Chapter 25
Wild Rose
Lost in the Rain’s Rapture
“What was she like?”
My heels clack against the ligneous floor as I pick up the portrait frame and reflect it towards the light spilling through the open balcony doors. The feathery zephyr flowing in wafts the aroma of cigars and tea around us. The rain is settling, and the glacial is slowly filling the tip of mountains as we enjoy what little of warmth is left. Or at least I do, Sebastian gravitates towards darkened spaces and gloom like a barn owl. Mariah had failed to pick up her quandary off the floor when I requested to have my breakfast in his company.
She seemed thunderstruck as she hesitantly followed behind me with a tray of food to his office. I did not bother knocking either, so I uninvitedly let myself in. The food looked too good to not have an audience. So, like manna, filled into my hands, I took the chance to inquisitively pry into his life, for reasons that are not as pious .
The breeze flurries in once more, making my skirt rise a little. Today I woke up feeling shamelessly coquettish, feeling like swaying candor gospels sitting on a certain man’s tongue. He sits behind his desk, looking ominously unperturbed and hot , with an ivory shirt complimenting his coal-black slacks and his hair curled so perfectly on the top of his head.
His blue orbs never looked up from the documents sprawled on his table at first. But that was until I piqued his interest or, more so, what I held in my grasp, pulled his pyretic stare to me.
“She’s gorgeous.” And indeed, she was—just like her damned son. His father must have been jealous. Sebastian was the mirror image of the woman who bore him. From the black curls resting on his head to the ocean-deep eyes and the gentle curve of his nose, he was undeniably hers.
“She was.” His voice is distant yet gentle. I take my seat across from him, setting the picture back on his desk.
“You must miss her?”
He lets the pen slip from his fingers as he leans back in his chair.
“It’s beneath you to wield my mother as a tool when you could simply ask what troubles your conscience, morally.”
He gazes past me, as if searching for the cards I keep pressed to my heart. Stoic in every sense, not a flicker of softness mars his face—his demeanor unyielding. A fortress of stone, yet fractured in places. Sebastian is a wolf draped in wool, a hypocrite unable to call a spade a spade. Not when his own intentions are as clouded as mine. Perhaps it was cruel to bait him with a past still bleeding when my own wounds remain so raw.
“You talk of morals as if you have them.” I lift my chamomile tea, letting its warmth settle on my lips before sipping its richness.
“And yet you carry yourself with an innocence long lost.” His voice is calm, laced with something dark.
I set my teacup down. The bowl of fruit, glazed in strawberry syrup, and the chocolate crepes no longer look as tempting as they did moments ago.
And I am more certain now—everything his light touches withers. I’d like to see flowers survive in his presence.
“My mother always said, the world only ever knows what you show it. So while my innocence perished, my will to wilder the enemy hasn’t”
He could not be further from the truth. Innocence, once worn like a veil over the eyes, is nothing more than a fleeting fantasy. When I watched the blood of my parents spill onto the road, their lives slipping away at the hands of my uncle, that innocence vanished into the air. It shattered within me, like a mirror crashing to the floor, each broken piece reflecting a part of my soul lost forever.
My world burned to the ground that night, flames licking at the ruins of everything I once knew. As the fire consumed all that was familiar, leaving only charred remnants, I made a promise—one that would bind me to the wreckage of that moment, a vow forged in the ashes.
“A lie then.”
“Roses have thorns for a reason, Sebastian.”
He hums.
They’ll never see my tears. They’ll never watch me succumb to their brutality. They’ll never bask in my misery and they’ll never know just how many pieces I had to glue back in the dark. They fractured me and for that I shall bless them with my rage .
“Tell me about diamonds,” s ince you get tongue-tied when it comes to your mother, I catch my own words, holding back the urge to open a bag of dusted bones and poke at the nefarious bear. I’m no better.
The Moretti name is known for the diamonds and blood they bathe in. An industry opulent and lucrative in its endeavors. They own and run mines across the world, including one of the biggest gem farms. A little Google search will give you a three-hundred-page overview of their success, but nothing compared to having had my family in business with them.
My father ran a tech vigilance firm that was contracted under many of the Moretti’s assets. They were the golden ticket papa referred to during meals. And before Callum could squander my father’s hard work to the ground, I came to the knowledge of just how much a golden ticket they truly were. In his office were paperwork and files that stated in writing how papa oversaw to it that not a dime to this family was ever stolen or lost. He not only provided physical protection, but he was the head security advisor to their business entities. And gosh, did they pay him thousands to move here from France. They had been the reason his business took off. It’s ironic how weaved and wreathed our lives are.
His brow arches. “Morbid curiosity.” I lie through my teeth.
“Was the internet shortcoming, Odessa?”
“The opposite, it just lacked your mannerism and you must know how much I enjoy the oddity.” I mock and something sadistic flashes in his eyes.
“A hard worker who climbed the ladder to victory.” - Times News
It is not that I doubted their wealth, I just did not believe Senior the first had attained it righteously when nothing about this family screams godly. And he saw right through my inquisitive thoughts.
“I’m marveled.” He drowns. “But if you insist —” I do not. “— Senior found plenty of greens in gems. His father was a miner who simply saw an opportunity and took it. In a world of chewing each other like rubber and stomping on one another like the gum under our shoes, he never intended to rely on luck.”
Luck doesn’t make the stars fall, pouting around and holding your breath for whatever God you bow to doesn’t make your wishes anything less than a dream.
“He was a man of greed, a walking corpse, of all cardinal sins. And men like him tend to bite the hand that feeds them. He was involved in atrocities better left unsaid, so yes Wild Rose, this wealth came from stained decisions.”
A thread is like a bloodline. It only ever stops if it’s cut apart. However, like anything in life, there is a beginning and an end. I do not know what life looks like outside of these cards I’ve been dealt, and a part of me doesn’t want to. After all the serenity I once rode like a high horse has been ripped from under me.
I’m stranded on a sea, and as my eyes take in every part of the man across from me, I just might have found a crest of silver lining. As days weave to nights, I learn more about him from his unsaid words, capturing moments that feel like a secret. When his attention is drawn to the music flowing from his hands on the piano or when he goes out to the cemetery to lay flowers on his parents’ grave.
And just like I watch him like an owl at night, he stalks me like a predator does his prey. When dawn breaks, he disappears into his office, and when the clock strikes midnight, and when the scent of sweet sin wraps around me, I know he is seated in my darkened room watching me.
Under his hellish gaze, I sleep like I’m locked away in heaven. Sebastian could tarnish me like fallen crows. He could dig his hands into my chest and break apart my ribs in search of the heart I’m not willing to surrender. For the submission he wants control of.
At times I feel as if we’re lost souls that have known each other since birth, wondering about unknowingly. When I’m near him, my faith in knowing what peace feels like is restored, yet there is a battle between the spiders crawling under my skin and the butterflies filling my head and heart.
I cannot describe it, and neither can he. I know it in the way I catch him writing away in his journal at night. When he puts his thoughts on paper. I’ve seen it so many times in his hands, but what a shame I haven’t been able to hold it in my own. I want to flip through those pages and steal a glimpse into his mind.
“How about your father?”
There is not much about him on any website, for that matter. I take it he did not share similar interests like Senior did. A few caught in the wind claims stated he lived a much simpler life.
“My father’s passion was my mother, he cared little for anything else.” A shadow passes over his face, like a ghost, and it stirs something inside me, a quiet ache. I know all too well the heartbreak of losing a parent, and it crushes even the bravest of soldiers.
I’ve managed to pull more words from him today than I’ve likely heard in the weeks we’ve spent under the same roof, each one a rare treasure, as if he’s slowly allowing pieces of himself to spill into the air—fragments of something once sealed tight.
“What was your father like, Odessa?”
The question knocks the air out of my lungs, whisking a heaviness to settle on my chest and bring what little high spirits I had for swaying more than a nod from Sebastian. Denial is bliss and anyone who speaks different, has never wanted to die. I leave every moment of my life, suffocating down the daunting revelation that I’m an orphan and much more the pain it comes with.
The only people I can ever talk to about Papa are not exactly here. His curiosity is poised behind malice, and the more I stare into his eyes, I see nothing other than an abyss.
“He always had such a huge smile on his face, I doubt he ever let a rainy day turn his head down.” A hollow smile stretches across my face. I shake my head to push away the memories that want to flood my mind and drown my heart.
“When there is so much good in your life, the bad never counts unless you let it.”
This is not going down a road I want to be part of. Memory lane always ends in hopelessness and devastation and I do not need any of that when my day has just started.
“Alright then, I wouldn’t want to take any more of your time.” I stand and dust my skirt, disregarding the worry lines forming on his head. I do not want him to care. Not now, not never.
“Some people are going to leave, but that’s not the end of your story. That’s the end of their part in your story.” His gruff voice, laced with echoes of his lineage, halts my movements. The truth in his words fills my chest, heavy and real, as if each syllable settles deeper within me.
“Faraaz Kazi.” I whisper, a quote I remember all too well. I grab the tray of food and make my way out of his office. As I shut the door behind me, I close my eyes, willing the tears that threaten to escape to stay hidden. This little life of mine hasn’t known brighter days or laughter in what feels like an eternity.