Page 55 of The Last Time You Break Me

I’m safely concealed away and you’ll never find me. I’ll watch as my enemy falls and relish in knowing that he never even saw me coming. I will destroy everything you ever created, everything you ever loved.

I won’t stop until you’re left in the ruins of the empire you built.

Of the empire that you stole.

I attacked the heart of Wyelli’s, Dom. I attacked your little slut.

And not one of you could protect her.

How does it feel? To know that I will take it all. That I was the one who killed her and my dad was the one who killed your wife?

She fell like the blood on a rose, so fucking beautiful. Soon your world will turn blue.

And every single one of you will suffer for what you have done to me.

L. Black

I reread those words a million times before I fisted the sheet of paper again, and rippled it in my wrath. Lucas was behind all of this. He had taken everything that I loved, the heart of this family and he had tried to snuff her out like the embers of a burning star.

But stars never died. They just burned throughout the abyss, always stared up at through one moment or another in time. Through generations… Centuries.

Dom had been on the warpath, formulating a plan of attack from the hospital conference room. After Lara was stabilized we had her moved to our own private facilities. The best doctors that money could buy tended to her twenty-four seven. Dalton was never here, always out looking for answers and clues as to where this cunt was hiding. That only added to Dom’s anxietyand made him impossible to be around. He refused to leave the hospital, but he also refused to sit by her bedside.

It was too hard for him and brought back many memories of the last time his heart was ripped open. I knew the feeling because I was reliving it too. Every single second of agony was heightened by an unbearable pain that tore through me. Half the time I was uncertain how I was still alive because my entire being hurt that deeply.

I couldn’t give up hope.

I had to be here, the first face she would see when she opened those pretty eyes of hers that had captured me for all of these years.

The eyes that had haunted me ever since I realized how I truly felt about her.

It was a fucked up thing, wasn’t it?

Regret and wrongful decisions.

For four years, I had denied both of us the happiness we deserved out of some warped sense of loyalty and rightfulness, and for what?

To one day come to my senses only to have her ripped from my arms the moment I gave in and decided that everything that would befall us was worth the risk?

I chose the road of morality and devotion to my family.

To my best friend.

I spent all those years in peril, without having truly lived at all and I did it all to make those around me happy. Yet those very same people lived without any regard for what lingered deep beyond my facade, not one person noticed how miserable I was in return.

I’m a good liar. I knew that. But it still begged the question.

Who was I truly trying to protect? To honor?

Because it wasn’t the family. I had begun to understand that now.

I was hiding from myself because I was a coward. A man I had written off before even having given myself a chance.

I never should have taken her on that date, it was a stupid move from a love-struck man.

I hated myself for it now, but I wouldn’t change it if ever given the chance.

And that is what had me fucked up more than anything else.

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