𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐌

65| S E S S A N T A-C I N Q U E

ALESSANDRO'S POV

We made it back home last night past midnight. We spent the previous days doing the same routine over and over, breakfast, beach, Armando whining, Adriano spitting his wise words every hour. I bumped into Martine a few more times and you may ask how, turns out she's one of the Moretti siblings's best friends. I was invited to dinner the following day of meeting Leonardo, the entire family was there and welcomed me. I had to sit down and listen to their conversations for hours when I got a call from Dante and excused myself for an emergency.

Emilion got himself into a lot of trouble one night at the bar. Apparently he got too drunk and told the security he is seventeen. We had to convince them that the six foot man standing beside us is twenty five and can legally drink. He got us in so much trouble that night and the rest of them. They all took turns to cause chaos day by day. It was a whole mess but I must admit, I did enjoy myself.

I came back home to not much work, at this point we've prepared everything. Our men are training with their new equipment, shipments are cut off and business is quiet. Akila is gone which may slow down a few things since this is her idea, I can't contact her through a phone or emails. I think she does have a phone but not for texting, I believe all she has is machines, weapons, objects to help her work and that's it. No entertainment, no breaks nor procrastinating, she just works constantly non-stop. A hardworking badass living among us.

I always thought I'm passionate about my job, my company and my major until I met Akila. I used to think so many things, so differently and weirdly now. She didn't just change my perspective on falling in love, she changed and showed me so many things in life I haven't yet discovered. It's becoming weird and almost unknown what it felt like back then. I've said this before and I still stand by it, every day, month and year are slowly getting blurry as time passes. Not the memories, not the past but the pain. The feeling of loneliness and trappedness, it's fading away, the marks, the scars they left behind are getting less visible day by day. They're far, they're distant and walking away for the first time in my life. All the worry, all the thoughts and hesitations in my old self are vanishing, I seem unable to remember what it feels like, what it did to me day and night.

And I think, I would like to think and I'm sure it's because of her.

She's the only reason, she's the only strike that hit me deeply and suddenly. She came into my world and made it her own, she developed in it and unintentionally seduced me into liking it, and loving her.

It's not her fault, if anyone it's mine. But I like to say it was never a mistake to begin with. Falling in love is never a mistake, it's never a failure from the other side. It's not a bad fall, it's not always a fall that will pain you, that will only hurt and crush you. Sometimes, sometimes and very rarely, there's people out there, there's someone, this one person you could fall onto and they would catch you, they would hold you back up and wait for you to fall again, over and over again.

And sometimes love is bitter, sometimes you fall and hit the ground, your walls crumble and turn into dust. It's not the idea of falling in love that's scary, it's the act of falling and not finding the person standing behind you, to save you, to protect you with all they've got.

I am lucky enough in this universe to experience love in the most beautiful right way possible. I am lucky enough to have her, lucky enough to get to hold her hand, to kiss her and call her mine.

I'm too lucky it doubts me but I keep going because I would rather doubt my whole existence a million times than walk away from her.

I close my laptop and pull the screen down. At the same very moment, Armando walks into my office. "Good evening sunshine" he greets me with a cheeky smile and stands in front of my desk. "What" I ask him coldly even though I'm feeling nothing but warmth right now. It really gets hard to hide it. One of the things I had to live through and deal with since she showed up in my life is to hide my soft side for her which is becoming difficult to keep in. I'm not ashamed of it, I'm not questioning my figure in front of my men if I treat her like the center of my existence because she is yet I want it to be between me and her, it's our own private thing she only gets to see.