Page 42 of Obsessive Love (The King #1)

Chapter Forty-One

Kaleb

S ophia turns in my lap, staring at me in bewilderment with her round, oceanic eyes. Her blonde hair hangs around her face, tangled and messy from running her hands through it earlier.

"What don't I know?" she asks, breaking me out of my perusal of her.

"Sophia, where were you in March last year?" Jericho asks, watching my girl with a frown.

"She was in France, studying at university."

"So you weren't in London when-"

"How do you know that?" she asks, interrupting Jericho and watching me with a cautious gaze.

"Sophia, I've known where you've been almost every day for the past eighteen years. This isn't new information." I pat my hand against her leg and nod towards my brother. "Let's stop interrupting Jericho and let him talk about things."

"Eighteen years?" she shrieks, looking at me in what I think is surprise or maybe horror.

I sigh and throw my brother an apologetic glance before I cup her face in my hands, bringing it close to mine.

"Well, not technically. I've actually been watching you for eleven years, but I first saw you eighteen years ago on the fifteenth of July in 2004 at the park around the corner from your parent's house. We were both six at the time. You were wearing a colourful butterfly dress and I was sitting in a car, admiring you. You looked at me, for a very brief second and that was the first time I felt the connection between us. Since that day, I kept an eye on you. I watched you, helped protect you, and waited for you because I knew that one day I'd make you mine."

She gapes at me, evidently in shock at everything I've just told her.

I wink and press a chaste kiss against the tip of her adorable little button nose.

"Process it all later. Jericho has his story to tell you now."

She watches me for a few more moments, her glossy eyes boring into mine as if she's trying to decipher whether I'm telling the truth or not.

Jericho clears his throat, garnering her attention and she slowly shifts her body so that she's facing him and her back is resting against my chest.

"Well, whilst you were away at university last year, a huge scandal broke out across the whole of London because of some leaked information about my father from over a decade ago and this scandal was what solidified my and Kaleb's hatred for our father and was the reason we decided to set a plan into motion and eventually kill him."

Her breath hitches, and her hand grabs my leg. She tilts her body forward slightly, leaning closer to Jericho as he continues speaking.

"Somehow, someone had managed to get a hold of recordings from my father's personal office and they'd broadcasted the videos on a continuous loop across all of the billboards in London. In the videos, my father was seen plotting our mother's death. There were various conversations shown between him and two other men in his office where he admitted to forcing her to take a cacophony of drugs for years until she was hooked on them and took them willingly so that he had a good back story for when they eventually delivered him a large batch of heroin and caused her to overdose."

"He killed your mother?" Sophia asks, watching us both with tear-filled eyes.

"Yes, and we're certain he killed Aria as well."

"Who's Aria?"

Jericho looks away from her, busying himself with pouring each of us a drink.

I grip Sophia's hips, lifting her further up my lap so that I can wrap my arms around her and breathe in her scent, hoping to calm the rage starting to form inside me because of the topic of conversation.

"Aria was the love of my life," Jericho states, placing our drinks on the desk in front of us as he gulps down his own and pours another. "I met Aria at the age of thirteen. We became best friends and spent almost every single day together. At the age of sixteen, I admitted that I was in love with her. We spent every waking minute with each other, falling in love and living in our own little bubble."

He pauses to take a sip of his drink and wipes at his eyes as they glisten.

"My mother adored her as much as I did, but my father despised our relationship. He was constantly making me do extra training, trying to take time away from me so that I couldn't spend it with her. He thought separating us would work to his advantage, but it didn't. When I was training, she was here spending time with our mother and looking after Kaleb."

He takes a deep, shaky breath and looks toward the ceiling, trying to contain the onslaught of emotions I know are conjuring up inside of him.

"It's not your fault, brother."

"Yes, it is," he says, squeezing his eyes shut and allowing a tear to trickle down his cheek.

Sophia watches him with concern.

"My father realised after a few months that Aria was starting to fit into the family and he hated that she was spending so much time with our mother. Shortly after that was when our mother started getting sick."

A pang of hurt slashes across my chest as images of my mother filter into my mind. I was young when she died and thankfully, Jericho made sure I didn't see much of her when she was out of it on drugs, so most of my memories are good ones, where she was happy and healthy.

"Aria stayed by my side throughout it all. She used to look after Kaleb on the days that my father and I were out because she knew my mother couldn't. The whole situation had me falling more and more in love with her. She was perfect."

A brief, unusual smile spreads across his face before it vanishes again and he clears his throat.

"When my mother died, I knew it was from an overdose, but I thought she'd been terminally ill for the past few years and had overdosed on her medication. I didn't suspect my father had anything to do with it until almost a year later when Aria disappeared."

My hands instinctively run along the length of Sophia's body as I nuzzle my head against her back, reminding myself that she's here and she's safe.

I've heard this story before, and the last time I heard it, Sophia wasn't near me. Instead, she was out in the world by herself, and the story panicked me and made me feel uneasy.

At the ripe age of thirteen, I learnt that I wouldn't ever be able to have Sophia without the fear of losing her because of my father. Thankfully, I'd met Miles by then and he was already a genius with technology, so I roped him into helping me keep an eye on Sophia so that I could be with her from a distance and make sure she was safe and out of harm's way.

"I was losing my mind with worry after only a day or two without hearing anything from Aria. I'd contacted her family and all of our friends who we'd gone to school with, but no one knew anything and everyone was equally as worried as I was. I couldn't do work, I couldn't focus on training, I was completely useless because all I could think about was her. After a few more days had gone past, I was physically sick with worry."

He stops again, sniffling and wiping at his eyes.

Sophia leans forward to grab a drink from the desk, passing it to me, but I decline.

"Dad forced Jericho to come down for dinner, he said it'd make him feel better," I say, continuing the story for my brother. "When we were all sat there, my father decided to start talking about the situation. He said that it was a blessing in disguise that Aria was gone because all she was to Jericho was a distraction. Told us that if we ever found ourselves having genuine feelings for any woman, it was best to get rid of them so we could focus on building our empire."

Jericho scoffs at my words and shakes his head.

"He spoke about Aria as if she was dead. Everything he said was past tense. After that day, I started thinking about everything over the last few years and I started putting pieces together," Jericho says, standing from his chair and pacing back and forth. "I grew suspicious of my father when I realised he never seemed to question my mother's illness or her death, he never seemed upset by it or bothered about it, not unless you directly asked him a question about it anyway. Then, he'd lose his shit."

"That was when Jericho warned me about my father," I say, finally taking the drink from Sophia's hand. "Because of Jericho's suspicions and all the secrecy and lack of police presence around both deaths, we grew paranoid and I knew that I had to stay away from you and keep my distance."

Her saddened gaze turns to me and a crease forms between her brows as she sees my expression.

"We had no proof of anything until last year when those videos came out. Learning that he was behind our mother's death confirmed to us that he must've had a hand in what happened to Aria as well. Stupidly, we expected some form of justice, but once they got rid of the feed on the billboards, it was all swept under the rug. Our father made a speech about how the videos had been altered and it was all false information and that was that, nothing else was done about it."

"How is that possible?" she asks, leaning back against me and subconsciously rubbing her hand along my thigh.

"You know the pull that both of our families have over this city, dolcezza . All my father had to do was threaten and blackmail some higher-ups and it all went away."

She shakes her head in disgust.

"Once we realised nothing was going to be done about it, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We pretended with our father that the information didn't bother us and because he believes we're cold-hearted monsters like he is, it was easy to convince him that we were okay with it. Realistically, we've been tracking down everyone that we believe was involved with helping him with our mother's death and also Aria's," I tell her.

"As much as I'd love to continue telling this story and filling in all the blanks, we all need to get a move on," Jericho says in his usual gruff tone, retaking his seat behind his desk. "Sophia, speak to your father and brother, please. Tell them I will meet them at your father's house in a few hours. Be sure to tell them to keep it discreet. We can't have anyone knowing about this."

She nods her head, standing from my lap and immediately taking her phone from her pocket.

"Kaleb, maybe you should contact Leo. You two both have similar psychotic thoughts, but he's more logical than you are. You can work together with a plan for after this weekend."

I chuckle and shake my head as if I disagree with what he's said, even though I don't.

"Sophia, I'll arrange for you to go shopping tomorrow to get a dress for the auction. Jaylen and Kaleb will be with you, just in case I can't reach Brody Garcia before then. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to have my office to myself so I can try to resolve all of our issues."