Heartless (Merciless Book 2)

I wonder if she really loves me.

I’ll never forget the way she said it. It gutted me. She may grow to love me, but she’ll always hate me.

I can’t blame her for that, but I want to hear the words apart from the hatred. So, I can pretend it comes without a caveat.

I want her to say it again, and this time to mean it. Those words shouldn’t have fallen so recklessly as I pushed her to the edge of pleasure. They’re addictive and they did something to me I can’t describe.

She’s drawing so slowly today. Lying in front of the fire in the den, she’s only been working on one picture. One single piece of art for the last three hours. I’m still not sure what it is, all I can make out is a field of flowers, but there’s something beyond the black smudges of petals.

I don’t have time to question her about it though. Other questions are too precious to be wasted by another moment of silence.

“What do you want more than anything in the world?” The fire crackles once my deep voice has broken the void of silence between us. The tension is still there, but it can’t exist forever. I won’t let it.

Aria’s hazel eyes lift, and she peeks at me through her dark lashes, not bothering to move from lying on her elbows. She glances back at the drawing and visibly swallows before shrugging slightly and looking back up at me as if she doesn’t have to answer.

At this point, she doesn’t. I don’t care what she does or how she treats me with the door closed, so long as she doesn’t run or hurt herself.

“I want my family to be untouchable,” I confess to her.

“That’s quite an ambition,” she answers, crossing her ankles and still staring at the drawing pad in front of her. She’s still cold.

“Isn’t that what you want, too?” I ask her. “That would seem to be especially desirable given the current environment.” I can’t keep the smug tone from my voice to cover up the pain from her reaction. If she would talk to me, she’d see. She has to see that there’s only one way for this to end. And once it’s over, it will all be better. I’ll make it better for her.

“I want everyone to fuck off and leave me alone,” she answers with a bite that tips the corner of my lips up into a half smile. I love the fight in her. She’ll live, she’ll survive. A girl like her knows how to survive if nothing else.

“Anger is something I didn’t expect. And someone like you shouldn’t be left alone,” I tell her.

“I don’t want to cry today. So, I’ll settle for anger.” Her answer comes with muted irritation. She throws down the stick of charcoal onto the paper and then meets my gaze to ask, “Why shouldn’t I be alone?”

“It’s one thing to say you want to be alone. It’s another to truly be it. You pretend like you don’t exist in the same world as I do. Locking yourself away and acting like that’s what you want. But you belong here. You were born to this life. You need to accept that. And loneliness in this world leaves you vulnerable and that’s a life neither of us can afford.”

“I was alone in the cell,” she says solemnly. I don’t think she slept at all last night; I know I didn’t. “I survived.”

A melancholy huff leaves me. “You weren’t alone. The first night you slept, I’d drugged your dinner to make sure you would. So, I could tend to your wounds and the cuts on your wrists.”

“You did?” Her eyes are filled with shock. “Why?”

“You were mine to take care of.” My shoulders stiffen, as does my gaze and she drops hers, falling back to the smudges of charcoal. “I knew you would live. And you would break quickly. Everything needed to happen quickly.”

“Why?” she asks me, and I don’t know how she can’t know at this point.

“I’d intended to show how willing you were to be mine to everyone who was watching. So, there would be no question where you stood in the war.”

Her eyes close and she chews the inside of her cheek at my admission, trying to keep her emotions in check. I know the truth of the situation is raw for her. An open wound. But she needs to see it all. She has to accept everything for what it is.

“Instead, there’s no question where I stand when it comes to you. I never liked Stephan. Once a traitor, always a traitor. But giving his death to you, allowing you to have vengeance? It spoke more words than I realized it would.”

Her face scrunches with the painful memory and then she hangs her head, avoiding my gaze and rubbing her cheek against her shoulder. She pushes the hair out of her face and when she speaks, she doesn’t look up.

“But you’re still going to…” She doesn’t bother finishing her question. I know she already knows. She’ll come to accept it.

“Your father doesn’t deserve what he has. He’s not half the man Romano is. And Romano is a pathetic excuse for his title. They’ll both die. Along with everyone who fights for them.”

“Please. Not everyone. I’ll do anything.” Her words are spoken with conviction and she lifts her hazels up to meet my dark gaze. “You want me to kneel at your feet? I’ll kneel.”

She still doesn’t get it. And my heart aches for hers.

“What if I wanted you to stand at my side?” I ask her, my heart racing in my chest. It’s a risk to give her more. Every time I do, she fails to cope with it. But I need her to know what I really want from her. What I desire more than anything.

“You would tower over me,” she answers.

“That’s not how it works, songbird. And it’s not what I want. You’ve only ever had broken wings, but I can show you what true freedom is.”

“You’re still going to kill my family?” she asks me as if that answer is the end all, be all.

“I’m going to do a number of things you’re going to disapprove of. You need to accept that.” My answer is hard, leaving no room for any intolerance. “I’m not a good man.”

“Is this what it would be like to stand by your side? To have no control and to simply accept what you do?” I’m surprised by her answer but eager to discuss terms.

“On some matters, you’ll never have control, and you’ll have to accept what I choose. Whether or not you want to know about them is your decision.” I know part of her despair is because she knows everything, yet she’s a casualty with little recourse.

“I’m sorry you know as much as you do,” I tell her and then almost take it back, thinking she’ll take it offensively and that’s not what I intended.

She doesn’t though. Instead, she cracks, showing me the side of her I love. The raw vulnerability.

“I don’t want this life,” she whispers, slowly pushing the art away so she can rest her head against the rug. The light from the fire licks along her skin.

“We don’t get to choose,” I remind her. I’ve told myself so many times that I wish things were different, but you live the life you’re given.

“You’re wrong,” she tells me as if she has another option.

“Do you love what I do to you? How I fuck that pretty little cunt and force you to scream out my name?” I’m crude and harsh with my question.

She doesn’t answer me, but she doesn’t have to.

“Then no, you don’t have a choice. I had a choice once. I chose wrong.”

“You’ll get tired of me,” she whispers, her eyes seemingly vacant but the depths of them harboring pain. “One day I won’t be a shiny new toy. One day, you’ll want someone to fight you and I’ll have none left in me.” Tears pool in her eyes. “One day, the idea of shoving your dick inside of me won’t interest you in the least.”

She has no idea how wrong she is. I’m only growing more obsessed with her. Breaking every rule to satisfy her.

Risking everything to heal the broken pieces of her she refuses to acknowledge.

I’ll never let her go because she isn’t a toy. She isn’t a challenge. She isn’t the fuckdoll she thinks she is and secretly loves being.

“Will you let me go then?”

“Never.”

She turns to face the fire and I whisper to her, “You’re so wrong, Aria. If you weren’t so set on hating me, you’d see.”

“You give me every reason to hate you,” she tells me. In the reflection from the mirror above the mantel, I see the fire dancing in her eyes.

She’ll never know how much her words hurt me. Or maybe she does, and that’s what she was after.

“Why are you doing this to me? Why me?” she asks me in a single breath and I offer her a singular truth in return.

“Your father set a series of events in motion,” I reply, remembering the night his men took me from the street.

I remember how the pills spilled into the gutter even as they slammed their fists against my jaw and I fell to the cold cement. With her, I only see what lies ahead. But she’s caught in the past. And that’s what will destroy us.

“So, it’s my father’s fault?” she asks me with a sadness in her eyes, as if I’ve robbed her of some fantasy.

“No, it’s mine.” My confession confuses her for a moment, but before she can say anything else, I continue.

“I thought I loved you,” I tell her with a bitter hardness that forces the words to sound violent on my tongue. Her eyes widen as she turns back and stares at me. Her stance changes to one of prey, realizing it’s stumbled into its worst enemy. The shock in her eyes fuels me to push her farther. For her to realize the man I truly am.

“For a long time after I left your home, when they kicked me back out onto the street after brutalizing me, I thought I loved whoever belonged to the sweet voice that stopped them from killing me.” Aria’s expression changes to one of fear and knowing.

I tell her to break whatever thoughts she has of love. And whatever thoughts I have of it. Weakness crushes down on me as I tell her what I used to think. What I expected this to be when I stabbed the knife into her picture and told Romano to bring her to me.

“I knew I hated your father, and eventually I hated everything. I hated you for letting me live.” Aria is silent, waiting with bated breath to see what else I’ll say.

“I’m condemned to hell. Of everyone on this Earth, God knows I deserve to burn. And it’s because I was allowed to live. It’s because of you.”

“It has nothing to do with me. My father–”

“It has everything to do with you,” I tell her, feeling the rage from the memory take over. “You’re the one who banged on the door and pleaded with your father. I was so foolish. For a long time, I thought when you were crying out, ‘I need you,’ that in some fucked up way, you were calling out for me.”

As I take another step closer to her, the wildness returns to Aria’s eyes, the fear I know and love swirls within them. Her cunt is still feeling the pleasure I give her, while her heart beats with the knowing fear of me.

“I didn’t–” she starts to protest, and I stop her.

“You’re the bird in the forest who lured the child out of safety until he fell into a black hole he could never get out of. And still, the bird sings so beautifully, taunting the child as he becomes a man of hardness and hate, stuck in a hell he didn’t know was coming. Do you know what that man dreams of more than anything?” I ask her, remembering the moment my gratitude changed to hate for the very girl who sits in front of me.

She barely shakes her head, not taking her gaze from me.

“First to get out, for the longest time, just a way to get out. But when he realizes he can’t, that there’s no changing who he is and where he’s damned to, he searches for the songbird. Eager to capture it. Just to silence the song forever. That’s why I wanted you.”

I lean forward, pinning her with my gaze as I tell her, “Aria, that was before I held you. No matter how much you choose to hate me, I swear I’ll never let you go. You mean so much more to me than I would dare to admit to anyone.”