Page 202 of The Devil's Fire

I had stepped outside to smoke once Althaia fell asleep. She hadn’t slept properly, and I had secretly given her a sleeping pill just so she could get a little rest. I had never been this stressed or lost in my life before. I had quit smoking because she couldn’t tolerate the smell of it when she was pregnant, but I picked it up again.

It was the only thing that could help me relax a bit and prevent me from going out and slaughtering people. I couldn’t be a ticking bomb right now. I had to be patient, even though it was killing me to wait and watch her suffer like this.

“How are you?” Arianna asked again, and I let out a humorless chuckle at her question.

“Does it even matter?” I inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply, but it was not giving me the fill I wanted.

“It does. You lost -”

“I know what I fucking lost!” I stared at her with an enraged glare. My hands were trembling in anger at the painful loss. But I had to keep it together for the sake of Althaia. “Mind your own business.” I sneered.

“You are my business! You need to talk about it, so you don’t bury all of your feelings into that deep, dark hole like you always do.” Arianna exclaimed in frustration, looking at me with a frown.

I flicked the cigarette bud away, my eyes were cold as I stepped so close to her that she had to take a step back.

“I will handle it the way I want to. I don’t need you or anyone else to tell me what to do.” My voice was low as I looked at her furiously.

A hand on my shoulder pulled me slightly back, and I glanced back to see it was Antonio who had stopped me. I hadn’t noticed that I kept walking toward Arianna, forcing her to back away from me.

I directed my glare at him when he tried to pull me away.

“What are you stepping in for? You think I’m going to hurt my sister?” I roughly pushed his hand away and took a couple of steps back. Despite being angry, I wouldn’t lay a hand on my sister, no matter how fucked up I felt.

“No, but you have pent-up anger and frustrations that you’re taking out on your sister. If you don’t want to talk about it, fine, but get your ass in the ring, and we’ll take it from there.” Antonio said calmly with his emotionless face.

I let out a scoff.

“Fuck off.” I ignored him, making my way back inside when Antonio once again grabbed me.

“Or we can just settle it here.” He said and threw a punch at my jaw. It made me take a step back; my head whipped to the side from the impact. I let out a low laugh as I moved my jaw and spat out when I tasted blood.

“Antonio!” Arianna gasped out in shock and tried to step in between us, but he stopped her from intervening.

“Trust me. He needs this before he fucking explodes.” Antonio looked at me as if he hadn’t just punched me in the face.

“I won’t go easy on you.” I smirked, and he mirrored my expression.

“I don’t expect you to.” He said and threw another punch my way.

This time, I blocked it and sent him a strong kick to the side of his stomach. He grunted in pain as I hit him where I knew he got stitched up. Quickly composing himself, he lunged at me again.

We kept going, throwing punches, kicking, and slamming each other to the ground, not giving either of us a break before making the next move.

By now, we had gathered a small audience with my men forming a circle around us to make it more interesting and wilder as we continued to punch and kick each other furiously.

“Okay, that’s enough! You’re going to kill each other if you keep going.” Arianna yelled out and stepped in to stop us.

We had been at it for a while now, and both of us were breathing heavily. At some point, we discarded our shirts after they got ripped from throwing each other to the ground.

I glanced at Antonio, noticing that some of his stitches had gotten messed up and were now bleeding. I got him pretty good, just as he had landed quite a few punches on me. He also had opened up the stitches on my arm. Blood was trickling down my arm and onto the grass.

“Go get yourself fixed.” I told him. Without saying another word, I turned around and walked inside.

Instead of heading to my own room, I went to the guest bedroom where Althaia had previously stayed to take a shower. Even though I had given her a sleeping pill, I didn’t want to risk her waking up.

I removed the remaining suture from my arm and used staples to close the wound, then bandaged it. It throbbed from the pain, but I didn’t care.

I made my way to my room, carefully opening the door to avoid waking her up. I felt relieved to see her still in bed, sleeping.

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