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ALLURA
I’m walking through my house. It’s quiet and late, just the way I like it. I think my parents went to some sort of event. Honestly, I don’t care. I’m just happy I’m alone. It’s my favorite time, and something I rarely get. Sure, some of my father’s men are watching the house from outside, and the place practically glows with security cameras, but that’s okay. I can live with being kept an eye on as long as I don’t have to be around anyone.
It might sound lonely, and if I had a normal life, maybe I’d like to be more social. I don’t have a normal life, though. I’m a mafia boss’s daughter who needs constant protection from other families. Sometimes, I wish I had someone to protect me from my own family. I used to have that, back when I was friends with Ryder, Reece, and Blaise, but that no longer exists for me. In fact, thinking about them causes anger to simmer in my veins.
Fucking bastards.
Not only have they been spreading all sorts of rumors about me, but they’ve also convinced everyone not to be friends with me. Well, except for Jessa. She doesn’t seem to care. I like her. She’s nice, and that’s something I’m not used to.
I would’ve had her over tonight, but she’s on a trip with her mother. I’m kind of jealous she gets to do stuff like that, and that her mother wants to do stuff with her.
I’m sinking into my pity party as I walk down the wide hall toward the kitchen. I have a pair of plaid pajama shorts on, a tank top, and my hair is pulled up into a messy bun. The marble floor is cold against my bare feet, and I think the thermostat might need to be turned up because it’s freezing.
Deciding to do that, I make a right and head toward the elevator entrance. When I near the area, the doors open, startling me until I see who it is. Then I relax.
“Hey,” I start to greet him, but something about how he looks at me makes my smile falter. Something is wrong. Something bad. I need to run—
I gasp for air, as my eyelids fly open, but I’m so overwhelmed with emotions that I can’t get my vision to focus on my surroundings.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
A hand touches my face. “Baby, just breathe.” It’s warm and soothing. So is the voice.
“Just breathe,” they say. “Come on; just take a breath. Nothing’s wrong.”
I know who that is.
My safety.
I haven’t felt it for years.
I blink a few times, and Blaise’s gorgeous face gradually comes into focus; his inky black hair that hangs in his stormy gray eyes that are surrounded by the darkest and longest eyelashes, his full lips, the piercing in his brow. I’m so out of it that, for a moment, I think I’m fifteen years old again and we’re still friends. That I can tell him about my dream. That he’ll make me feel better.
But then it all waves over me—all the things he did, all the stuff that’s happened over the last few years. And now he’s in my bed calling me baby? What the actual fuck?
I jerk back from him as I scramble to sit up. “What’re you doing?” I frantically peer around, trying to piece together what the hell is going on.
I’m in my bedroom, in my bed, and I have on a black skirt and velvet top …
Sluggishly, it comes back.
The party.
Getting trashed.
Reece finding out I was there.
Stumbling into my house.
Ryder helping me back to my room.
After that, things become a bit blurry.
A flash of hurt flickers in Blaise’s eyes as I scoot farther away from him.
