Page 69 of Obsessive Love

I wink and press a chaste kiss against the tip of her adorable little button nose.

"Process it all later. Jericho has his story to tell you now."

She watches me for a few more moments, her glossy eyes boring into mine as if she's trying to decipher whether I'm telling the truth or not.

Jericho clears his throat, garnering her attention and she slowly shifts her body so that she's facing him and her back is resting against my chest.

"Well, whilst you were away at university last year, a huge scandal broke out across the whole of London because of some leaked information about my father from over a decade ago and this scandal was what solidified my and Kaleb's hatred for our father and was the reason we decided to set a plan into motion and eventually kill him."

Her breath hitches, and her hand grabs my leg. She tilts her body forward slightly, leaning closer to Jericho as he continues speaking.

"Somehow, someone had managed to get a hold of recordings from my father's personal office and they'd broadcasted thevideos on a continuous loop across all of the billboards in London. In the videos, my father was seen plotting our mother's death. There were various conversations shown between him and two other men in his office where he admitted to forcing her to take a cacophony of drugs for years until she was hooked on them and took them willingly so that he had a good back story for when they eventually delivered him a large batch of heroin and caused her to overdose."

"He killed your mother?" Sophia asks, watching us both with tear-filled eyes.

"Yes, and we're certain he killed Aria as well."

"Who's Aria?"

Jericho looks away from her, busying himself with pouring each of us a drink.

I grip Sophia's hips, lifting her further up my lap so that I can wrap my arms around her and breathe in her scent, hoping to calm the rage starting to form inside me because of the topic of conversation.

"Aria was the love of my life," Jericho states, placing our drinks on the desk in front of us as he gulps down his own and pours another. "I met Aria at the age of thirteen. We became best friends and spent almost every single day together. At the age of sixteen, I admitted that I was in love with her. We spent every waking minute with each other, falling in love and living in our own little bubble."

He pauses to take a sip of his drink and wipes at his eyes as they glisten.

"My mother adored her as much as I did, but my father despised our relationship. He was constantly making me do extra training, trying to take time away from me so that I couldn't spend it with her. He thought separating us would work to his advantage, but it didn't. When I was training, she was here spending time with our mother and looking after Kaleb."

He takes a deep, shaky breath and looks toward the ceiling, trying to contain the onslaught of emotions I know are conjuring up inside of him.

"It's not your fault, brother."

"Yes, it is," he says, squeezing his eyes shut and allowing a tear to trickle down his cheek.

Sophia watches him with concern.

"My father realised after a few months that Aria was starting to fit into the family and he hated that she was spending so much time with our mother. Shortly after that was when our mother started getting sick."

A pang of hurt slashes across my chest as images of my mother filter into my mind. I was young when she died and thankfully, Jericho made sure I didn't see much of her when she was out of it on drugs, so most of my memories are good ones, where she was happy and healthy.

"Aria stayed by my side throughout it all. She used to look after Kaleb on the days that my father and I were out because she knew my mother couldn't. The whole situation had me falling more and more in love with her. She was perfect."

A brief, unusual smile spreads across his face before it vanishes again and he clears his throat.

"When my mother died, I knew it was from an overdose, but I thought she'd been terminally ill for the past few years and had overdosed on her medication. I didn't suspect my father had anything to do with it until almost a year later when Aria disappeared."

My hands instinctively run along the length of Sophia's body as I nuzzle my head against her back, reminding myself that she's here and she's safe.

I've heard this story before, and the last time I heard it, Sophia wasn't near me. Instead, she was out in the world by herself, and the story panicked me and made me feel uneasy.

At the ripe age of thirteen, I learnt that I wouldn't ever be able to have Sophia without the fear of losing her because of my father. Thankfully, I'd met Miles by then and he was already a genius with technology, so I roped him into helping me keep an eye on Sophia so that I could be with her from a distance and make sure she was safe and out of harm's way.

"I was losing my mind with worry after only a day or two without hearing anything from Aria. I'd contacted her family and all of our friends who we'd gone to school with, but no one knew anything and everyone was equally as worried as I was. I couldn't do work, I couldn't focus on training, I was completely useless because all I could think about was her. After a few more days had gone past, I was physically sick with worry."

He stops again, sniffling and wiping at his eyes.

Sophia leans forward to grab a drink from the desk, passing it to me, but I decline.

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