Page 62 of Ruins
Then, my phone buzzes on the bedside table.
Santo.
I reach for it, my breath catching as I read his message.
‘Sleep well, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Simple. Direct. Yet somehow, despite everything—despite the silence, the uncertainty, the storm raging inside me—his words ease something in me.
Exhaling softly, I switch off the light and slip beneath the covers.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
Chapter 14
Santo
Vasilisadidn’trespond.
I don’t blame her.
I spent the rest of the week pretending she didn’t exist, as if that would erase the taste of her name from my mouth or the scent of her skin from my memory.
It didn’t.
Days at NovaRael. Nights at Opulent. I bathed in self-loathing and regret like they could cleanse me, but they didn’t.
Tomorrow, I’m supposed to stand beside the most innocent woman I’ve ever met, look into her eyes, those goddamn eyes and let them strip me bare. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s staring straight into the abyss.
She wants a prince. A fairy tale.
I can’t give her that. I can’t give her anything but the weight of my shadow.
Scythe.
She belongs to me and yet every time I look at her, I feel him.
He stirs when I see her, claws at the surface of my skin like he’s ready to break free, to take and consume. Being near her makes me feel the same as when I pull the trigger, or carve a knife into skin, like the world slows and sharpens, like the kill is inevitable.
But she isn’t a target.
She’severythingelse.
I watched her anyway. Watched the little blue dot on the tracker app drift across the city. Luca trailed her, invisible but close. I couldn’t keep away, not even from a distance.
Obsessed.
That’s what I am. A man infatuated with something fragile and beautiful, something that will shatter the second I lay my hands on it.
So, I won’t.
A glass slams onto the table, shattering the thought.
Angelo laughs, leaning back against the leather of the booth.
“Another round!” He shouts over the music at Opulent. We have a booth in the back, I hate being close to the stage so reluctantly Angelo agreed to the booth in VIP.
Opulent was my father’s vision of a gentlemen’s club. Angelo, ever the blunt one, calls it a strip club with taste. Our bottle service girls wear what they please, as long as it’s black or red.
