The Devil I Loved

Chapter 1 : Five years later

Alexandria’s POV

I sat in the back of the black uber car, watching as the tall buildings sped past, but they never seemed to end.

Five years, that was how long it has been since I have last been in Los Angeles, and I'd be lying if i say i didnt miss it.

The city looked exactly the same as five years ago when my mother and I were exiled and my father imprisoned. But I wasn’t the same girl who had left.

I remember hoping back then that somehow, my father would come running after us. But he didn’t, and not because he didn’t want to, but because by then he had already been taken away by the police.

I remember how the tears of my mother filled the small hotel room we stayed in before leaving the country. She had spent the entire night calling and begging people who we thought were our friends to help us.

But no one did.

The same people who used to fill our homes with laughter and celebration and promised to be with us no matter what suddenly stopped answering our calls, and the ones who did came up with one excuse or the other before they finally stopped answering at all.

Friends became strangers, and business partners disappeared.

But i knew my father more than anyone, he was many things but he wasn’t a criminal.

London had given me five years to think about what I wanted to do when I would finally come back. The Torres family took everything from us. Our company, Our home, Our reputation. I spent the last five years planning my revenge.

I wanted them to feel what we felt, I wanted the Torres family to lose everything the same way my family did, I wanted to destroy them.

And most especially destroy the person behind why my father was arrested in the first place.

Him.

I stared at my reflection in the tinted car window, Long dark hair, tired eyes and a face that looked calm despite the storm brewing underneath it.

I had spent five years imagining this moment, and I was waiting for myself to feel nervous or to feel my heart racing but instead, I felt nothing.

I sighed and stared down at the photograph I'd been clutching in my hands. It was a photo of my dad, my mum and me. The only thing I'd kept from my life after we were exiled from the city. Before the chaos, before our whole life came crashing down.

I turned it around to read the message written in my dad’s handwriting, “Always protect your family”.

I wiped away the small tears that were beginning to form in my eyes.

“I promise to set you free dad” I said right as the car finally came to a halt and I looked outside the window.

I was finally here.

The place that was the reason for my return to L.A.

The Torres Empire.

For a moment, I couldn’t move, it was as if my whole body had frozen in place.

I kept staring at it, I hadn’t seen this place in years yet somehow, I still remember every part of it.

“Ma’am?” The uber driver called snapping me back to reality.

“Aren’t you going to get down?”

“Oh yes I'm sorry” I quickly reached into my pocket to hand him a twenty dollar bill “Keep the change”.

I opened the door and stepped out, cold air brushed against my skin.

I took a deep breath and made my way to the lobby keeping my head down, in case anyone recognized me, although I doubt they would.

Five years had changed a lot, including me.

I made it to the elevator and then pressed the button to take me to the main office floor.

Once the door opened, I stepped out and looked around, everything was exactly as I remembered it.

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the black key card I managed to steal many years ago and stared at it for a moment.

I hesitated a bit before inserting it into the card slot but, I had spent so long preparing for this, I wasn't going to turn back now.

After swiping the card, the door made a click sound and a green light flashed on the door knob before it opened. I held the knob and twisted it slightly then made my way into the room, making sure to close the door behind me.

I wasn’t sure what I would find today. Maybe the evidence I'm searching for doesn't even exist anymore. Maybe someone had destroyed every trace of what happened five years ago, but I kept searching. I couldn’t give up.

I couldn’t disappoint my father.

A few years ago, The Sinclair and The Torres families were actually business partners, they built their empires together and both empires were very successful, so my father used to bring me along with him when he came for business meetings at the Torres headquarters.

That was also when I first met him, Elijah Torres, he was tall, muscular and strikingly handsome, but he had a very cold demeanor to him. He glanced at me with the most uninterested eyes and quickly turned back to look at his father.

Nathaniel Torres shook hands with my father before they both went into the main office to discuss business deals, leaving me with the stone cold Elijah.

I turned to look at him, his eyebrows were a bit scrunched and his face had an unreadable expression to it.

“Hi” I said with the biggest smile on my face “My name is Alexandria but my friends call me Lexie, What’s yours?”

He turned his face a little and answered “Elijah” then went back to facing forward.

“Oh okay, how are you-“ I said trying to continue the conversation

“We don’t have to talk” He cut me off rudely and his face turned into more of a frown.

After that day, I ignored him whenever I saw him and he did the same to me.

Until the day we crossed paths at my favorite coffee shop, where I come to study and work. It turns out he did too. We started talking more after that and found out we actually had a lot of the same interests.

Slowly, we started meeting at other places to get to know each other more, and we fell in love. Or so I thought.

It all came crashing down the day my father got arrested, after a little digging I found out he was arrested for leaking confidential information and being involved in illegal financial dealings connected to the Torres family. And the evidence against him was presented to the police by Elijah.

The man I loved was the cause of my family’s ruin. I was nineteen, I trusted him, and I was such a fool.

I brushed my thoughts on the past aside and continued searching around the files for evidence. Something, anything that could prove my father is not the criminal he has been made out to be.

That was when I heard it. Fast sharp footsteps coming from the door, I already knew who it was.

“Alexandria?”

I turned around to face the man who had been occupying my thoughts for the past half decade.

Elijah Torres.