"I'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck."

Arabella Karve The garden is beautiful, beautiful in a silent and peaceful way, like a lingering remnant of a kiss from heaven on earth.

Beauty like this is one of the few reasons I believe in something better than us, something more powerful. I find it impossible to accept that a world this beautiful was created merely by chance.

Earth was too beautiful before the birth of the fallen angels we are, before we tore it apart and gutted it where we stood.

I am thankful there are still a few strokes of the world as it once was that have been left preserved, so that we can remember the beauty we are capable of. Along with the ruin.

The white roses are blooming finally, and a smile blooms across my face with them. White roses remind me of all that is good in our world, the color a reminder of the purity and peace and innocence that we possess, but can no longer see.

But then—red. Dark, all-consuming red.

It drips slowly from above me, so perfect and steady, landing amongst the labyrinth of rose petals that seem to be the only thread of hope I am clinging onto. It's such a soft and silent pattern, I almost wonder if I'm crying the crimson color. Or maybe the open sky above me is crying—crying for the loss of its beauty because of men, just like I sometimes do.

My hand moves without addressing my brain, a single finger reaching out to touch the tears. The ruby liquid stains the pale skin, embedding itself into the ravines of my fingerprint. I bring it to my nose without thinking, the familiar pang of iron greeting my senses like an all too familiar friend. Blood.

A scream is the next thing that greets me. It takes a couple seconds for me to realize it was mine.

My body moves without thinking, flipping around and ready to run. Run, run, and run until I never have to see that color again. But my feet are frozen in place the second I turn around, the woman standing behind me like a silent force on my bones.

Tara's washed out face stares right back at me, blood streaming from the carmine cavity hollowed out in the center of her forehead.

I can't move.

Seeing her face that was once so lovely—once so full of life—now like this...that night comes back to me. The night that I've tried so, so hard to forget.

And the worst part is that I have to live knowing it was my fault. And that I died too—a piece of me at least. A piece that no one else will ever be able to see, not until I deal with all the other pieces refusing to give up.

So now I live in eternal limbo, left to mourn both my best friend, and me.

She looks so scared, her gaze wavering as she stares down at her fingers, each one stained with the blood from that hauntingly familiar bullet wound.

She's dead. She's dead. She's dead.

"It's your fault, Ara." She croaks out, her voice sounding as though it hasn't been used in years. Like it has been rotting away under the cold, hard ground, her body buried with the part of me that was buried with her.

She looks so terrified, and heartbroken, and angry—angry at me.

"I am so sorry," I whisper, my voice splintering and shattering on the bloodied stone. Guilt chokes me, shoving itself down my throat and making a permanent home in my rigid bones.

"It's all your fault!" She suddenly screams, the excruciating sound like a force of nature, propelling me to the merciless floor. Blood pools from her thin lips, the skin split in small gorges and almost matching the color of the vitality roses behind me.

She would never say this, I realize. Tara would never say this. The thought courses through me, and it dawns upon me that it's happening again. It's a nightmare—I'm having a nightmare.

"This isn't real!" I sob against the floor that I can't seem to get off of, pushing my trembling hands against my ears. I block out her screams, block out the sound of her voice. "It didn't happen like this!" I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing my hands desperately harder against my ears and letting the hurt become a welcoming distraction.

"Wake up," there is a soft whisper in the back of my mind. The sound causes the moment my mind forces me to relive again and again to fade from around me, melting away like some sort of wax reality being held to a flame.

Sobs wrack my body, my lungs and ribs aching. I don't want to do this anymore.

"Wake up."

My eyes snap open.

I am in my bed once again, sweat and tears coating my sticky skin. I gasp through ragged breaths, coughing over and over again to try and get air through the tightening in my chest.

Tara's words echo in my mind, becoming a persistent ringing in my ears that drowns out everything else in the world.

I struggle to crawl out of bed, needing out of the twisted sheets entangling my body and trapping me just like the memories I'm forced to remember. Without realizing, I reach the edge of my bed and tumble over the side, the tangled mess wrapped around me restricting any movement. I hit the floor, scrambling away from the messy bed.

Something falls to the floor as my back hits the dresser. I don't even bother to look over at what it could possibly be, the fresh memory of that night sinking its cold claws into my soul, and drawing panic in the form of blood.

Tremors wrack my body as I slowly close my eyes, tilting my head back to rest against the wardrobe. I try, and fail, to block out the images of Tara, seared forever in my mind. Taking deep breaths again and again, I try to repeat the steady pattern of counting to three before exhaling.

You can do this, Ara. You have dealt with these by yourself before, and you can do it again.

It feels like forever before I can think with at least a sliver of clarity, swaying as I push to my feet with the help of the dresser behind me.

It's pathetic the way I stumble across my messy bedroom, avoiding the mirror perched atop the vanity across from me at all costs. I'm not ready to see the reflection waiting for me, not ready to see the girl who wears the skin I call my own.

The cold tile of the bathroom floor tethers me to reality, the sound of steaming water sating the bathtub filling the room. I release my grip from the knob once it's filled, then peel off my clothes, stained and filthy from the night before.

I don't think any washer could fix whatever I was able to do to the pieces of cloth in a single night. The bath is heavenly feeling, I think, slipping into the peace and warmth it's able to provide. I scrub my body raw with honey scented soap I found in the back of my drawer, washing off the grime and dried blood clinging to my skin.

The water envelops my weight, but does nothing to help soothe the excruciating pain from the damage on my throat.

The only thing keeping the ache from pushing me completely over the edge is the knowledge that, at least, I'm paying for some of the things I've done—the tragedy I've caused.

After spending too long avoiding the world outside of my bathroom, I finally manage to pull myself out of the water that turned cold at some point when I was lost in my own tangled thoughts.

I let out a ragged breath after getting changed into an outfit that I pulled off of the floor and passed the smell test. A short black skirt, black tights, an oversized knit sweater, and black combat boots—all a flimsy effort to make myself at least a little presentable.

I sit down on the stool in front of my vanity, mentally preparing myself for whatever I am about to see.

But no amount of preparation could have made the girl staring back at me any easier to stomach.

My neck consists of dark shadows of injury blooming all along the skin that is unhealthily pale. The man's hands are still there—I realize—but now in the form of bruises, like a phantom unable to let go while trying to punish me for the sins I've committed.

The colors consist of violet storms and midnight blues, all blending together to map out the story of what happens when you try to break free of this hell we call our home.

But even worse than the discolored necklace hugging my throat like a collision of storms, is my face that looks withered and drained—as if all the life has been sucked out of it.

And God, my eyes.

Brown, boring. The flecks standing out amongst the darkness—once filled with sparks and distant stars—now fled and abandoned. The dark beauty in them now vanished, making me think that the past sparks started a forest fire, and burned everything in them to the ground. The flames only having left the ashes and hollow trunks to fill my irises.

My eyes are outlined by soft shadows beneath them, dragged down by the sleepless nights I've been having for what feels like years. The dark veil of endurance from the weathered soul beneath the surface of my skin finally showing through.

I look away abruptly, my nausea thickening at the sight.

Trying not to look too closely, I paint on a light layer of foundation, hiding away the appalling eyebags and dark blemishes. I drag the foundation along the discolored scar along my jaw and neck, as if covering that will hide away my past. The bruises go into hiding along with it, like two secrets the world is not worthy of knowing.

I use a few of the other products scattered across my vanity to manage looking a little bit less dead. Setting down the tube of mascara, I glance over at the screen of my phone displaying the time.

8:54am.

My fathers personal assistant, Denix, who was hired a few years ago sent me a message earlier this morning to inform me that my parents wanted me in the dining room for breakfast at 9am. So in conclusion—I was sent a death sentence.

"Kill me now." I mumble under my breath, running one of my hands through my semi-dry hair. I don't bother to do anything with it, knowing it will just be a dark, wavy mess by the time breakfast is over.

Everything in me wants to crawl back into bed and fade away from existence, but even I know I can't avoid the inevitable.

I step out of my bedroom that is void of any light, finally pulling all of my shit and pathetic chaos of emotions together.

The heels of my boots creak against the dark boards of hardwood as I make my way downstairs to my oncoming doom. Trying to distract myself, I study all of the empty walls that trap in my permanent cell. The only pictures in the entire manor is one hall in the west wing lined with the portraits of all the different generations of bosses in my family.

But other than that, there is nothing.

I think there is only one photo taken of me as a child. There are none of me with my parents, or any other branched off family members.

But it doesn't matter, not to my parents at least. My father only sees me as some sort of tool to his regime, he has my entire life. It doesn't matter what I want from this world, or in my life. I am not his daughter. I am the heir to his mafia, nothing more.

I reach the dark, double wooden doors that lead into the dining room, the wafting scent of bacon and syrup crawling through the gaps.

The smell at least makes me feel a little better about wherever I am about to face on the other side, the hunger outweighing the anxiety my parents give me. That thought is basically my life in a nutshell.

I quietly pull open the doors, hoping that there is a slim chance my parents won't even notice that I am here and will just leave me to eat breakfast in peace.

"Good Morning, Arabella." Shit.

I glance up at my mother, her dark green eyes clashing with mine as she takes a sip out of the champagne glass held in her slim hand.

"Yeah, something like that." I make it to my regular seat across from my parents, lounging against it in a less than attractive way.

"You're late." My father looks up at me from his place, his eyes so cold I'm pretty sure frost forms across my skin.

I look down at the golden watch on my wrist, "I'm sure you can find time to make up those two lost minutes of my clearly enjoyable company."

My voice is still hoarse from the damage probably done to my vocal cords, causing excruciating pain everytime I talk. It probably didn't help my situation that I did nothing to help the injury last night or this morning.

My father shakes his head slowly, the black hair flecked with streaks of grey unmoving from the way it is pushed back with gel. His dark brown eyes study me carefully, analyzing me in a way that—if I wasn't so used to it—would make me crawl under the table and hide away from the raw disgust in his gaze.

"It's about punctuation." He scolds, clearly already done with my presence.

He can hate me all he wants, but out of the two of us I'm the only one who knows why. It's because he sees himself when he looks into my eyes. He hates me because I am him, and fire can't burn fire.

I may not be the daughter he wanted, but I am the daughter he made.

"Okay." I can't help but smile, casually scooping up a couple pancakes and a variety of fruit onto my plate.

"As disappointed as I am, I suppose I'll give you a pass for running behind since we know you were out so late last night." My father leans back in his seat calmly. I don't dare look up at him, inhaling sharply.

The air around him thrums with indignation, and I know I should tread lightly.

Eros told him.

I brace my elbow on the table, resting my cheek against my fist. "Thanks, that's very considerate of you." I hum arrogantly, knowing that my father has never once given me a pass in the nineteen years I've known him. I fail to tread lightly already.

My fathers rage is one that is deathly silent until it is not. Like a snake waiting to strike that you don't know is watching until it has already struck.

I push around a diced strawberry on my plate, keeping my eyes away from the strangers on the other side of the table.

My father huffs out a breath of cruel laughter that sounds too much like my own. "What? Did you think Vandare was going to keep your secret?"

Hate crackles in the air between us.

"I'm not clinically stupid, so no, I didn't."

"Idris—don't," my mothers voice is pleading and gentle as she speaks to the monster of a man she married. The man who hurts her and paints her in bruises and tears instead of kisses and smiles as a husband should.

The people in front of me are the reason I will never fall in love and trust someone as my mother did my father. Because that's how you end up being the fool holding the hand of a man who only uses it to make you bleed.

I refuse to look up, refuse to watch my mother plead to the monster I'm supposed to call my father so that he doesn't hurt me in whatever way she knows too well.

My father is about to snap, I don't have to look up to know that much.

The reverberation of the dining room doors falling shut echoes throughout the room. The heavy tension hanging in the air splits in half, falling on either side of the table.

Right on cue, I glance up to see Eros sauntering into the room, entering like God's favorite fallen angel entering the gates of hell. He looks at nothing in particular, not a care in the world written across his face.

A slightly disheveled white oxford shirt loosely clings to his body carved from pure muscle, unbuttoned down to the bottom of his sternum. A silver cross hangs around his neck, a glaring paradox to everything that Eros Vandare is.

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear." I mutter under my breath, stabbing the strawberry on my plate and lifting it up to my lips.

Eros sits down on the chair next to me, casually leaning back. He doesn't say a word, manspreading in the seat that seems too delicate for his body that is merely a weapon in the form of a man.

He drapes an arm over the back of my seat, his addictive smell enveloping me entirely.

I roll my eyes.

"Wow, handsome and good manners—how lucky am I." Sarcasm rings in my raw voice, every time I speak it sounds like a rock was used to hone my vocal chords.

"How about you eat your food, Bella?" I feel him glare at the side of my face, his gaze lingering for a second too long. He looks away.

His thick Italian accent adorns the silence of the room, filling it with something other than the sound of silverware clinking against plates. I would be thankful for the distraction from the lifelessness of the room, but the sounds are interchangeable.

Eros's voice sometimes feels like pressing my ear to a conch shell. But where I expect to hear the melody of ocean waves crashing down on themself—so beautiful and deep—there is nothing but an empty echo.

"I would, but unfortunately I lost my appetite once I saw you."

"Cute." He says dryly, sounding less than amused.

"Thank you for joining us, Vandare." My mother purses her lips in acknowledgment, ignoring whatever just took place.

Eros just nods in response, his expression giving away nothing—as usual.

He wears the cold mask of indifference all too well as he looks over the table carefully. I have never seen him drop that mask from the moment we met until now, and it's honestly unnerving how one person can appear to be so hollow. But it's not like I bother wasting my time trying to understand what Eros is really like beneath the seemingly permanent defenses he is too untrusting to let down. I doubt that there is even a beating heart inside of the man beside me.

"Are you still comfortable in your living arrangements?" She asks, setting her fork down on the plate she barely took more than two bites off of.

"Comfort is irrelevant," his dark gaze flickers up to her. He leans further back in his seat, his arm still slung across the back of my chair.

My father laughs—actually laughs.

In my father's eyes, Eros can do no wrong. According to him, Eros probably walks on water and is the man who hangs the stars and moon in the sky every night. Even though he is a murderer.

"Good man." My father comes down from his laughter, shaking his head.

Eros just stares at him, a piece of his messy hair falling in front of his eye like a raven's feather.

"Well I am willing to make any accommodations that would make your time here any more enjoyable."

Her green eyes glance over to me, such a faithful reminder of the similarities I will never share with my mother. Another reminder of which parent I was woven from, rather than other.

"They suffice, I don't require more."

"Must be nice to have such low expectations," I hum.

He tilts his head back a little, looking over at me as I chew on a bite of my food. His Adam's apple bobs in one steady movement. "Try it sometime, might make you less insufferable."

"Cute," I throw his words from earlier back in his face. But "cute" is the last word I would ever use to describe the monster sitting beside me in the disguise of some kind of God. There is nothing cute about him, I know that much.

"Maybe you should excuse yourself if this is how you are choosing to act," my father's voice pulls Eros's eyes away from mine. I am secretly thankful for my father interrupting us, since I am only able to stand the way Eros looks at me for so long.

I scoff with a growing smile, "if not having to be here were that simple, I wouldn't be. But we both know it's never that simple with you, is it?"

If Eros weren't here, I can't even begin to imagine how my father would respond to the way I just spoke to him. Maybe he would finally do the job the rest of the world seems incapable of.

"You never cease to disappoint me, you know that?" My father says every word without any hesitance, without any drop of regret. It's as if they are the words he's been waiting to say to me ever since he held me for the first time. "I thought I raised you better than this."

And I feel his words.

I feel them so deep inside my bones, carving their existence into the foundation of my world and planting the seeds of their truth in the depths of my soul. They are watered with my blood and sprouting their branches along my veins. They fill every inch of me, becoming all of me. All until I am left with nothing but the words my father said to me on a random Sunday morning. A morning that blends in with all the ones before it, and will with all the ones after at.

"I think your disappointment lies in the fact that you believe you had any part in raising me."

"Arabella." My mother cautions quietly, a clatter following her warning from my father angrily dropping his spoon into the bowl in front of him.

"No, Martha, let her speak." He puts up a hand to stop my mother, keeping his dark eyes on me. "Tell me then, if I didn't, who raised you?" My father questions. I can almost taste the danger in his simple request.

"It's not the people sitting in front of me; I know that much." I shrug, popping a strawberry into my mouth.

My mother shakes her head, placing a hand over her eyes. And my father looks murderous, his eyebrows drawing in tightly to form the scowl that seems to never leave his face.

Eros just silently watches the scene unfold, his gaze steady as he removes his arm from the back of my chair. With a deliberate calm, he rolls up the cuffs of his sleeves to the top of his forearms, his muscles flexing with each simple movement.

The eerie tattoo winding around his forearm seems to ripple to life, the design looking ready to slither out of his golden skin any second.

"Get out." My father says quietly, the sound barely short of a growl.

I push to my feet, "does this mean I am off the hook for family dinner?" I can't help but push him a little further.

My father throws himself up to his feet slamming his hands on the table, every dish rattling around him. Throwing a forefinger towards the door, he looks me dead in the eyes. "Out!"

I don't waste another second. And by the third, the dining room doors are slamming shut behind me.

My body hurts from head to toe, I feel like I haven't slept in weeks, and the last thing I want to do is sit in a room that is too tight, full of people I hate.

The world is too hard, and I am too tired. It wants war and I want sleep, yet there's never been anyone to tuck me in.

My room welcomes me back as I enter, the soft breeze of the open window pushing back my hair to greet me. I almost smile—almost—the touch of the air one of the few gentle ones I've ever known.

I grab one of the many books off of my cluttered nightstand, folding myself into the armchair pressed against the far corner.

Honestly, I am thankful my father wanted me to leave. I know I will pay for the consequences later, but nothing in the future matters to me anymore. I guess it hasn't for a while.

I'm living my life by surviving each day and hoping that the next one doesn't come. That's all I can do right now.

I crack open the book, realizing that it is a random tragic romance that I bought a year ago. Do I believe a single word in it is true? No. Do I believe that two people are capable of loving each other more than themselves, more than anything? No. Do I ever want to be a fool thinking a love like that is even possible? No.

But I still read it because I will read any book as long as it helps me forget about my own world.

I am surprised in all honesty that I can read Shakespeare's tragic love story with a straight face when somewhere along the line I stopped believing in the very existence of love. At least for myself.

But, I think that book just reminds me of Tara. It was her favorite, so I don't think about two ignorant teenagers who took their own lives in response to a chain of events that was caused by the undying love they had for each other when I read it. I think about my best friend.

I stop my mind before I spiral any farther.

Flipping to the first chapter, I begin reading and it's the most peace I've felt all day.

Reality and I fall away from each other as I lose myself in the words and other worlds where everything seems to be so much easier. I forget who I am, and where I am, and what time and day it is. I am someone else completely, someone loved and with a purpose beyond what everyone else has forced upon me.

As I read, the weight of the world becomes lost on me—that is, until the sound of my door being pushed open pulls me back to reality, my feet hitting the ground and words scattering away.

If I wasn't pissed before after dealing with the shitshow that is my family, I definitely am now.

Reading is one of the few times in my life that I don't spend planning on how I am going to end it.

I glance up over the top of my book, fully aware that the look on my face is anything but welcoming to whoever just shut my door behind them. Honestly, I expect it to be my father, here to reprimand me for my behavior this morning. Or maybe Denix, here to inform me that my father is waiting to speak with me in his office.

But what I don't expect is to see Eros standing by the door, an ice pack, water bottle, and something else in hand—looking just about as irritated as I feel. He pauses briefly, his eyes trailing over my curled up figure and lingering on the damage to my throat, the faint sheen of foundation doing little to mask the extent of the dark injury.

His eyes meet my eyes once more and he finally speaks,

"you really have no self preservation skills, do you?"

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