Page 129 of Volatile Obsessions

“What do you mean?”

“What city?” she clarified.

“Oh, right. London.”

Reaching for her drink on the table, she took a generous sip, her lips quirking around the rim. “So close yet so far away that whole time…”

“Liverpool, right?” I hedged.

“No, that was Suki. Leeds, here.”

“And we all ended up Miami.” I smirked. The world was so damn small. “Anyway, while I was wreaking havoc on the streets with Leo, Sio was staying at the Milani’s main warehouse. Some days, she’d go home after school with a friend, but usually, she wanted to tag along with me. Leo had twin sisters who were only a year younger than Sio, so she had fun with them. They did homework, played out on the dock, and I got to make money. It was a win/win for me.”

“Did your mum know about all of it?”

“No, and I never gave her the money personally in fear she’d spend it. She had an envelope in one of the kitchen drawers—I used to slip some in there every few days.”

Lux’s features cinched dubiously. “She never noticed the money?”

I hitched a shoulder. “That she brought to my attention, no, but again, coke destroyed her. She was oblivious. Bills were paid, though, there was food on the table. Things were pretty damn decent for a while there… And then I met Liza.” A regretful scoff shout out of my mouth of its own accord. “Originally from Wales, she ended up in London after becoming an orphan overnight. She ran circles around her foster family, which I never understood, considering they gave her the world. The girl literally had everything handed to her, but she had a wicked penchant for trouble. We met at school, starting hanging out together. She got to know Leo, too. Few months in, we started dating, and within a couple weeks, she started coming out with me, feeding her desires. I fell for her, hard. I thought she had, too. We were making moves, handling bigger projects for the Milani’s, making more money. I gave her—and them—five years of my life. Until that one day…”

Lux shifted slightly in her seat, car-piling the words on my tongue.

I tried analyzing her expression, but the mask was firmly in place. “You sure you wanna hear the rest of this?”

“From start to finish,” she assured me, reaching behind herself to untie her bikini top. The black triangles keeping her decent gave away, falling to the brickwork beneath our feet.

Lips parted, I took her in ever so slowly, dragging my gaze from her perfect little tits up to her hooded eyes.

“Some motivation.” She shrugged coyly.

“I need you closer than that to get the full effect.” I grinned, holding out a hand to her.

She came more than willingly, straddling me, her inked arms falling gently around my neck. “There, I’m closer. Go on. Until that one day what…”

My stomach sank just thinking about it. “I walked in on her and Leo”—and Vic—“in the office.”

Her stare widened. “Were they…?”

“Yup. I went fucking ballistic; destroyed the entire office, beat Leo an inch from his life. But my biggest mistake was threatening to expose his family.”

And that was the gods-honest truth.

It was both my biggest mistake, and my biggest regret.

Had I controlled my temper, my rage, I could have spared myself a lifetime of excruciating and irreversible pain.

But twenty-year-old Rome didn’t know how to reign himself in.

“The worst is coming, isn’t it?” Lux’s voice was incredibly soft, her grip tightening around my neck. “I can feel it.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, burying my face in the slope of her neck. “Short version of the story? I came home one night to both mum and Sio, dead.”

Gasping, she stilled in my arms. “Leo?”

I nodded again. “He raped Sio, slit her throat, tossed her in the bathtub like a rag doll when he was done with her. She bled out in the water. And mum…he tied her to her bed, spread eagle. Abused her and slit her throat, too. I’d never seen so much blood in my life, not even on the streets.”

Lux took a hold of my face then, gripping it with urgency as she pierced me with her stare. “Tell me you fucking slaughtered him?” She was entirely serious.

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