Page 234 of The Wicked

Arturo Garza had died, and the manor was the only property he hadn’t sold off or turned into an asset. It was registered under a privately financed institution tasked with maintaining the building, employing people to clean it, and organizing tours and excursions for little children. The manor would be the first place to look if the original painting could be anywhere.

How I never thought of this before was way beyond me, and I was to blame for that.

I hadn’t been focused lately, going off track, making stupid slip-ups like getting kidnapped, and getting myself involved with Elio.

At the thought of Elio, I couldn’t help but sigh.

It was no secret that I found him fascinating, a well-sculptured challenge I wanted to win. A challenge that gave me complicated feelings every night. One that had me become as crazy as acknowledging that I might have feelings for him.

I raked my fingers through my hair, pacing around and counting the minutes in my head.

Caring for the victim of my effortless teasing wasn’t part of the challenge. Liking how he talked and walked wasn’t part of the challenge; staring at him from afar when he wasn’t fucking looking was not written in the content list for the so-called fucking challenge.

Maybe my worry didn’t entirely stem from the fact that he knew more about me than Street did at the moment; perhaps it came from the fact that I allowed us to get so far with this thing between us, and now it was most likely over.

I would be delusional if I denied the recent shift in the dynamic between us. How he had grown comfortable in my presence, the way he would look at me, without hate or irritation, but like a person he was interested in. A person he could tolerate. A person he liked—as he’d confessed the other day—a confession I had ignored because it meant something I didn’t want.

Never in a million years, strapped to that chair, fate slightly uncertain, a bullet in my shoulder and a plea on my lips, did I think a day would come when, with a single thought of Elio, I would feel his gaze on me, his fingers on—and inside—me, his lips marking me and creating still purplish pleasure bruises on my body.

But here we were; my brain had been fucked.

My thoughts had gone soft on a man I wasn’t even attracted to the first time I saw him. A man who was in the category of men I judged at first fucking glance, a man who could walk in here any minute with a gun and my life in his hands.

I groaned, feeling that sharp jolt in my stomach with the last thought.

Still…

Elio Marino was like a shiny new toy that I didn’t like but was stuck with and had to eventually…likebecause, despite his similarities to the previous toys I had discarded, he was built a bit differently.

Maybe that was why I understood him when he told me that I complemented his being. He complemented mine too, and it freaked me out in more ways than one.

It was a new feeling.

I didn’t like to be shoved into the unknown. Being in the unknown meant being uncertain, and uncertain situations made me uncomfortable.

I should be somewhat glad Elio would be angry enough to call things off between us, but I wasn’t. I didn’t like the idea of me never getting to tease him, or touch him, or listen to his sarcasm, learning from it, and having him look at me in a way that made me feel different. In a way that showed me he cared… like really cared… about me.

I despised these feelings, but I couldn’t help feeling them.

He had given us the payment and passports to leave. It only meant he had found the original painting or knew where it was; either that or he just wanted to get Street out of his hair after this mess we had caused.

I’d be fucking damned if I let him push me out of the narrative now that things were finally beginning to make sense.

I sat on the small bed again for about thirty minutes before standing up and pacing for another thirty minutes… four and a half hours, five hours… six… seven… eight.

In those hours, my nerves flew right through the roof; I was rocking on my feet, leaning on the wall, groaning, cursing, biting my lips till they were swollen.

Waiting… waiting and fucking waiting like an animal praying for a knife to reach its neck to end the torture of waiting.

I hated the silence. It made me think unnecessary thoughts, ones mostly centered on him—the last time we were together, how he had let me see him, help him.

Countless times, he’d trusted me with his feelings because he felt like there was no harm in doing that. He knew I wouldn’t judge. But I knew he was primarily free with that part of himself because he wanted me to be free too.

But that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

My trust issues ran deeper than I could even fucking reach. In the world I grew up in, it was safer to hold on to your trust, never hand it to anyone else because they would most definitely break it, and then use you to the point that you would lose yourself; believing anything they said, you would mistake manipulation for love, you would be gaslit every second of every singleday into thinking everything that went wrong in your life was your fault.

I had been naïve.