Seething with the rage he felt on Chloe’s behalf, Lucca pressed the knife bitterly against Amo’s throat, spewing, “You looked at her every goddamn day at school for three and a half years, and not once did you ever give her the fucking time of day. You claim to love her, but where the fuck were you!” he yelled, digging the edge of the blade in deeper, his harsh words lashing at Amo like a thousand whips. “When she and Elle were bullied, when Elle was taking beatings to keep her from being touched, when she was called a freak, where were you, Amo? How could you pass her in the halls with those scars and not do something? Not protect her?”
Amo’s face fell at each harsh question. His anger slowly dissolved into pain as everything Lucca said hit him like a ton of bricks, making him feel like the trash he was.
Taking the same cynical tone Amo had just given him, Lucca continued, “Let’s be honest; she wasn’t going to spread her legs for you, so there was no need to, was there? You were too busy calling her a freak with the rest of them.”
A paling Amo quickly realized Lucca had found out his deepest, darkest secret.
He wanted to leave now, but he couldn’t with Lucca pinning him, forcing him to listen to what he had to say, forcing him to face the truth and accusations of those words.
“You had to be told to look in her fucking direction and give her your precious time. I didn’t,” Lucca growled, never letting up on the knife. “It took me one look to fall in love with her. One look to want to know everything and anything about her. One look to feel protective of her, like my life depended on it. One look to want to kill whoever gave her those scars.”
Blood now trickled down Amo’s throat.
“If you’re meant for her, then how have you slept without finding out who did those things to her, who made her the way she is now?” Lucca stared Amo down, his eyes boring into the weak soldier’s. “I bet you didn’t even know those scars were given to her; that she wasn’t actually in a car crash. You didn’t even know that she suffers from insomnia because she’s too afraid to sleep in fear of the nightmares. Admit you didn’t even know!” Lucca roared.
Ashamed, Amo shook his head. He was slowly beginning to break down. The strong Amo he had been moments ago had vanished before Lucca’s eyes.
Resisting the darkness that wanted to slide the blade into Amo’s neck was unimaginable, but Lucca was doing it. Besides, this feels so much better.
“There is so much you don’t know about her because you were too focused on lying to her, pretending to be someone you’re not, afraid of scaring her away. You have done nothing but hinder her because you think she’s weak when, in reality, she’s stronger than anyone I have ever seen.”
Pain then entered Lucca’s voice that also showed through his blue-green eyes, something he had never shown a man before, let alone one of his soldiers. “You will never know the love I feel for her. How beautiful it is. How painful it can be. What it felt like when I first looked at her. And what it felt like when I thought I might lose her before I could even save her. You will never know true love until you experience true fear. And you will never feel those toward her, as I am the only one for her. She. Is. Mine.”
Amo was almost there. Almost a broken human being. Lucca could stop now and show mercy, but he wanted Amo’s punishment to last a lifetime. A sentence he deserved for letting Chloe walk through hell even for one day.
“If Elle hadn’t seen us that night, I don’t want to think where Chloe would be now, or how she would have ended up, because you sure as fuck wouldn’t have protected her. You, Nero, and even Vincent are pieces of shit for letting them go through that hell.”
Lucca didn’t hold back on him, and he didn’t feel an ounce of guilt over it. His soldier deserved it after trying to do the same to him. The only difference was Amo was blinded by infatuation, mistaking it for love, whereas Lucca recognized the pureness of what he felt for Chloe.
She was his soulmate.
“You will never deserve Chloe. The same way Nero will never deserve Elle. Nero will spend the rest of his life trying to, but I won’t let you try and deserve her.
“I wanted her so badly that I actually wanted to trade places with you for those seven months … But not anymore. Now, you have to look at yourself in the mirror every fucking day for the rest of your life and see what a disgusting piece of shit you are. That’s why I’m not going to kill you.” Lucca removed the blade from his throat, but he still made Amo stand there like a wounded animal, not releasing him just yet. “I want you to live every day knowing that I’m with her and you’re not. Knowing that she belongs to me and me alone. To die little by little every time you see us together, just the way I did when I saw her with you.”