Crave For You

Gabriel

The dead are supposed to stay dead. Except Dante Salvatore was never among them.

No car crash left his burned body behind. It was all a sick staging by Bianchi whose corpse is rotting somewhere in a morgue now. The cops are puzzled as to what might have gone wrong. Two dead bodies materialized inside the house under their noses. They won't find the truth. I had the security footage wiped out after Isiah informed me that he had spotted a man walking out of the mansion.

That man was Dante Salvatore. And Dante Salvatore is mine.

If anyone got to him, it would be me.

I could have been among the non-believers, thinking that I was dreaming. But I knew that it was real. I made my men follow the car quietly before I followed them.

Every cell of my body protested when I turned away from Sofia's begging eyes. The tragedy of her life was mapped upon her face, churning pity in me which I blessedly had the strength to ignore. I told myself it was the hard drive I went for, only that and not the woman whose lover had returned from the dead.

I have lost her. She doesn't deserve my forgiveness or my mercy. She corrupted herself the moment she chose to betray me. She played me like a fool, doing the very thing people die for.

I couldn't kill her. Not her. Anyone but her. I didn't even have the strength to point my gun at her. It stayed in my car, my fingers hesitating even to bring it near her.

I am a disaster.

She is a chapter of my life which is over. It must be. I can't bring her back, I can't put her in danger again. She could live with her Dante—a life she had longed to live. Whatever is next for her, it is with the very ghost she is terrified of.

We all get over our fears. She will too. She will forget me soon. She will be safe.

Safe with him.

The thought is infuriating, causing my feet to storm into my room, marching for the liquor cabinet which calls to my chaotic thoughts.

I didn't want to fuck her. It was a moment of weakness, instigated by the presence of her lover who was participating in an act of voyeurism from the shadows. I wanted him to know that his girl wasn't the same as he had left her. He had to know that she had been claimed by me, that she melted for me just like she did for him. I wanted to imprint the image of her spread open for me, with my ring still on her finger, in his mind.

Fucking her was never the problem.

I need a drink to make sense of my life.

Snatching a tumbler from my collection and the grandest bottle of scotch, I let the dribbling liquid's sound provide the comfort I need until the brown liquid sloshes from the circular edge.

I sweep the glass up, sipping long gulps that sting my throat. My actions come to a rapid stop when a nauseously sweet scent assaults my nostrils.

I spin around with dizzying alertness, blinking at the intruder in my room.

My breath gets stuck in my throat.

Vera Valentino is standing by my bed, looking at a framed picture of Sofia and me on our engagement night. I only put the picture up for the show so that the maids could spread the gossip that we weren't just pretending. Her curious study of it only reminds me that I have to remove it.

Vera is no longer in her sickly costume. She is in a dress, the maroon shade of it contrasting with the pallor of her dry skin which signifies a close call to death. A pair of crutches support her frame as she stands on wobbly feet. Her hair is neatly brushed back, not one strand out of place.