Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
But when I cut… he’ll be screaming his way to his grave.
“Are there more like these, Lyriope?” I ask hesitantly. “Did he cut you elsewhere?”
Lyriope shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.
I pull her to me, holding her, comforting her, needing to know that at least for this minute she is safe back in my arms. But it isn’t long before Lyriope is pushing me away from her.
“You still need to go,” she asserts. “It’s time for this to end, and it can’t while you are still in the mix.”
I hold her to me, not willing to let her leave me. “I need to get you out of here,” I declare. “Away from the Sidorovs, away from Italy, and away from this hell. I won’t let him or anyone else do this to you again.”
Even though I say the words, I’m not sure I can make good on that promise, but I will damn well try. I hate myself right now. Downright detest the man I have become. She had begged me to go to Wonderland. And I had just handed this helpless woman to a sentence of abuse. I made it easy for them. I practically handed her over on a silver platter. Who could do something so vile? Who could deliver a precious gift to a fucking monster? A goddamn party in Italy was more important than staying by her side. I had to grandstand. Show off. Be the Nick Hudson everyone wanted to party with. Why the fuck did I leave her?
Lyriope shakes her head, finally pulling away from me and straightening her dress. “You can’t save me, Nick. I can’t stay hidden in your private Italian town forever. I have to face my reality. I have to stop looking in from the outside, but actually enter the looking glass. It’s time. It’s long past time.” Lyriope turns away from me and begins walking toward the door.
“You can’t leave me again,” I yell out to her, desperate to make her return to me. “You lay in my arms, your skin against mine, and we connected in a way that can’t be broken.” I walk slowly toward where she has come to a stop. “I won’t let you go. I won’t let us go. Never apart again. Remember?”
Lyriope slowly turns, wiping the tears from her cheek. “You have no choice. We have no choice.”
Her words pain me.
“I can’t just watch you leave me, knowing it’s not what you really want,” I say. “It’s time you do what you want. Stop allowing others to control you.”
“That’s what I’m doing. You’ve had control over me too, Nick. Don’t you see that?” Lyriope asks coldly.
When I don’t answer her, Lyriope continues. “I’m a Morelli. I’ve not faced what that truly means my entire life, but it’s time to. It’s time I meet Bryant. It’s time I step into that family and try to embrace my lineage. It’s time I take control of me and who I am. And that doesn’t involve you right now. I’m sorry.”
I can’t look at her, sighing heavily. “I’m not going to stand in the way of you becoming a Morelli.”
“Then you need to leave,” Lyriope continues. “Because you being here… is getting in the way of that.”
“I’ll walk out that door if that is truly what you want,” I say. “But I know you’re lying. You don’t want me to leave. You want to be in my arms just as much as I want you in them.”
Lyriope doesn’t budge at my words.
“So you can win me as the highest bidder? You just don’t want to lose to those men. Is this really about me, or is this about your pride?” Her jaw tightens and her eyes glare. “You got your fuck from me. Our contract is null and void. So is this about… more games? Possession? Or is this about ego?”
“I wasn’t a good man,” I say as I reluctantly lift my gaze back to Lyriope. “Hell, I’m not far from the devil himself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect you. It doesn’t take away that my heart fucking belongs to you whether I want it to or not. Do I have a huge ego? Fuck yes, I do. But that doesn’t change the fact that I care about you. That I don’t want to see you go. I declared you as mine, and I don’t take that lightly.”
Lyriope bites her lip.
“I have never felt this way about anyone before,” I say softly. “I have never allowed anything but greed and aggression inside me. I danced with the psychotic and dined with the demented. I loved every second of the raving lunatic until I met you. Your sanity soothed the madman, and for that… I am a changed man. I am a man who now thinks of someone but himself. I am a man who can see things so clearly. There is no more fog of madness when it comes to you. It’s just you. Me. Us.”