The Prodigy | ✔︎

30

After a few minutes, I could see a teardrop fall onto her bare thigh.

"My mother is alive," she repeated, her voice fragile and ready to snap.

"What makes you think that you can find the most hidden criminals to ever exist, but you can't find a single woman. What if she doesn't want to be found? What if she got so fucking tired of you to the point she just left? Watch you find out that you're doing all this work just to find out that you are absolutely nothing." I chuckled.

Finally, she broke away from her thighs to look me square in the eye. "Is that what your family did to you? Are you trying to put your trauma onto me, is that what this is?"

My jaw clenched as I looked at little red. She was entering a dangerous territory that I was positive she didn't want to go in. "You don't know shit about me," I stated, narrowing my eyes.

"I know enough. I know that you're a hypocrite and a coward. Don't ever talk about my family when you couldn't even keep yours," Reyna said.

I reached over and gripped her by her neck before slamming her into the seats. My breathing was heavy and uneven as I glared at her.

Reyna's eyes widened just as the car pulled up in front of my house. The driver quickly got out, leaving a tense silence to fill the car.

"Sometimes, a rumor is just that... a rumor... spread by idiots who need to learn a simple thing about minding their own business," I stated just before releasing her from my hold. I opened the car door and exited not before slamming it shut.

After fixing my suit jacket, I pulled out my phone and immediately dialed Leo's number as I began to walk into the building.

"Saint," he greeted.

"Where is Adriano?" I questioned.

Knowing Adriano, he would be pissed but he would understand. Breaking omertà was a huge thing in this family. Everyone knew that the only way out was death. The only reason I kept Adriano alive for so long was because a gut-wrenching feeling told me something was off.

At first, I blamed it on weakness because I sympathized with someone who grew up with me. Someone who watched over me when I was nothing but a quiet boy, holding back an evil that transformed my heart from a faded pink to a decaying black.

When I had no one, not even myself, I had Adriano.

It was dark one night, clouds were angrily shooting at the ground with precipitation that destroyed itself amongst impact like a bullet. The rain had washed away all the blood on my body. All of the souls I held dearly swam off my body, flowing down the empty street.

I couldn't have been more than thirteen years old, sitting on the corner of the street. There was a bus bench that I used to rest, especially when the weather was as bad as this day.

Of course I had seen Adriano plenty of times. His family was a good friend to my own. They used to force us to be around eachother, claiming that one day we would be all we had left-they weren't lying.

Never having a choice in the people I wanted to associate myself with was the only reason I quickly grew to hate him. However, looking at him on that day where my life changed forever-hate was no where near me.