Owned By The Psychotic Billionaire (Mafia BL)

PAST ORION’S POV

Every time I walk down a hallway, every time I step out of a car, I reflexively look behind my left shoulder, expecting to catch a glimpse of those sharp brown eyes staring at me with pure hatred and killing intent.

He is never there.

At night, I lie awake in my quiet apartment, staring at the blank ceiling. I think about that kiss in the janitor’s locker. The only kiss of my life. The first kiss of my life.

I cannot sleep. How am I supposed to sleep when my skin feels like it is on fire?

A heavy, suffocating warmth begins to build in my chest every time his face flashes behind my eyelids. It feels like a thick, burning sludge rolling around in my lungs, moving over and over and over again until my ribs ache from the pressure.

It leaves me with this terrifying, indescribable craving.

I want to reach out, stick my hand straight through Adrien’s chest, wrap my fingers around his beating heart, and pull it out just so I can keep it in my hands forever. Where it is safe. Where he can never walk away from me again.

When I am nineteen, I meet Marcella and Luca.

They are brought before me in a cold, dim basement after my men pull them out of a hideout. I’m supposed to take their lives to make a point. Whatever point it is, I don’t remember.

Luca is kneeling on the floor at my feet, trembling violently, begging me for mercy. He is terrified, pleading for his life and the life of his sister.

I stand above him, looking down.

As Luca speaks, a faint glint of light catches his eyes. He sparkles.

My chest tightens. Suddenly, all I can see is the way Adrien always sparkles in my vision. The way Adrien seems to take up every inch of space in a room the second he steps into it. The way I can never, no matter how hard I try, look away from him.

I look at Luca kneeling in the dirt.

For the first time in my life, a tiny sliver of warmth touches the cold black void of my heart. I spare them. It is probably the first time I have ever spared anyone out of pure sentiment.

I pull them off the ground and bring them directly into my group.

By the time I turn twenty, my syndicate has taken deep root in the city. I need a front, a stronghold worthy of what I am building.

I purchase a massive, high-end luxury hotel in the heart of the commercial district. I name it I PROIKA SOU.

It means Your Dowry in Greek.

Because that is what this is. It is a gift. It will be one of the many things I present to Adrien when he comes home to me.

Late one night, I stand across the street, looking up at the glowing glass facade of the hotel. A cold wind blows through my hair, but my thoughts are warm.

A dowry, I think to myself. A dowry means marriage.

Does this mean I want to marry Adrien?

The thought should feel strange, but it doesn’t. I imagine standing outside this very entrance one day, leaning against a car, looking over at Adrien and asking him, ”What do you think of this?”

I know Adrien. He would never look at the grand glass building and say, ”It’s nice.” He would never give me that satisfaction. He would narrow his eyes, give me that sharp, unamused glare, and mutter, ”Why the hell is he asking me this?”

I smile softly to myself in the dark. He does not need to understand it right now. All he needs to do is see it. He needs to see that even while he was gone, even while the world was grey, I was always thinking of him.

Through all these years, my interactions with the Vassilis family have been almost non-existent. Half-hearted messages passed through third parties, brief phone calls I hang up on halfway through.

Lady Dimitra Vassilis is furious about my extracurricular activities in the underworld. And I am utterly miserable with life. So I suppose we both have things to be unhappy about.

I do not care about Leon at all. If he wants the Vassilis family name, he can have it. It has nothing to do with me anymore. I hope inheriting the mantle forces that little wimp to finally do something with his life, but even if it doesn’t, it makes no difference to me.

Then there is Louise.

I am twenty-one now, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with Louise.

She is my girlfriend on paper. I chose her for whatever reason I did at that time, but I do not care about her. I feel like I could marry her if the world demanded it, but when I sit alone in my room, I cannot for the life of me understand why I would ever do such a thing.

I enter long periods of intense introspection. They hit me randomly. I will be sitting at a table, surrounded by plans and weapons, and suddenly my mind will drift away into the fog.

Niko gets so tired of it. He hates when I do it. I will simply vanish for weeks at a time, leaving him to run the group, only to return with a strange, manic glint in my eyes.

This time, I disappear entirely. I catch a flight and go all the way to Guatemala.

I cannot describe the country to anyone. I do not know how I ended up there, what streets I walked, or what the buildings looked like. I lived like a phantom. I ate, I slept, I pissed. Everything was done mechanically, like a machine running on the lowest battery.

My mind was consumed by a single, agonizing thought.

What if I go look for Adrien? What if he somehow walks back into my orbit, steps into my room, and sees that I am still dating Louise?

I wonder how Adrien would feel about it. Would he be angry? Would he be jealous?

And then, as I sit on a dirty wooden bench somewhere in the Guatemalan heat, a terrible realization hits me.

What if Adrien does not feel anything at all?