by Ashley Jade
He reaches for my hand. “You're strong...but you're stunted because you're not learning and evolving. You're not living Lou-Lou. I'm not trying to hurt you when I say this...but the truth is that you're stuck in your misery and victim mentality.”
He kisses my hand. “But you don't have to be a victim.”
I never thought about it like that before. I treat people badly and push them away because of my past, because of what was done to me.
I thought being tough and strong and cutting people down would protect me from further harm...but it's only hindering me.
Ricardo may have a point. I have to learn to learn to trust others and believe there's still good people in the world. Despite what my father inflicted.
I don't want to be his victim anymore...but I have no idea how to go about that.
Being a victim is all I've ever known. It's the cloak that wraps around me...it's the cord that strangles me.
“How do I—” I stall and swallow back another sob because being around him makes all my emotions come crashing to the surface.
He runs his hands up and down my arms. “You start small. You start by letting someone in the ring with you. Someone who doesn't want to put out that beautiful fire inside you...but wants to show how to utilize it the right way.”
His voice drops to a whisper. “But you have to let me in.”
A tear trickles down my cheek because my defenses are down.
And for the first time in my life...I want to try. I don't want to keep feeling this way inside. I don't want to be wrapped up in my misery and the shame of my past anymore.
“Okay. I'll try, but what if I screw up? You gonna get rid of me? Stop being my friend?”
He wipes my tear away with his thumb. “It's okay if you screw up, it's going to happen. I'll still keep coming back for more. I'll keep proving that you can trust me.” He looks down. “On one condition.” He pauses. “Well, two.”
“What?”
His expression changes from one of determination to one of utter heartache and my heart pulls.
Hell, this man could tell me he wants me to rob a bank at gunpoint right now and I'd seriously contemplate it.
He lifts me higher and pulls me tighter to him. “Please don't do drugs. That's a hard limit for me. If you have a craving, or you feel like you did that night...you can always call me. I'll drop everything for you and I'll get you through it. Just please don't use again.”
The pain in his voice right now is like nothing I've ever heard before. “I promise.” I run my hand along his jaw and look into his eyes. “I promise I won't ever use again.”
I fight the urge to tell him that with the exception of last night, I've never actually wanted to use before.
But of course, I can't tell him that. Guilt grips me even harder when he utters his next request. “And never lie to me. I don't care how bad the truth is—don't ever lie to me.”
His eyes bore into me. “I know you love him but I also know you're scared of him, Lou-Lou. And the only way I can keep you safe is if I know everything. I need you to trust that whatever problems may arise with my father that I will be able to handle it and take care of it—as long as you're always honest with me and you don't keep me in the dark about things. You're not a team of one anymore, you have me.”
His voice is filled with such devotion and promise I have to suck in a breath.
“Okay,” I agree.
He gives me that gorgeous smile of his and my heart practically leaps out of my chest.
It's only then that I realize he's shirtless...and I'm still straddling him.
He seems to realize this too because when he looks down I see his adam's apple bob.
Neither of us make a move to get up or fix our position.
Every fiber of my being is telling me to throw caution to the wind and give in to this need that only seems to get stronger the longer I'm around him.
But then I remember the wind is DeLuca...and he's not a cool breeze—he's a tornado destroying everything in his path.
“You don't flinch when I touch you anymore,” he notes.
“That's because I'm not scared of you,” I say. “Not physically anyway.”
And damn, that's the truth because if anyone has the ability to hurt me...I'm realizing it might just be him now.
Before my mouth can catch up with my brain I utter, “I like when you touch me.” His eyes blaze and I continue, “I like that you're not afraid to touch me after I showed you the ugly and dirty parts of me.”
I close my eyes. “I don't feel his disgusting hands on my body when you touch me.” I look up at him. “All I feel is you, Ricardo.”
His hands frame my face. I can feel his heart racing like a freight train. “I don't see those dirty and ugly parts of you, Lou-Lou. I see the beautiful parts because as far as I'm concerned, that's all that exists.”
He sighs. “And if things were different. If you weren't with...” his voice trails off and my own heart plummets because I know what he means.
If only DeLuca wasn't the common denominator between us, the tie that binds us together.
Who knows what we could be.
He clears his throat. “Are you sleeping over tonight?”
“Do you not want me to?”
The corners of his lips twitch. “That all depends. Am I going to wake up to the Antichrist again?”
I playfully smack his chest and he links our fingers together and bites his lip. Those damn butterflies swoon like no one's business.
My life is so simple and easy here in this moment. Everything feels just like it's supposed to.
He makes me feel both lighter and heavier at the same time.
“You want to hear another truth that no one else knows?”
He stands up and I wrap my legs around his waist. “You know I do,” he says.
He walks into the bedroom and I crawl to my side of the bed. “The truth is that I don't like Scarlet.”
He turns off the light and pulls me into his arms. “I know, you already told me that, remember?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you don't know the real reason I don't like her.”
“Why don't you like her?”
“Because she has something I can never have.”
I'm starting to drift off when I hear him whisper, “I know the feeling.”
I don't have bad dreams that night.
I dream of nothing but fairy tales and white-knights.
Just like I used to before the nightmares began.
But I can't say the same for Ricardo.
Chapter 15 (Ricardo)
I jerk and thrash around on my bed, trying my hardest to ward off what's happening.
It's no use because I can't wake up...I can't get out of this hellhole.
I can't wake from this nightmare.
I'm stuck. Trapped. Imprisoned.
This is my purgatory.
A pair of hazel eyes sear into me.
A beautiful little girl's screams haunt me.
A crowbar bashing into Graham's skull torments me.
I look back to the little girl and she's no longer looking at my father...she's looking at me.
“Do something! Don't let him kill my Daddy,” she begs me.
I try to get out of the car but I can't, the doors are locked.
I bang on the window and try to break it open anyway.
But I'm too late.
Graham's lifeless body is lying on the pavement, a pool of blood surrounds his now deformed face.
The little girl's hazel eyes fill with tears and she hits the windshield “No! Daddy! Please, No!”
She looks at me again. “How could you, Ricardo?”
“I'm sorry,” I say. “I'm so sorry.”
Shame washes over me because I failed this little girl and I failed a man I looked up to.
Just like I failed my mother.
I grip the sheets...I know the worst of my nightmare still isn't over yet.
Because this part isn
't a nightmare at all.
This is a flashback...a reel of torture and anguish that plays on a constant loop inside my head.
I try to scream but my mother's voice halts me. “Shut up!”
She draws up the needle full of heroin and the 8-year-old boy version of me screams for her to stop.
Just like so many times before.
I hated that stuff, it made her cruel and mean. She was no longer kind. It made her say things that broke my heart.
She plunges the needle into her vein and I feel myself start to cry.
She finally looks at me. Her beautiful face contorts into a menacing scowl.
My insides twist because I know what she's going to say.
I try to brace myself for the impact but I can't.
I never can because it hurts so much each and every time.
“I never wanted you. I should have aborted you.” She balls up her fist. “You're going to be just like him. I hate you!”
“I'm sorry, Mommy,” I tell her because I am. I'm so sorry for whatever it is she thinks I'm going to be.
For whatever it is that's causing her so much pain.
“I hate you, Ricardo. I wish you were never born,” she screams over and over again.
I don't know what I did to make her hate me so much but I still loved her even when she acted like this.
She closes her eyes and starts nodding off in her drug induced haze. I bow my head because I know what's coming.
Her body starts to twitch and she screams for someone named Bruno to stop touching her.
She keeps begging and pleading for it all to end.
She keeps screaming how much it hurts.
That's when it finally sinks in for the very first time.
And the shame for being the constant reminder of her rape washes over me until I'm screaming and crying with her.
Her screams prompt my own and it's loud enough to wake me.
I know all too well now, what Bruno DeLuca did to her and how I came to be born.
I am cursed.
I can't blame her for hating me so much.
I hate myself.
There's only one way to get rid of this feeling.
Only one way to make it go away.
I sit up in bed and scrub a hand down my face before checking the clock on the nightstand. 2am. Perfect.
The world only dealt me two choices when it came to being Bruno DeLuca's son...either I had to become him...or become a coward.
Fighting back would ensure that others died.
Those were always his stakes and the day he killed my mother, I realized he wasn't bluffing.
I had no choice but to become a coward in order protect others.
I'm so fucking tired of being a coward. But for a few short hours...I don't have to be.
I get to take on the bad guys.
I get to make rapists pay. I get to do to them what I wish I could do to DeLuca.
I close my eyes as the next thought slams into me.
I'd like to think that maybe, by doing this, I can earn my mother's forgiveness and love, despite the fact that she's no longer alive.
Because of me...because I fought back.
An arm wraps around my waist and fingers gently skim up and down my stomach. The contact jolts me for two reasons.
One—I forgot that Lou-Lou's currently in my bed.
And two—I'm not used to being touched.
Especially like this.
The only touches I ever welcome are the sexual kind.
From the kind of sex where I don't take control from women...they give it to me, willingly. And in turn, I give them pleasure.
Lou-Lou's touch is soft and sweet...it's strange. Not in a bad way, just in a way I don't understand.
And yet, I can't keep myself from touching her. She lets me touch her. She doesn't flinch or pull away anymore.
Which of course, makes me keep wanting to touch her.
The only thing I can compare it to is what happens when magnets flip and find one another.
They can't stay apart.
And now that she's told me she likes it when I touch her and she no longer feels that motherfuckers hands on her when I'm touching her.
It makes me want to do other things.
Like touch her in all the places he violated her...if only to wash all her pain away.
It makes me want to show her what pleasure can feel like... because I'm sure my father doesn't know the first thing about what it takes to please a woman.
It boggles my mind that he's even with her in the first place. He's the last person she should be with. Even if he did save her.
God, the fucking irony of it all.
But that's how DeLuca likes his prey...he likes them damaged and bruised. This way he can manipulate and control them...bend them to his will.
The funny thing about Lou-Lou? She's not like that.
She's strong—the kind of strong where I doubt she even realizes the full capacity of her strength. She doesn't realize, that if channeled the right way...she could move mountains and do great things with her life.
But she's with him...and he'll take every bit of strength from her before he tosses her aside like a used toy.
Normally his prey is too naive to realize what he's capable of until it's too late. They're too busy flying high off having the most feared and dangerous mob boss take care of them and protect them.
Oddly enough, I don't think DeLuca has Lou-Lou fooled in any way, shape or form.
She knows exactly who and what he is.
Which makes this feeling burrowing in my gut worse.
She loves him for exactly who and what he is.
Her arm fastens around me tighter. “Don't leave. It was just a bad dream. Come back to bed.”
I close my eyes because she couldn't be more wrong.
“I have to go. I'll be back in a few hours.”
I get up from the bed but she jumps on my back like a spider monkey. “I believe you owe me a truth, Ricky.”
It mildly annoyed me when she first called me Ricky...I know it was just her way of giving me a 'fuck you' for not remembering her name.
However, I'm finding that I don't mind it so much anymore.
She's right about me owing her 'a truth'. She's been shelling them out left and right and she deserves a few of mine but I don't want to give them to her now.
I tilt my head to look at her. “Can I give you an 'I owe you?', I really have to leave.”
She purses her lips and shakes her head. “Nope. You want me to let you in? Well, that goes both ways.”
She plants a soft kiss on my shoulder and I curse under my breath when my dick twitches and my heart jumps.
She traces the outline of the scripture from the tattoo on my back. “I've never seen this one before.”
“It's from the Green Mile, by Stephen King.” I reluctantly plop back down on the bed. She hops off my back and climbs onto my lap instead. I bite my lip and suppress a groan because having her in my lap right now isn't such a good thing.
It makes me want to find another way to escape, especially since she's insistent that I don't leave.
She's off limits; forbidden fruit, I remind myself. Although every second that passes between us makes it harder and harder for that to sink in.
She looks up at me and searches my eyes. “I didn't know you liked to read.”
“I used to like to read,” I correct her. “See? There's a truth for you.”
“Tell me more.”
I grab her hips and shift us so I'm sitting against the headboard. “What do you want to know?”
Her eyes never leave mine. “I want to know what your nightmare was about.”
Yeah, should have seen that coming from a mile away.
“It wasn't a nightmare exactly. It was a flashback, sort of. It starts off with a flashback that twists itself into a nightmare and then ends with another flashback...if that makes any sense.”
Her head falls against my ch
est and she wraps her arms around me. Then she begins drawing little circles up and down my arms in a soothing manner.
I suck in air and I know my heart's pounding like a jackhammer.
I'm torn because I don't hate the feeling. I'm just not used to anyone touching me like this.
My mother had her nice moments...when she was sober. Moments where she acted like I was her son. Moments where I believed she really cared.
But the one thing my mother never did was hug me, or show me any kind of affection. Usually, she was too strung out and ripping into me about hating me so much because of who I am.
Which of course, she was more than justified for.
And as far as DeLuca goes. The only kind of contact we've ever had was a few fist's to the face.
The bottom line is that I've always been a lone-wolf.
Most people belong to packs, usually their family or circle of friends.
It gives them a sense of belonging and in turn, it teaches them how to build human basic connections and from there they establish things like trust and love.
But me?
I've never belonged anywhere.
How could I?
My conception didn't result from a basic human connection. It resulted from an animal who stripped a woman of the rights to her own body without remorse.
I'm the epitome of an abomination.
I never once felt like part of a pack, like I ever belonged.
At least, I didn't until Tyrone, Jackson and Momma came along.
They're the closest thing I have to a family and if they find out the truth...I'll lose them.
I've never felt included or wanted before them...and I think it's why on some level, I understand what Lou-Lou means when she says that she loves DeLuca, even if it makes her a monster.
I'll never love DeLuca...but try as I might, I can't deny there's a small part of me that wants him to accept me and wants him to love me.
Because no one else ever has before.
Lou-Lou squeezes me tighter and plants another kiss on my shoulder. “Tell me what happened, Ricardo. I won't judge you.”