Chapter 101
Leon’s POV
No. No. No. No.
This couldn’t be. It wasn’t real. This was a joke. Yes, that’s what it was. A fucking joke. But it wasn’t funny. It fucking wasn’t funny.
The screen of my phone was a shard of glass in my eye. It burned. Every pixel was a tiny needle of white-hot rage stabbing directly into my brain. I had been staring at it for an hour, maybe two. Time had dissolved into a thick, acidic sludge in the pit of my stomach. I felt like throwing up. Fuck!
I ran to the bathroom and emptied the contents in my stomach. And there was nothing. Fuck this shit.
The picture. Just remembering it made me want to throw up in anger once more. I saw red.
That bastard, Kaeleen fucking Sterling, shirtless and smug, with the morning light glinting off his over-muscled torso like he was some kind of fucking god. His smile was the worst part. It wasn’t a press smile or a polite smile. It was a deep, genuine, possessive smile. The smile of a man who had woken up completely satisfied.
He fucked her. I know he did. And Astrid was a good fucking lay. I’m sure he swan in that fucking sweet pussy and being the whore she was she leg him. I know she did.
But even at that, it wasn’t his face that held my gaze. It was the background. Over his shoulder, hanging like a trophy on the wall of his bedroom, was the drawing. Her drawing. I knew her style as well as I knew the back of my own hand. I had cultivated it, after all. The delicate cross-hatching, the impossible softness she achieved with charcoal, the way she captured not just a face but the very soul behind it. And the soul she had captured was Kaeleen’s.
I had made sure no one ever saw her drawings and now he was posting it for the whole fucking world to see. He should treasure her drawings and keep them for himself. If people found out she was fucking perfect then they will want her. I protected her but he couldn’t.
As if posting the picture wasn’t enough, he had a caption. The words that were a declaration of war to me.
`Best Birthday Ever thanks to wifey.`
Wifey. I stared at the word until I saw red. Wifey? She wants his wife. She didn’t belong to him. She was mine. She was fucking mine. I owned her.
Astrid. My Astrid.
He said she was his wifey. The word was disgusting. He was disgusting.
My hand clenched, and the phone creaked under the pressure, the screen threatening to shatter. I wanted to throw it, to watch it explode against the far wall, to see the image of Kaeleen’s smug face splinter into a thousand pieces. But I couldn’t. It was the only connection I had to her right now, this digital window into the life she was living without me. A better life. The thought was bile in my throat.
She looked good. But she has always looked good. I’d seen the few photos from the party last night. That emerald dress clinging to her curves, her hair falling in soft waves, a confident smile on her face. She looked... powerful. Alive. It was a look I had never seen on her when she was with me. When she was with me, she was a beautiful, broken bird. Fragile, dependent, her eyes always searching mine for approval, for safety. I had been her savior, her entire world. And she had been my perfect, pliable creation.
She looked better when she was with me. Now she was just doing her own thing. She wasn’t supposed to do her own thing. She was supposed to be crafted. She was supposed to be molded. She had been perfect when she was with me and now, yes she still looked beautiful but she wasn’t mine. She wasn’t perfect. If this was what she wanted then I could give it to her. But she’ll be mine.
Now, she looked like a queen when she wasn’t a fucking queen. She was a perfect bird. Mine. She was fucking mine.
A soft knock on the office door broke my thoughts. "Leon?"
Clara’s voice. Soft, hesitant. So much like her sister’s, yet completely lacking the fire I had tried so hard to extinguish in Astrid.
"What?" I snarled, not looking away from the phone.
"Get out," I said, my voice dangerously low.
She flinched. "But you need to eat..."
I slammed my hand down on the mahogany desk, the sound cracking through the room like a gunshot. The whiskey glass beside my hand jumped, sloshing amber liquid onto a stack of papers. "I said, GET OUT!" I roared, rising to my feet. "What good are you? I brought you here for one reason! One! To be leverage. To be the anchor that kept your sister tied to this pack, to me. But you couldn’t even do that. She ran. Escaped with that fucking bastard, Shadow or whatever his name is, right under your fucking nose, and you were utterly useless. You are a constant, walking reminder of my failure!"
"I was only gone for a few hours and you couldn’t do anything! She left you! You claimed she would always stay as long as you were here. You claimed it but she left you behind!"
Tears welled in her eyes. She trembled, the tray rattling in her hands. "I’m sorry," she whispered.
"Sorry doesn’t bring her back!" I stalked around the desk, my shadow falling over her. She cowered like the pathetic creature she was. "I don’t want your food. I don’t want to see your face. Your presence here is an insult. Now get out of my sight before I do something we’ll both regret."
She didn’t need to be told again. She practically fled, leaving the tray on a console table by the door before scurrying away like the rat she was. The door clicked shut, and I was alone again with my rage.