Page 72 of Lovely Deceit

Leo

Darkness sits like a heavy fog around my shoulders. No one was home when I got back. Not the prince or the professor or her.

My arms hang at my sides like anvils, my feet planted in the middle of the living room. I stare around the shadowy Hall. I’d expected her to call Oliver to give her a ride, but I never expected all of them to be gone or to not come back.

Fury rises inside me like a tsunami. Thoughts flick through my brain in rapid-fire succession.

I’m never good enough for anybody.

I can’t do anything right.

Everybody leaves.

Just when I think I am headed in the right direction, I get derailed.

With every thought I have, I start smashing things. Hurling the TV against the wall. Slamming the heel of my foot into the coffee table that I ate her out on. Upending the couch and kicking it across the room.

I tear through the house, destroying everything in my path, all the chaos on the outside matching what I feel on the inside.

I open the refrigerator door and slam it a few times before taking my arm and running it across everything on the counter, shoving it to the floor.

Oliver’s sissy teapot shatters after teetering on the edge. I pick up his stupid teacups that he makes her tea in like he’s some sort of fancy connoisseur and fling them amidst all the other broken pieces. They splinter and fragment until the picture at my feet is the mess inside my brain.

I tried being a different person for her. A gentleman. Tried to care, and all she did was throw it back in my face. Allowing me to fuck her and then telling me I can’t touch her.

I take Alaric’s coffee pot off the counter and heave it into the other room. It explodes against a mirror on the wall, the fractured pieces tinkling to the ground.

I continue to rage, hitting and tearing and prying everything in my path until I’m gasping for breath in the middle of the wreckage.

The doorbell rings.

Something tells me it’s them: Eden, Alaric, and Oliver. I grin, imagining their shocked surprise as they walk into the room. Maybe then they’ll see how much I’ve been holding back just to live with them. Maybe then they’ll see the fury that owns me.

I stare at the door, wondering why they don’t just come in, when it bangs open. I growl, all the words I want to spew in her face bubbling to the surface.

A group of black-robed Knights spill into the room, surrounding me in what seems like only a few seconds. They attempt to grab me, but I start swinging, my knuckles bursting open even further with each connection.

My head explodes with pain. My arm gets twisted behind my back. There’s a sharp sting in my neck, and my eyes grow too heavy to keep them open. They shudder closed, but I force them wide again only to find that I’m being carried out of the house.

Then, everything goes dark.

* * *

My eyes flutter.My head pounds, the ache echoing through me when I start to come to.

“I was hoping I’d never have to do this.”

That voice. I’d know it anywhere. I pull at my wrists but they’re bound. Little by little, my surroundings become clearer. My muscles throb, and there’s a twinge in my neck from being hunched over. Judging by the state of my body, I’ve been tied up here for at least a couple of hours.

I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them, finding my grandfather’s dark silhouette in front of me. “Wake now, Leonardo.”

I clench my hands into fists, yanking at my restraints. The fog behind my eyes begins to clear, and I freeze.

I’m in the house I grew up in, sitting in a chair similar to the one we found Eden in a few weeks ago. I yank and pull on my restraints again, yet they hold.

“They’re zip ties. You won’t be getting out of those.”

A growl works its way up my throat. Here I am again, being played for the weak one. I’m always the weak one in his eyes.

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