Love isn’t in my cards. It’s hard to love someone when every person you have ever cared about is ripped from you.
Sliding one arm under her knees and the other cradling her head, I hold her against my body. She is a tiny thing, light, but curvy.
“Let’s go to bed,” I whisper against her skin as I watch her eyes close. She falls into a blissful sleep before my feet even hit the top steps. She is the angel, and I am the devil. There is no saving us from the destruction I will cause.
Chapter Eight
Bree
It had been three days since I had the most mind-blowing sex of my life. Zerro is a dark man, but I am starting to crave him. He hasn’t fucked me since that night, and though I have given him blowjobs and allowed him to go down on me many times, we still haven’t connected again.
“Get out of bed,” he orders, his voice stern. He has started to grow angrier every day, and just the other night when I heard him conversing with Mack, a bottle of bourbon was smashed against the wall.
I roll my eyes at his command. He might have a hold on my body, but my mind is mine to keep. I can say whatever I want in my mind, and if I had the courage, I could say it all out loud.
“Out,” he orders again, coming to my side of the bed. I growl, my feet hitting the floor. We have gone over this. I told him there will be no ordering me around, and though he didn’t agree, I figured I had gotten my point across. Obviously not.
“I’m up. What the fuck crawled up your ass and died?” I stumble from the bed and toward the closet.
Grabbing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I walk away from him, leaving him to wallow in whatever it is that is making him mad. He is mad all the time, grateful for nothing I’m sure.
I slip through the bathroom door, fully intent on closing it and locking it when his body slides through, stopping me.
“What do you want?” I ask, distasted with the fact that he can’t… no, won’t leave me alone.
“Why did you accept the debt for your father?” His eyes hold this curiousness that bothers me. He isn’t curious. A man like him is never curious... He has a reason behind every question that he asks.
“If you think I did this because I thought that it would be fun, you have got to be fucking crazy…” I laugh. Not the normal hunky-dory kind, but the kind that makes me look like I am crazy.
Raising an eyebrow at me, he watches my facial features as if he is going to find me in a lie somewhere. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, why would you just step up to the plate?”
“Why would you take an innocent girl and bring her into your sick and twisted life? You should have to apologize for the monster that you have become,” I retort. Who does he think he is? Questioning me has been his plan all along. He has to know that most people who borrow money from him will never be able to pay him back. Which, in that case, means he does what he does knowing the outcome is almost always going to be death.
His face twists into an angry scowl. I don’t want to push him, but then again, I do. My blood sings for him to take me, to slam my back against the wall and push my panties to the side…
“Me, apologize for being a monster?” he growls, stepping more and more into the bathroom, forcing me to take steps back until my back hits the vanity.
“Why should I have to apologize for the very thing that these people have made me out to be? Why should I have to say sorry to anyone…” His face is in mine, anger is right on the surface of exploding within him.
Lifting my chin and staring him straight in the eyes I say, “Because, people who are innocent and just trying to get by, die because of you. You kill people because of a debt that is meant to be paid? Did you ever think that these people come to you as a last resort? Have you ever lost anything or anyone? Probably not… You don’t even know the pain….”
His fist raises and comes down though it never hits me. The mirror directly behind us shatters. Shards of glass go flying in every direction, and I push past him and out of the way as blood pours from his hand.
Hate, deep and ugly, radiates off him. “I know loss, pain, and heartache. You take my mercy for kindness, but I’m not kind. I’m not soft!” he screams at me.
They say you should never look death straight in the eye, but I guess you can say I’m a bit of a rebel. I can see the misery, anger, and insecurities within him swirling. He wants me to think that nothing can break him. That there isn’t anything on the face of the earth that can bring him out of his own personal hell.
“You are, or you wouldn’t have taken me instead of ending my father’s life.” I don’t let the way he’s looking at me scare me. I don’t let his beautifully dark face tarnish my mind.