Dark, amber, sharp, and bitter—hell, it burned down his throat, but he did not feel the whiskey anymore. He had not felt anything since the moment he saw her falling from the balcony.
No, that was not right... He felt fear, a crushing fear... but there was still hope... Right! Hope that she would wake up again, touch the dimples he never knew he had, laugh at his particular quirk, the secret she pinky-promised never to reveal, and... and..
They just stole her unconscious body...
"Amore..." he whispered her name inside his chest the way a priest whispers a prayer to his dying god.
His room was dark, except for the distant foggy night—cold lights reflected in the glass wall like a thousand eyes witnessing him break. His jacket was on the floor. His tie hung loose, twisted around his provocative neck. His black silky shirt was stained with the memories of hours ago.
He lifted the glass again...
Hands shaking
He never shook
He was Diello
Heartless CEO
Unbreakable
Untochable Diello Volkov
The perfect real-life version of those tall, handsome, rich CEOs from those dark romances that make your toes curl...
He is a man so feared that his shadow could silence a room. Yet none of that mattered now.
Diello swallowed the drink in one go, then slammed the empty glass against the marble nightstand, hard enough. It shattered. His reflection stared back at him in the darkened window: eyes red-rimmed, jaw clenched, hair disheveled, pain carved into the bones of his face.
A version of himself he did not recognize...
A version he never knew he had.
Lightning flashed outside the glass walls, illuminating the forgotten chaos in his room—the overturned chair, the shattered glass where he tried calling her again and again...
As if she could answer
As if she was still...
He choked at the thought.
Right... He was so useless that he could just imagine her now. They took her from him, under his nose—under his protection.
His breath shook as he grabbed another bottle—something older, stronger, bitter enough to overpower the sourness of his heart twisting for her. He uncorked it recklessly, spilling some on his shirt, as if that stain could inject a miserable dose of color into a world that had gone gray after the light of his life vanished during his battle for survival at the hospital.
His hands smelled of whiskey, rain, and desperation.
"Why could I not protect you?" his voice fractured into the silence. Low and ragged.
He pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes, swallowing back something that felt like a scream lodged in his chest.
How many people in the world could bring Diello to his knees?
Just one
And someone took her
He staggered to the window and leaned his forehead against the glass. The city below blurred through tears he did not want to admit were there.
Her smile... too bright
her voice... too pure
Her touch, too soft for a world that had built her to make him feel so insecure, too stupid— too weak.
She had looked at him like she knew him long before he knew himself. Hell, she knew him better than he did, as if she was just born to fit his likes, to validate his taste, and embody his preferences.
And now she is gone.
He exhaled, shaking from the inside out.
"Where are you?" he pleaded.
"Where did they take you?"
Thunder rolled across the sky just as her laugh tore the world he once knew.
Shatter...like when her hand slipped out of his reach
His scream echoed against the emptiness of the room.
Whiskey bottle still in his hand...
Heart still breaking; she was still nowhere in his embrace, just as she always had been. The memory of her goodnight kiss and the smudged lipstick, a terrible quality that left her lips imprinted on the corner of his mouth.
He did not...
He did not know how
He just sat there, destroyed, drowning in alcohol and regret—as the storm raged outside, mirroring the one inside his heart.
Tonight, he was not the man the world feared. Tonight... he was just a man who lost the only thing he had ever felt worthy of breaking his rules.
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow, he would burn the world to get her back, even if he had to go where Hades lived to bring her to life.