Sophia
Denial.
I couldn't look at him. I couldn't even think about him without feeling my stomach twist into something ugly.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard his voice.
"I love you."
Those words... they were supposed to be impossible. Not from him. Not from Ricci Russo.
But he said it. And now I couldn't unhear it, couldn't pretend he didn't. Couldn't pretend it didn't make something in me ache in a way it shouldn't.
I should have felt victorious, maybe. Like I won. That I got close enough to make the king fall.
But all I felt was guilt.
I knew things about him now. Real things.
The boy is under all that violence. The man who still woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and angry and lost. The man who held me like I wasn't poisonous.
And now I didn't know how to face
