Chapter 8

• CALLUM'S POV
• I walked to the bar in the living space and poured myself a glass of scotch “You look like shit already.” I turned to find Zaleo sprawled on one of the couches, giving me a smug smile as his gaze moved to my bloody hand, which was clenched tightly on the glass. “I wonder how you'd look after months.”
• “I'd be better than you,” I replied to him with a smirk.
• “You won't; I can sense the weakness already; a woman like Helena would have been better….” As soon as he completes his words I flung the bloody knife, Ophelia had used to him and he was swift catching it close to his eyes “Helena would have been better, you just wanted her pussy, but I feel you want more with Ophelia which is really bad.” He repeated.
• “Father sent you to convince me to divorce Lia Huhn?” I looked away from him, downing the glass in one go.
• “How would I convince someone who broke out of a mental asylum?” Zaleo teased, “If it had been another woman who had done this, you would have snapped her neck; Bella had done nothing before you tightened a chain around her pretty neck.”
• “Return the damn knife to the owner,” I said with a little bit of anger in my tone, remembering what Ophelia had done and said.
• “Where is the box?” Zaleo was a great observer, he had informed me earlier about my wife's sister giving her a knife as a present, and I don't care to know how he fucking knew.
• I walked up to him, throwing the box into his lap, and he scoffed, twirling the little box in his hand. “Sly,” he stated before getting on his feet, “She might stab you at night, but she would surely get her revenge for her sweetheart. Be careful, brother.” He pats my shoulder before he walks past me. “Father wants a new wedding.” He added before taking the exit.
• I scoffed, if that old man thinks I would abide by any of his rules, he must be fucking joking.
• Running away from rehab was true; one of my darkest pasts of being locked up with crazy humans like me. I did that because I wanted someone; I was locked up because I wanted and fought for that person at the age of eighteen when my father forced me to high school, and I was in my junior year while she was in senior year.
• The lady that made my heart throb, my damn head in an unusual turmoil, Ophelia Laurent, and that was when my obsession began. The urge to own her when she had come to meet me in the school detention room after father had sent his men to hit me for breaking a boy's nose and jaw because the motherfucker couldn't shut his fucking mouth.
• Everyone should have been on my side, but even my father felt it was my psycho nature acting up. 'He had a mad son, whom he hated before but wanted like shit now because that son could get blood in his hands without batting an eyelash.' But Ophelia looked like she wasn't afraid of that mad boy when she followed him into the detention room with a first aid box in her hand.
• She was short, fucking cute like one of Mom's dolls before she died. Her red hair, which I so much wanted to caress, and I could remember that mind-blowing smile of hers as she walked to where. I sat bloody with my damn ribs broken, but I felt none of the pain. “I. I am Ophelia.“ Maybe she had tried not to be scared as she stuttered in front of me, and I barely gave her a response, with blood trickling down from the corner of my lips.
• “Yo..you are hurt, I..I can he..“
• “Did my father or the teachers know you are in here?“ I know Father won't ask me to be treated; heal by yourself. That was his own rule as a made man. Psycho or not; none of his sons has seen the walls of a hospital. 'Women had a lot of crazy privileges.'
• When I got shot for the first time by his rival who wanted him dead, Father made me pull the bullet out on my own and made me stitch it up bloody.
• Ophelia shook her head and told me she had seen when I got beaten up on the field. If she had known what I did to deserve that, she would have fled. Even though I tried to be indifferent like always, taking her by her pretty little neck and getting a look of fear on her face, she scampered off and sneaked back into the detention room with a plate of cookies.
• Wanting to become friends with even a fucking viper was her thing; she was a free bird, a daughter of a bloody bastard who saw his daughters as stocks. The mother fucker I almost broke his nose when I saw him yelling at Ophelia when he came to pick her up from school.
• Ophelia had softened something in me for her only. She had done what the therapists my father had asked to guide me had never done, always treating me like I was some kind of fucked up puppy. So I murdered five, including the two females at the Rehab who had tied me with chains like the devil and had injured a total of seven, rendering most of 'em comatose.
• If only Ophelia had left me in that room, if only she had never come and had treated my injuries giving me her heart-shaped cookies, just if only she had never asked to be my friend I could have been more sane than keeping her hostage five years ago and killing her little sweetheart now.
• During classes where I would sit like a usual lifeless loner with kids younger than me. Ophelia would come in with her candies, giving me one before she left, and I would miss her like crazy. When it was lunch hour, she would make sure I came with her to the rooftop and talked for hours even when I had no interest in replying, just loving her presence and innocence.
• Our bond grew stronger, I felt closer to her, she felt and smelt like the home I never had and I could reply even with a word to her hundred of words, she could let me caress her hair fondly while she ruffled mine with her soul-calming giggles. But the sweetness of life ended when I had caught the lunatic of her uncle raising his hand to slap her in the principal's office, and hell broke loose that day Ophelia had found out she had been playing with nothing but a Rottweiler.
• I had beaten the man bloody, stabbed him in the side of his abdomen with a pen, and buried a lot of staple pins in his body, not even the principal nor the teachers were able to stop me but the silent cries from the already shivering Ophelia who had watched her friend grow from a Chow Chow to a beast.
• That's when I felt my first ache; it ached like crazy seeing her cry, and I left her uncle to meet her, but she broke me, moving back, not letting me touch her. I wanted to clean those fucking tears, but she didn't let me even after telling her I was sorry for doing the right thing.
• As my father slammed the metal chairs into my head, disciplining me in the school, the only pain that almost made me pass out was Ophelia's fear-filled eyes, walking away with her uncle not daring to look me in the eyes.
• The fucked up teachers had advised my father to take me to a psychiatric rehab after being violent three times at school, and he listened. I craved to see Ophelia after being locked up; I wondered m
• any crazy things: 'What if she was with another boy?' 'What if she was ruffling his hair and not mine?'