Female Novel
Chapter 23 (Marco)
I go to my journal and pick it up and take it across the room where I move the rug on the wall aside andopen my safe, placing the book in a more secure venue. I ignore Aliyana’s tantrum, because that iswhat it is, a tantrum.
This isn’t about the book; I see it now. It is about us and it’s time we talked.
“I love Camilla, Aliyana, but I’m not in love with her.” My voice is not raised in my confession, nor is itchanged by the truth. Because for Aliyana this is news to her, but for me, I have said those words in myhead every single day I laid my cursed soul in her path. Every time I stepped foot in her home I havesaid those words in my head.
She turns around and I see her tear-stricken face, “I don’t want to hear it, I just want to leave and staygone, please Marco.”novelbin
“No, hear me out, if you still want to leave then go.”
“Leaving you when I did and how I did was the only option there was. Marrying me comes with a headyprice tag.”
“Mischa?” She asks, and I nod as she moves into the room, further away from the door.
“Yes, and no. I come with an early death sentence. I have a lot of enemies, many of them. When I sawyou on that rooftop you stole a piece of me, I didn’t want to give to anyone, and every day since, youtook more. But like you, I made Ren promises, and one of them was leaving you to live your life.”
“What? But I only met you that day, and Ren died that night.” She comes closer to me and her eyes areso confused but wary.
“It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen you. I knew you from the time you were a kid. Never meeting you inperson was for my sake of mind.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. But I didn’t want to put a child’s face to the woman who would potentially be my wife.”
“But you chose Camilla.”
“Yes, it is a complicated situation. My father wants me to have an heir and Camilla is one I initiallychose to give me that, but I changed my mind a bit too late. My father agreed to Dante Moretti’s termsand the day I approached him about everything, it was too late.”
“So, you chose to hurt me instead? Do you have any idea how I felt?”
“I’m ending our engagement. I want to be with you, I’ll marry you in secret and keep you here just likeElladio did with his wife.” A tear leaks from her eyes and she looks behind me at the painting of thebeautiful woman who once graced this library. A woman many don’t know about because herhusband’s love, became her prison, and her life an obsession.
“I thought you hated me, I convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough, it took me months to get overyou and now you want to marry me?”
I walk closer to her and graze her arm which she moves and turns away from me.
“I loved you Marco, I begged you, you left me without a backward glance to even say goodbye, you leftme there, then you announced to the entire world that your marrying Camilla. Now what? You finallysee the bitch she is so decided that you’ll just have me? Do you honestly think I am just going to forgiveyou and forget what you did? How you made me feel?”
“You are mine dammit, you have always belonged to me,” I walk behind her and wrap my arm frombehind her waist, “I’m sorry, so sorry, I was not strong enough to stand up for both of us, to fight, I’msorry Aliyana.”
Her knees give out and I willingly go with her to the floor as she sobs. I hurt her, and I’m hurting too, butspending this time with Aliyana so close to me and not having her be mine, has made me realize that Iwant her and my brother is right, I am not just a Catelli and Elladio DeMarco found a way to be with hiswife and keep her safe, I can do the same.
“I love you Aliyana, you can’t leave me, never again.”
I whisper things in her ear as she quietens down.
“My father will never allow two of his children to be married to a Catelli, don’t you get it? Your actionsdoomed up.”
“I will find a way, Aliyana, your father is a man, like all of us.” I will kill him if I have to, she will hate mebut eventually, she will learn to live with it. She lifts herself up from her position and looks at me withher red-streaked face, and glistening green eyes, and I swear my soul leaves my body in hope oftouching hers.
“Kiss me,” She utters and I hold on to her neck, knowing if she knew the lengths I would go to have her,she will run.
“Ti Amo, Mezzosangue,” I love you, half-blood. I confess my biggest sin before my mouth descends onhers.
I kiss her like I should have done all these months, I kiss like I have not kissed another and she kissesme back, like she is mine, because she is.
Aliyana’s hands grab onto my shoulders as mine goes to her button. She slips her blouse over herhead as her naked flesh, a sight for a monster like me remains trapped in a white bra, begging to bereleased. I hold on to her, feeling her pulse race underneath my fingers.
This what it feels like to have your heart in your fingers. Fragile, yet so powerful it can stop yourexistence like that. Her chest expands, as she watches me with those half-mast eyes.
It is on this day, a cold Sunday in 2012, 2 days before Christmas that I make a vow, that AliyanaCapello will be my wife and I will kill anyone who stands in my way.
"Take what is yours, Marco." I stare into her soulful green eyes, my pulse racing with adrenaline. Mycock hard, and my mind fuzzy from the thought of her. From the promise of her intoxicating smell andhypnotist eyes that stare at me, like I am her fucking god, and that is what makes her the mostdangerous person in the world. Because I will start wars, and risk everything for her.
“Can you feel it? This.?” I ask her.
She tilts her neck, as a tear slides down her cheek, “I was made to be yours.”
“Yes.”