Page 221 of Ruin Me With Lies

“I know it’s been bugging you,” Gio says, “but if it’s government property, what’s there to worry about?”

“How can we call this city ours if we don’t know what’s going on in it?”I press.“You’re fine not knowing if it’s terrorists laying bombs underground, waiting to level us to the damn ground?”

Gio guffaws like I’m being absurd.“You’re always so damn dramatic.And paranoid.You should write a book.”

Cora walks in and offers us fruit cups.

“Your spirit is better these days,” she says, forcing a slice of mango into my mouth.“Much happier.Less mopey-dopey jilted-lover.I like when the handsome rude man visits for chess.Your mood is always better.”

As Cora walks out, Gio smirks and arches a brow at me.

“I haven’t been ‘mopey-dopey,’” I grit out.

The fucker just keeps smirking.

I throw a piece of fruit at him.“Shut your ugly ass up.”

He throws his head back, laughing.“I haven’t said anything!”

“Have Sanders round up a team for tonight,” I tell him.“Think it’s time we welcomed our new friends to the city.”

~

OKAY, I’LL ADMIT, Ihavebeen a mopey, jilted lover.

But notallthe time.

Maybe for a bit, after the one-year agreement was up.

The moment it ended, I didn’t wait a single day to reach out to Soraya.But got disconnected lines and bounced messages instead.

Which led to me getting on a plane to Switzerland as fast as possible.Problem was, once I landed, I had no damn clue how to find ThreeFours.

So I went to Zytglogge.Every day.For two weeks straight.Stood under that damn clock tower and waited.

She never showed.

When I reached out to JB and Pavlov, they both insisted on staying out of “our affairs.”Funny that, considering the separation was entirelytheirdoing.

I stuck it out in Switzerland for a full month before finally dragging my pathetic ass home.Reluctantly.Dejectedly.

The weeks that followed were rough.I swung between being depressingly morose to irrational fury.No one wanted to be around me.Can’t blame them.I didn’t want to be around me either.

But eventually, I snapped out of it.I know Soraya.I know how she feels about me.Wherever she was, she was watching.And she didn’t fall for the glum, self-pitying version of me.

She fell forme.The real me.

All that painful dejection that was growing like a goddamn tumor on my heart?I ruthlessly excised the fuck out of it and burned it to ashes with the flames of the white-hot rage I’d been suppressing.

And then I went back to being the magnificent fucking creature I am.

Let her miss me.Let her watch from whatever hidden place she’s tucked herself into and feel it.

I’m Stefano fucking Castello.And my name comes with a reputation.Savage.Cruel.Business savvy.Egotistical.Deplorable.Narcissistic.If it’s bad, my name’s right there, bold and underlined.And I wear it like a crown.

But of all the things I am, I’mhers.

If I was created for any reason at all, it’s to love her.I feel it in my bones, in my blood, in the deepest part of my wretched black soul.