Page 31 of Arianna

You are safe here.

He will not hurt you anymore.

Several suppressed emotions fight to come to the surface of my mind, but I push them away.

I had so many questions, but I am not sure I want the answers.

At least, not now.

That was the last time I was in Sebastian Kenton’s presence for a long while, but to my dismay, he was always present whenever I closed my eyes.

The asshole not only held me hostage but my thoughts as well.

I didn’t know it then, but the man that took me from all I knew also set me free.

He gave me my wings back.

The ones my father ripped so cruelly off my back.

* * *

BASTIAN

This was not how it was supposed to go down with the Parisi princess.

It was all set in stone.

She was to come to Chicago with me and fulfill her father’s part of our deal, but she had to go and look up at me with those empty and sad eyes piercing through my hallowed soul and making me rethink everything.

Fuck me, those emerald-green eyes.

That girl.

That lonely and angry girl…

She might not think she is a kid, and maybe all the tragedy she has lived through has shaped her and given her a maturity not many eighteen-year-olds possess, but she is still just a kid.

I saw it.

That innocence buried deep underneath all that attitude.

The moment she looked out of the plane’s small window with so much wonder and a child-like enthusiasm when she thought I wasn’t paying attention was the moment I knew that if I took her and used her like I initially intended, I would be just like him.

The man, we both hate.

The man that ruined and broke his own child’s heart.

I am no better than that son of a bitch, but at least now I can look at my daughter and know I did the right thing by someone else’s little girl.

Who-the-fuck would have thought I would show mercy to my enemy’s blood?

Sure-as-fuck not me.

Yet, here I am doing exactly that.

After some digging the weeks prior, I was to retrieve her. I took care of every threat to her life.

Every sick motherfucker her father had lined up if I had said no to his offer.

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