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“I watch her to keep her safe,” he insisted with venom in his tone. “You should try being more like me. Maybe she would have said yes to your sad fucking proposal.”
Blinded by rage, I gripped his collar and pressed my nose to his, breathing through my mouth. “Just because you have a crush doesn’t mean I should act like you and swoon every time she walks into a room. I’m the man of this family, little brother. If you want to play house with our queen, go right the fuck ahead. No one is stopping you. But you need to stay the fuck out of my business with her.”
“Your business with her isourbusiness.” He peeled my hand from his collar, his blue eyes wide and full of rage. “This is a partnership. We’re all in this together. So start fucking acting like it.”
Marcello took a few steps back and fixed his tie, pulling on the fabric as his focus shifted back to Alex, one floor below us in her bedroom.
She stood between the open French doors in a pair of silky pajama shorts and a matching top. She wore a similar pair every night.
“Do yourself a favor and fuck her.” He tugged at the ends of his black hair that was always messy from him pulling on it. He licked his lips as our eyes met. “She was worth the wait. Trust me, you’ll never think about anything else again.”
Ignoring him, I stared at Alex on the screen. Her long blonde curls trailed midway down her back, moving as she swayed her hips. She was fucking perfect.
Maybe Marcello was right.
I’d been dreaming about splitting her open with my cock for years. Envisioned every moan I would steal from her pouty lips as she took all of me. Like a piece of art, I wanted to preserve her so no one could touch her.
I waited too long to have her.
My brothers had already defiled her, ruined the pretty image of her in my mind. But I had more important things to think about other than sex—like saving her life.
At least she was safe.
For now.
We were home.Safe. That was a close call with Alex, too fucking close for comfort.
I dropped my bag on the floor beside my closet and sat on the mattress, slumping forward on my elbows. Damian walked into the room a few seconds later. He hadn’t spoken a word about Alex or the attack at The Mansion. It was business as usual for us, but this time it was different.
We could have lost her.
I knew without communicating that he was just as fucked up over it as me. He dropped to the bed beside me, his hand on my knee. I covered his hand with mine. We didn’t look at each other, didn’t say a word. Just stared at the black and white wall as I hummed the tune to Alex’s song.
Damian liked when I played the piano for him. It soothed him, calmed him down when he was out of control.
He was okay… for now.
But I could tell he was close to snapping again. It was only a matter of time. His condition was incurable, a sickness he would live with for the rest of his life. Stress seemed to exacerbate the problem. If we had lost Alex, he would have gone full-blown psychopath.
“Bash,” he said after twenty minutes of listening to me hum Alex’s piano sonata on repeat.
I tapped my fingers over top of his, my gaze on the dark walls. “Yeah, D?”
“You were right about her.” He groaned as he shifted his weight on the mattress to look at me. “She’s good for us.”
I turned my head to look into his green eyes that were so damn dark they looked like emeralds. “I told you she’s a keeper.”
“Yeah, but…” He shoved his hand through his black hair. “She’ll never accept me. Not the way you do. As soon as she sees what I’mreallylike, I’m going to chase her away.”
I grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at me. “Listen to me, D. You’re not a bad person. You just do bad things that are out of your control. If you were bad, would I still be here?” He shrugged, and I continued, “Do you think Dad would have put up with your sickness? Or our brothers? They didn’t have to take us in when we were kids.”
“Dad had his reasons for adopting us.” He curled his hand into a fist on the mattress, teeth gritted. “It wasn’t completely out of the kindness of his heart.”
I lowered my hands to his biceps and held him close. My touch always seemed to quell his dark emotions. We had a special bond no one would ever understand.
I did things for him—and with him—that neither of our brothers would do. The few times they had caught us in the act, they looked down-right disgusted, but never said a word about it. We all had our demons to feed.
“What if she sees what Eva saw in me?” He pressed his lips into a thin line, staring out the patio doors. “She hated me. If she had lived, Dad wouldn’t have kept us.”
