Page 33 of Twisted Obsession

Then he turned on his heel and began to walk away.

‘I’d like to see Mia.’ I called after him.

Without turning around he called out, ‘My instructions still stand. You are to stay here where you are…’

‘I KNOW!’ I shouted back at him. ‘WHERE I’M SAFE!’

I knew he’d heard me. The whole house would have heard me, but Salvatore didn’t break his stride and nor did he reply. He disappeared out of the main door, and I heard him shouting at someone outside. Lorenzo appeared in his wake, looking less than happy with the fact he’d taken the brunt of my older brother’s anger.

I turned and took the stairs as quick as I could, trying to reach the sanctuary of my room. As soon as I heard feet behind me, I too confronted Lorenzo.

‘Don’t follow me. I’m going to my room.’

It made no difference. The faster I covered the distance needed, the quicker his heavy steps sounded behind me.

Finally reaching my room, I slammed the door shut behind me and slithered down the cool wood to the floor. There I sat. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cause a fuss, like the child they still thought of me as.

What I was going to do, was to get out.

Chapter Fifteen

Dante

Ihadn’t slept for more than two hours at a time since Mia had gone missing. I was mentally and physically exhausted. Sure, she was back where she belonged, but we still had a lot of ground to cover to find her perpetrator. None of us could carry on the way we were going. After speaking to Salvatore and identifying that Enzo had only a limited number of places left where he could be hiding, we’d appreciated that the fucking bastard was as good as caught, and all we had to do now was to close the net on him. Alessio had made it clear that we were now only allowed to go twelve hours without rest.

So, here I was, laying on top of my bed, in the early evening. My body was still thrumming with pent up adrenalin, making sleep and even rest evasive. I intentionally hadn’t contacted Giovanna since earlier that day, even though my hand had hovered over the call button more than once since I’d showered.

And there was my problem.

What I was telling myself was it was because I wanted to hurt her. Make her pine for my company, to crave my voice and touch. But laying there staring at the ceiling while sleep evaded me, I began to understand what I’d been trying so fucking hard to ignore.

I was lying to myself.

And I was terrified of sleeping, because every precious hour of sleep I had managed to wrangle, she claimed my head space as her own. Each moment we had spent together during the past few days played out like a film in my head.

The more I saw her there, watched her hair shine in the sun or candlelight, heard her laughter and pain, the more I wanted to phone her. But I knew if I did, I would get down on my knees to beg her to meet me again. So, until I worked my way through the crazy notions inside my mind, the only place I could trust to keep my hands was underneath my head, gripping my hair.

This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

‘You just need a fuck.’ No sooner the explanation had left my mouth, my head began to envision the way she’d felt in my arms—was it only the day before? My cock began to harden behind the confines of my black trunks, as my body screamed at me to relieve the ache in my balls that was accompanying it.

‘No more.’ I squeezed my eyes tight.

I was a man who exercised restraint in all things, and rubbing one out at the thought of her wasnothappening. Call it my punishment, call it me trying to gain the upper hand over my thoughts, call it what you want; it wasn’t materialising.

The sound of early evening rain caught my attention, and I refocussed my taut body on listening to the sound of the storm that was obviously about to roll in. Until, at last, my body relaxed enough to welcome sleep, even if with it, it brought dreams of her… and I could ask myself where this game of revenge of mine had started to unravel.

I’d been waiting in the long corridor refusing to take part in the pissing contest her bodyguards were frantically trying to draw me into.

The more they stared and attempted to make me feel uncomfortable in their presence, the more I made my posturerelax. With every fold of their arms, crack of their knuckles and grunt that left their mouths, I recognised just how much I was getting to them and couldn’t hold in the grin that was threatening the corners of my mouth. Hearing Giovanna’s voice just the other side of the closed door had me clearing my throat to get their full attention and letting that shit spread ever wider until my grin nearly touched both sides of my jaw.

‘Again… you can go,’ Paulo reiterated.

I winked at him quickly and then dipped my gaze to the floor just as the crack in the door began to widen.

‘Dante.’ She spoke my name breathlessly, as though she didn’t expect to still see me there.

Deliberately, I lifted my eyes from the floor to find hers and as I watched, her tear-stained face began to show her happiness at the fact I’d stayed, and not for the first time I was worried. Worried that this game I was playing to piss off her big brother was going to backfire in my face.

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