by K. L Mann
I’ll Burn Anyone
By: K.L Mann
Copyright © Oct. 2021
All Rights Reserved
Intellectual Property of K.L Mann
Editor: C.J Mann & K.L Mann
Author’s Note
Thank you for picking up I’ll Burn Anyone, the second novel in The Challenge Night Series. This is a brother's best friends, age gap, forbidden, dark romance with many different themes, secretive characters, and truths to uncover as you read along.
Triggers Include:
Alcohol Abuse & Drug Use
Violence Including Murder
Depression & Repressed Trauma
Warnings:
Testing the limits with fear based or non–traditional rough sex can be exhilarating. However, both partners need to be educated and confident with their safety in doing so. Safe words, or safe ‘hits’ can be used to end rough play; please use them to keep yourself from sustaining any injuries.
Breathe play, or choking has a wrong and a right way of being executed. Please, make sure your partner knows how to choke you correctly.
The only safe way for gun play to be done is to remove your weapons firing pin, or use a prop or practice gun. Without this, there is no guarantee of preventing an accident.
Knife play should only be done with experienced or educated partners and the knife should never be pointed at major arteries.
A Note About the First Challenge Night Novel
While I’ll Do Anything was not the first book I’ve written, it was the first book I’ve published. I knew that it was not perfected to the Gods, but I also knew that if I didn’t publish it when I did, I might not have ever.
I received so many kind words about it, but obviously I was met with criticism as well. I would like to say with confidence, that it didn’t get to me, but of course it did. I have learned so much from writing, editing, and publishing that it has been worth every bit of stress. Life is so wild and strange, and I’m enjoying the journey.
All this being said, I’ll Burn Anyone, is my newest baby. I hope you fall in love with the characters just as I have.
Author’s Social Media
Tiktok– @Kassandramann
Instagram– @Kindakassiee
Twitter– @Kassandrabooks
Wattpad– @Kassandramannauthor
For The Ones Fighting Fate,
fuck forbidden.
Arianna’s Playlist
Maneater– Nelly Furtado
Love Game– Lady Gaga
Tell Me You Love Me– Demi Lovato
God Is a Woman– Ariana Grande
Crying in the Club– Camila Cabello
Gangsta– Kehlani
Radar– Britney Spears
Like I Can– Sam Smith
Not Today– Imagine Dragons
Gangsters Paradise– Coolio
Love Me Like You Do– Ellie Goulding
Champagne & Sunshine– Plvtinum
Someone You Loved– Lewis Capaldi
Hate Me– Ellie Goulding
Promiscuous– Nelly Furtado ft. Timberland
Light 'Em Up– Fall Out Boy
Keep You Safe– Lindsey Ray
Forever– Chris Brown
Lovely– Billie Eilish
Take Me Home– Jess Glynne
Preface
I have a problem. I’m utterly obsessed with my brother’s best friend and I have been for years. He won’t give into my advances and he treats me like I’m still a kid although I’m nearly 21. While my brother and his wife are off on their honeymoon, I’m hiding out at their house to get a break from campus. But the thing is, he lives there too. Both of my brother’s best friends do. So, I’m stuck living in the same house as them for the next three weeks. My confidence dwindles every time he rejects me, but I’m going to break him down. Gio Colombo will be mine, fuck forbidden.
Chapter 1: Escape Plan
“The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
–William James
Arianna
Waiting outside for someone to pick you up is something that shouldn’t feel embarrassing, but it does. Like getting up to use the bathroom during a lecture or eating in a crowded restaurant. I’m sure somewhere out there, there are people who do normal activities without feeling strange, but I’m not one of them. I’ve always been more socially uncomfortable than I let on. No matter how convincing I may be, I’m a fraud.
I put on brave and peppy faces to convince myself I feel safe when I’m not sure that I do. Despite my inner fears, I certainly come across as confident. I’m loud, overbearing and worst of all, a hugger. Of all my problems, physical touch has never been one. I like affection and it’s one of the few things that doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. I enjoy being held, hugged and kissed, but doesn’t everyone?
Even though my confidence is fabricated, it comes across as quite genuine after years and years of practice. Since I have always clung to the sunshine persona that I crafted at a young age, I’m quite the actress. Though, I think in some ways, false happiness makes me happy. It’s comfortable to hide. Even if it’s wrong, it feels right.
Mamma raised a poised and sophisticated lady quite well, but even she couldn’t decipher my lazy forced smiles from the real ones. Mamma, like the rest of our family members, simply notice what I allow them to notice. They see my eyes full of mischief, my teeth when I smile and my flushed cheeks when I laugh. I’m a proper heiress, well-behaved, well-mannered, classically beautiful, humble, and modest to the untrained eye.
The thing is, even princesses crack underneath copious amounts of heated pressure. Expectations are a steaming hot bitch, but luckily, I almost always end up meeting them. Arianna Vitale has always outperformed. I’ve taken on my peers academically with brilliant success. I was a varsity cheerleader before anyone else my age. Prom Queen, Homecoming Princess and Valedictorian of my class came easily to me.
Part of me always wished I didn’t attract so much attention, but with success comes notoriety. Lorenzo, my eldest brother, loves notoriety. He enjoys being honored for his achievements, and I find it sincerely unnerving. Yet I suffered through the attention to avoid my father's biggest fear, failure.
Vitales are not failures. We’re successful and honorable Italians with great pride in our family. We have history and we maintain our good name through glorious achievements. I suffer because if anything is worth being in pain, it’s family.
I love my family more than the night sky loves the stars. Vitales are fierce lovers, and that is what I’m most proud of. Personally, I pride myself on a few things. However, I’m much better at pulling apart my downfalls.
I’m a kind friend and a dutiful daughter. I’m great at cheering people up, and I am an amazing shopper. But I’m a shit sister, if I’m being honest.
I envy Lorenzo so much that it makes me hate him sometimes. Hate his success, how our parents favor him, his power and how lucky he is to have a woman like Katherine. She’s got her issues, believe me. But she loves him with the fiercest passion I’ve ever seen. A good sister would be happy for him, but I allow my jealousy to eat at me.
I’m a better sister to Marco, my junior by three years. Still, I seem to fail him just as often as I do him good, but in different ways than I fail Lorenzo. I should stick up for Marco more often, and it makes me disappointed with myself whenever I don’t. I know I don’t have the power to fend off my father’s rude comments or the isolation he subjects Marco to. As his sister, I shouldn’t care about the consequences of being his Savior. I should just do it.
Marco and I grew
up thick as thieves. We might as well have had our own language. We understood each other, and we spent more time together than with anyone else. Lorenzo, being much older than us, meant he didn’t really grow up alongside us. He was already eight when I was born and eleven when Marco came along. He was more like a second father than a brother. But Marco and I were best friends, even as siblings.
Marco is an outcast, set on never joining the family business. He won’t talk about it with me, probably because I’m not privy to business discussions. The Vitale are old school and the men run the family businesses. Not that I mind, I’m not expected to be a housewife. Women can do whatever they want, but the men run Vitale Industries. Lorenzo started working for our father young, and Marco should have started already, but he won’t. Hence the bridge of rage being built around him.
I wish he’d tell me more, but I won’t push him, even if he’s spiraling. Marco rebels against Italy, favoring American music and culture to spite what he believes our father stands for. He drinks too much and parties too often, but he’s always been my closest ally, so I’ll never judge him. He’s always been my best friend, yet even he doesn’t know how I feel in my own skin.
So you see, I’m sort of a phony.
If you asked anyone in my family what my biggest problem in life is, they might make some silly comment about a shopping dilemma. Maybe Katherine might dig deeper and mention my loneliness. But none of them would consider me an anxious person.
So, like a phony does, I suffer in silence, waiting for my ride. All I can do is pretend to be interested in something on my phone, so I don’t have to see anyone looking at me. There’s only so much scrolling I can do with disinterested, wary eyes. Luckily, Katherine finally texts me back as I’m getting restless.
Katherine: We landed safely. We’re in the Maldives!
I already knew where they were going. I made Lorenzo tell me because I loathe surprises.
Arianna: Thank you again for letting me stay here, and keeping my secret. Have fun!
Katherine: You too. *Winky face*
She’s completely on team Arianna and Gio. She calls us Ario, her version of a celebrity ‘ship’ name, I guess. I’m glad I have her support because fuck knows I’m going to need it.
A car horn honks, making me jump and look up from my phone with a glare.
It’s Luca. I can see his blindingly blonde hair even through the tinted windshield. He’s picking me up from my dorm and taking me back to Lorenzo’s house as a favor to my brother. I can tell he’s driving one of Lorenzo’s Maseratis, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. He has his own cars but never drives them. I think he prefers staring at them or something.
All the men in my life have a weird obsession with cars that I don’t understand. Even Katherine likes them. She’s bought herself a few ‘muscle cars’ since the wedding. I’m smart enough to look past the nice sounds they make and understand that they’re terrible investments. All of them have expensive taste and not nearly enough time to appreciate the hunks of metal. I suppose since they have money to burn, they like burning it.
Luca Caruso is a pain in my ass. He drives me insane, but he’s picking me up right now, so I’ll play nice for today.
Both Gio and Luca know my parents aren’t aware that I’m doing this. Katherine threatened to cut their balls off and fry them up for dinner if they let my secret slip. One of her issues is being a bit dramatically psychotic, but I love her for it anyway.
Coming to stay at their house was her idea. She knows a bit about my feeling isolated in Milan, and she’s on this whole self-care kick, so she’s demanding I take care of myself for once. She’s right, and that’s why I didn’t put up a fight. I jumped at the chance with a big fat smile on my face.
I just can’t stay on campus right now. It’s too much. Everyone looks at me strangely, and no one invites me to anything. I’m practically royalty back home and yet on campus I’m a social pariah. My professors were way too easily convinced to move my courses online for the rest of the semester, which only added insult to injury. There’s a month left, and it’s like even they didn’t want me here.
Luca doesn’t get out of the driver's seat and I don’t expect him to. I easily throw my suitcase into the back seat and climb in, sitting next to it.
“Thank you for coming to get me.” I rarely say nice things to him, but I have manners, especially when someone is doing me a favor. Our town is like three hours from my school, so flying seemed unnecessary; meaning I needed him. It would also be easier for my father to figure out I’m home if I get on a plane. Luca looks back at me like I’m crazy, probably because I haven’t made a snarky comment yet. “What, I can’t say thank you?” My voice rolls off my tongue like an insult as I glare at him slightly.
He returns my snarky look. “You can, you just normally don’t.”
“Don’t read too much into it. I’ll be rude when you’re done doing me a favor.”
“Good.” He turns back around, shaking his head with a weak laugh. He revs the engine before he speeds off like a race car driver. Completely unnecessary, but completely Luca.
Car rides are mind-numbing to me. I usually do whatever it takes to make time move by more quickly. It’s only natural to take out my laptop and flip on my hotspot. I have a few papers due at the end of the month that I’ve already started. I want to get them done sooner than later, so I throw in a pair of headphones and start typing; hoping the ride will be over quickly.
Luca and Gio aren’t the only ones keeping my secret. Marco knows I’m coming home, too. As much as he’s an ass nowadays, we actually get along most of the time. Even though we were really close as kids, things have become more complicated.
It’s difficult to be around him with how our parents treat him. I’m expected to keep him in the same tone as they do, but I don’t like it. Since they don’t know that I’m coming home, we might go out. His friends don’t seem to mind me being around, and it would be nice to not feel completely shunned again. I’ll have to sneak out, and that will either be extremely difficult or easy if Gio ignores me like he normally does. Caterina, Lorenzo’s chef and personal assistant, won’t be there to catch me since Katherine gave her paid vacation while they're gone. Though, I’m genuinely expecting her to come cook for the boys, despite her time off. She’s a mama bear like that, even though she’s young.
I don’t think my parents will find out I’ve left the campus. Mamma is completely occupied helping Sofia, Katherine’s mom, move into her new house. She decided to stay in Italy and bought a small mansion a few miles from our estate. Mamma and Sofia were fast friends. They are together all the time now. Papa is occupied with work often, so I think my chances of staying off their radar are good.
Chances are, they wouldn’t mind me being home, but they wouldn’t want me at Lorenzo’s, and that’s where I want to be. Papa would also give me an earful if I said that I left Uni because I felt lonely. He’s a big tough guy and even though I’m not, he expects me to be strong as an ox.
Vitales are warriors, Arianna, you are fierce. His words ring in my ears, itching to make me feel bad for making this decision. Surely, he won’t act upset with me, but the possibility of insulting papa makes me sad. He’s my father and I want him to be proud of me.
Luca is driving like he’s in a race to win a priceless artifact or something, yet somehow, he doesn’t get pulled over by the three cops we pass. My brother and his friends practically run our city with business interests and apparently have some of the best luck ever. Everyone acts like they are a big deal, but I just ignore them. It’s stupid to care how much money or power they have. Even girls on campus will whisper about them sometimes, like they are superstars.
It pisses me off, especially when they talk about Gio.
Gio isn’t for them.
He’s mine.
I finished a lot of research and I’m nearly finished with a 2,500-word paper just as we pull into Lorenzo’s property. The car comes to a stop outside of the f
ront steps.
No matter how many times I’ve been here, it will always take my breath away. It’s an over-the-top Palazzo style mansion. The deepest green hedges are arranged artistically surrounding the structure. From the outside, it looks to be four stories but anyone whose explored it properly could tell you that the basement makes five. The bright cream white color of the walls contrasts with the burnt orange-colored rooftops and the darker toned arches.
Closing my laptop and throwing it into my purse, I take a quiet breath to prepare myself.
“Thanks again, loser,” I say, opening my door and jumping out with my suitcase and purse in hand.
“You’re welcome, brat,” he pokes back.
The car shuts off and Luca jumps out.
We’ve never gotten along, Luca and I. Some of it is jokes, some of it isn’t. He’s called me brat, short for spoiled brat, since I remember meeting him. He was sixteen, and I was ten, so in hindsight, I probably was a spoiled brat to him. Still, I don’t remember ever doing anything to genuinely upset him, other than being born into money. But Lorenzo is his best friend and my brother, so it seems like a poor reason to hate me. I, on the other hand, hate him because he started it.
Luca goes inside and I follow behind him slowly with no need or desire to rush, then make my path upstairs. I’m staying in Katherine’s room. She assured me someone thoroughly disinfected it, which is nice, but I wish she wouldn’t have said it out loud. I didn’t need a mental picture of what goes down in her bed, especially since I’ve already heard her screaming my brother's name in the next room before.
Gross.
I envy that she’s so comfortable talking about sex. I just wish it didn’t involve my brother. She’s given me advice before about good sex, and I had to admit that I had nothing to compare it to. Being a virgin as a sophomore in college is probably the most embarrassing thing to admit to someone. She didn’t shame me about it or anything, but I still felt sad talking about it. No guy has ever been willing to do more than kiss me or touch my boobs through my shirt. It’s like there’s a sign on my head that says ‘don’t touch me’. I’ve wanted to burn that damn sign more times than I can count. It’s frustrating and I despise it.