he had lived. He was always by my side and there whenever I needed him.
And now…
He was gone.
Dead.
Because of me.
I refocused my attention on Marcello, trying not to spend too much time harping on the past. “You’re a fast learner. Even Cole hasn’t picked up some of this stuff, and he’s an engineer.”
Marcello flashed a proud grin and sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. He had arms like a boxer, strong and thick and bulging from beneath a fitted T-shirt. “I’m proof you don’t need college to do cool shit.”
I laughed for the first time in weeks. Having Marcello here made me feel normal again. Like I could eventually leave my house and start acting like a real person.
I rose from the chair, patting my growling stomach. “I’m hungry. Stay for lunch.”
“Alex is expecting me home soon. But I can spare another thirty minutes.”
Without Tate by my side, I only had Olivia. Except she wasn’t mine anymore. All because of my stupid fucking nightmares and the flashbacks that felt so real.
I broke my promise to Tate.
Financially speaking, I was taking care of Olivia. But she wouldn’t spend time with me that wasn’t work-related for us to get closer again. My chance of ever getting her to forgive me, let alone marry her, was looking slimmer by the day.
“You doing okay, Drake?” Marcello hit the button on the wall to call the elevator. “You don’t seem like yourself.”
“I don’t feel like it.” The doors opened, and I stepped inside the elevator. “My whole life is fucked now. I lost Tate. And now Olivia. What’s next? My company? I have nothing without her, Marcello.”
“She just needs time. Everyone grieves in their own way.”
“It’s not just Tate. I hurt her. It was never my intention.” I leaned against the wall as the car shot upward and sighed. “I lost control. The flashbacks happened while we were fucking. I could have killed her.”
“Shit,” Marcello muttered. “Yeah, that’s happened to me, too. But my brothers were there, so… You know. One of them stopped me.”
“I don’t trust myself with her. Or with anyone really. My brain keeps trying to sabotage me. I can’t tell what’s real anymore.”
“You should call Damian’s doctor. He’s helped him a lot.”
As the doors opened on the ground floor, I laughed. “Yeah, sure. Damian is a real psychopath. He enjoys killing people. No amount of therapy can save him.”
Marcello chuckled and followed me down the hallway. “Probably not. But he seems better since Alex had Sofia. I think being a father has changed him.”
“That’s good. Maybe there’s hope for me.”
Cameras panned the corridor as we walked into the kitchen. I doubled my security team as a precaution. Olivia’s life was too important to leave anything to chance.
In the kitchen, we bumped into Olivia, and when her eyes locked onto me, she scowled.
“Liv,” I said, moving toward her the way a small animal would a lion. With extreme caution. “It’s lunchtime. You should eat with us.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not hungry.”
I clutched her shoulder. “You keep saying that. But you must be hungry.”
Since that night in my bedroom, she’d kept her distance.
Whenever I tried to apologize, she walked away.
She stopped coming to bed and refused to eat meals with me.
We were nothing more than roommates and co-workers.
She sent notifications about my daily schedule to my phone and spoke to me through Lovelace.
Olivia tossed my hand off her shoulder and stepped out of my reach. “I feel sick to my stomach. And I don’t want to eat. I’ve been throwing up all week. I think I caught something.” With her head down, she sniffed back tears. “Go wait in the dining room. I’ll coordinate with the chef.”
We couldn’t heal together. That much was crystal clear. Our movie nights ended with Tate’s death. So did any semblance of normalcy. We used to joke and tease each other. Now, she couldn’t stand being in the same room as me.
I took my place at the head of the dining table and put my head in my hands.
“I can’t do anything fucking right, Marcello.
She hates me. I have all the money in the world.
I can figure out any problem.” I lifted my head and hated that I had tears in my eyes.
“But I can’t bring her brother back. It’s fucking killing me. ”
He reached a hand across the table. “You did everything you could to save Tate.”
The butler’s kitchen door opened, and heels tapped on the tiled floor.
“You could have told Tate to stay in the Marine Corps.” Olivia dropped our plates onto the table with a clang.
“You could have refused to let him work for you. He’s dead, and it’s all your fault, Drake!
I wish we had never fucking met you. We would have been better off on the streets. ”
Before I could respond, she ran out of the room, crying.
“Fuck.” I shot up from the chair, dabbing at my eyes. “Do you see what I’m talking about? I can’t even breathe without her yelling at me.”
Marcello pulled me into a hug, and I wrapped my arms around him, sobbing on his shoulder.
I hated being this out of control. A sobbing, stupid mess.
I wasn’t much of a crier, not even when I got picked on throughout school.
But almost dying changed me. Losing Tate turned me into a different person. Someone unrecognizable.
Marcello held me until I stopped trembling, and that was when the awkwardness on my part settled into my bones. This wasn’t normal for a man. I must have looked so weak and pathetic.
“I’m sorry.” I stepped out of his embrace and ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
I turned away, and Marcello grabbed my arm.
“Don’t be sorry. I was a mess when I got home. If it weren’t for Alex, I would still feel like I’m losing my mind. You and Liv need each other. It’s going to take time for her to see that.”
“She’s never going to forgive me.” I wiped my face with the Batman T-shirt hidden beneath my black suit. “Liv is only here because of the deal we made. I want to tell her she can go, but I’m afraid of what will happen.”
She’ll never come back.
My heart raced at the thought of losing Olivia forever. She was supposed to be mine. I made promises to keep her safe, to make her my wife.
I resumed my place at the table and put a cloth napkin on my lap. “At least while she’s living under my roof, I can keep an eye on her.”
Marcello lifted his fork and sliced into a juicy filet. “You’re making the right call.”
I nodded. “I hope so.”
“Avenge her brother’s death,” he said between bites of steak. “I know you’re resistant to using Lovelace to start a war. But it’s the only way our families and The Devil’s Knights will ever be free of The Lucaya Group.”
Instantly losing my appetite, I dropped the fork onto the plate and wiped my mouth with a napkin, throwing it onto the table. “We talked about this, Marcello.”
“You’ll be doing the world a service. The Lucaya Group has to go.”
“I don’t see you offering to help,” I shot back with anger dripping from my tone. “If this goes wrong, it’s my ass on the line.”
“I will help you. So will the Knights. But we need you to lead us.”
“This is my fight. Mark Ruben is funding them. If I cut off their financial support, I can draw him out of hiding. Without a steady cash flow, they don’t have an army willing to fight for them. I’m just waiting for him to make a move. He will eventually. Trust me.”
Tate warned me.
He knew this would happen and tried to get me to strike preemptively. Everyone wanted to turn me into a villain, but I was still clinging to the notion that I was the good guy. I was the hero in my story, and heroes didn’t kill people.
They saved the day.