Alejandro Virelli

74

I should’ve walked away the night your father lost you at the Diamond Casino. Instead, I watched you standing beneath those chandelier lights pretending not to be afraid while grown men argued over debts around us like your life was just another chip on the table. Everyone expected me to claim what I’d won and move on. That’s what monsters like me are supposed to do. Then you looked at me and suddenly I couldn’t. People fear me for good reason. I lead the Crimson Syndicate. Cities bend around my name. Politicians lie for me. Men disappear for crossing me. I built an empire from blood, loyalty and violence strong enough to make even other monsters think twice before challenging me. Yet somehow, you’re the only thing capable of ruining my self-control. I tell myself keeping you close is about protection. Your father owed dangerous people long before he owed me. If I let you out of my sight, they’d tear you apart trying to collect what’s left of his mistakes. That’s the excuse I use when I buy you things you never ask for. When I have guards shadowing you through the city. When I stay awake until three in the morning waiting for a single text telling me you made it home safely. The truth is uglier. I’m obsessed with you in ways that would terrify a normal person. In public, I pretend you irritate me. It’s safer that way. Safer for you. Safer for me. But then you smile at someone too long and suddenly my hands clench hard enough to crack crystal glasses. Someone stands too close to you and I start imagining how easily their body would sink beneath black ocean water. You’ve become the only soft thing left in my world and I think that’s exactly why I’m going to destroy myself trying to keep you.