Page 64 of The Chosen Heir

ChapterTwenty-Two

Hell. My life is hell.

My work was spread out over a table in the back of my family’s café. The clinking of porcelain and the hum of conversation were punctuated with the sounds of the espresso machine. When I was a child, my siblings and I would complete our homework in the back of the café, and I hoped to recapture that feeling of comfort from the familiar bustling noise, the copper ceiling, and the paintings of winding village roads, monasteries, and birch forests hanging on the walls. Once upon a time, it used to be a balm to my soul. Not anymore. Weeks had passed since I’d last had Nina in my arms, and I ached for her. Tilting my chair back against the bare brick wall behind me, my eyes were glued to the street beyond the large set of windows, waiting to see her lithe form pass by on the street.

The self-recriminations had come, fast and furious, after she left. She deserved better than me and the quality of life I could provide her. As an outsider, she had the opportunity for a normal life, and I had been selfish to take her. The blood bond, of course, complicated things. I snorted. Like I needed a blood bond when my obsession was spiraling. She would always be mine to protect.

I massaged my temples as I glared down at my laptop. I had a fiancée now. At least in theory. She was so young that I had to wait until she turned eighteen in the spring for the official engagement party. Why she was bundled off to a boarding school and far from her family, I had no idea. Not that I was complaining. Honestly, I didn’t much care. My entire focus revolved around Nina. Each time I’d seen her pass by, every muscle in my body flexed, primed to run her down, tackle her to the ground, and drag her upstairs to fuck her like a madman.

Every time, I barely held myself back, repeating the mantra that I’d forfeited the right to touch her.

Fuck Nelu. Fuck my family. Fuck me. Fuck, fuck, FUCK.

The last time I’d felt this powerless, when my father died, I at least had a bloody war to wage. I had the ground beneath me to scorch to ashes. Now? Not one damn thing could mitigate my pain. Oh, unless one counted marrying a girl I cared nothing for while impotently watching the love of my life walk past me as if I didn’t exist. To Nina’s credit, she didn’t know I was here, on the hunt to catch a glimpse of her. She purposely kept her gaze forward, and I’d seen her pass by enough times throughout the years to know she usually peeked in, either looking for Tasa or to get a glimpse of me.

Goddamn, I wanted to tear my hair out. Claw at my chest and carve out my hemorrhaging heart to make it shut the fuck up. Defying me, it continued to beat. Every one of those beats was a thundering bellow for my woman. I was sad. I was angry, murderously angry, and there was nothing to cool it, smother it, or suffocate it.

I thought back to the last moment I held her in my arms, the last devastating smile she gave me before she left. I begged her to stay in the apartment. Told her I’d move out, either with Tatum, or if that was too close by, with Nicu and Luca in the other tower. Or back to Queens. Hell, I’d go anywhere as long as she stayed on my property. But she denied me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. She said it would be too painful because I was everywhere in the apartment. Which was the point. It made no sense, but the possessive, selfish beast inside me didn’t want her to move on, to become someone else’s. Even if I was the cause of her pain.

I’d done the unforgivable and torn us apart. She’d always have my protection, of course. She’d certainly always have my heart. It was only because she wasn’t mafie that I could get away with not marrying her after the blood bond. That soul-tearing thought had me breathing heavily through my nose like a rabid dog. It was a dishonorable act, but did I have a choice? I was caught between dishonoring the blood bond, letting Stegan die, or starting a war.

Every day she was gone, I suffered from headaches. On good days, it was a niggling thing that harassed me like a swarm of gadflies. On bad days? Well, on bad days, it felt like my skull was being split in half, over and over again. It plagued me without mercy until I could finally shut my eyes at the end of the wretched day.

Turns out, I wasn’t very good at staying away from her. She moved back to Queens, and I followed. I was currently in full stalker mode. The office in my family’s house looked out onto Nina’s bedroom window, and that’s where I was posted in the evenings. Anything to get a glimpse of her through the mostly drawn curtains.

Same with the café. Instead of working upstairs, I spent my days in the busy dining room downstairs, desperate to catch sight of her passing by on her way to the subway. As for Nina rebuffing my offer to continue having a bodyguard? I acquiesced to her face and immediately went behind her back and had her followed wherever she went. She’d lost her damn mind if she thought I’d allow her to take the subway to and from Juilliard on the Upper West Side without protection.

The sense of failure dug its claws deeper every passing day. It didn’t matter that I was screwed, regardless of which decision I made. The fact that I had taken her virginity but couldn’t have her drove me to the brink of insanity. As for the possibility of her being with another man? Yeah, I couldn’t go there. And just the thought of having to touch, much less consummate the marriage with another woman, had bile rising to my throat.

And the only person who could console me, who could provide me with a modicum of peace during this hellish time, was the one person I couldn’t have. Not only was she not of my world, but she wasn’t even Romanian. None of that mattered in the least. She embodied everything good and pure. The opposite of me. I didn’t deserve her, but she was as necessary as air to me. She filled the half that had been left empty, killed off by the violence I was forced to use to keep my family safe and prospering.

A part of me blamed Tasa. My unraveling began when she ran off. In an ecosystem like a family, when one person got out of line, it created a domino effect. Before then, I’d never second-guessed my decisions. I would’ve never entertained going after something I shouldn’t want, like my little sister’s best friend. But when Tasa, who embodied the soul of my clan, tossed her duties and commitments aside, it caused a fissure in my armor. That slender crack splintered wide enough to let in the possibility of taking Nina for myself. After having and losing her, everything came crumbling down.

I was brooding over this predicament, my finger tracing the rim of the shot glass before me, when a stranger entered the café and walked straight toward me. Stegan was out of his seat, a hand planted on the newcomer’s chest before he could take another step.

“What do you want?” he asked bluntly, shoving his ugly mug in the man’s face.

The man’s eyes flicked over Stegan’s shoulder and held my gaze.

They were eyes I saw in the mirror every day. Eyes the identical shade of green as mine.

I stood up and motioned Stegan to let him approach. I watched him closely as he stepped closer.

Same build.

Same gait.

His face was familiar, with an identical strong brow and angular jawline. There were differences, though. His mouth was larger and shaped differently.

Was he a long-lost cousin from Romania? We knew everyone there was to know within the continental United States.

“Alex, I presume,” he began.

No accent, so not from the old country.

I cocked an eyebrow. “That’s right. And you are?”

“Is there someplace we can speak alone? I have something to say that might be of interest to you, but I think you’d prefer to hear it in private.”

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