Chapter 16 (Kylie)

I watch her tall lithe form walking toward the jet.

I stand in wait, patiently watching Vincent get out of his car.

His jacket is now gone, his disheveled hair giving the impression he ran his hands numerous times through the mass, on the drive here. A slight breeze, elicits shivers down my spine, as goosebumps prickle on my tanned flesh. I run my hands down my naked arms. My face changing into a frown the closer he gets to me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask straight away.

“There is obviously a problem, I want to help.” I raise my eyebrows at his blunt answer because him helping us in any way is foreign.

“We don't need your help, I SUGGEST you run along to your people and leave us to our own devices.” I am not sure where my confidence is coming from, it has never shown itself in the face of Vincent before.

Maybe the reason being is that my brother is missing.

Or that I know he doesn't really want to help, he just wants an in with his brothers, my brothers, and that thought, that knowledge pisses me off. My brother is missing. I don't have time for games now.

“Don't get smart Kylie,” He warns me, pulling his shirt sleeves up his hairy arms that I have spent nights imagining wrapped around my body.

“Smart? You think I am smart, OH now I get a compliment, wow.” My sarcastic reply has those hardened eyes of his that I have spent months hoping would look at me with interest just once, widen in shock, as his jaw, the jaw I spent hours wishing I could touch just once, tightens in anger.

Good I want to anger him.

I want him to be pissed off, I want him to take me on.

“Have you forgotten that I am more a Stone than you? They are my family by blood, DNA. I don't need your permission. I wasn't asking for it.”

I step closer to him, so close our nose could touch. His dark scent washing over me, a torturous reminder that I will never have him. I will never touch him. He will never look at me and want me. Vincent will always be a made-man and I will always be a thorn in his side.

I stare into his dark brown angry gaze. I mentally snap mind pictures as I see it, for the first time really hitting me. Vincent Stone will never feel a thing for me. I have to let him go. It angers me to the point that the words pour out of my mouth, but they are coming from somewhere deeper inside of me.

“No, the Famiglia is your family, you made that choice the day you left, you chose the Rosetti family over the Stones, so don't come here and expect a pity fucking welcome, because you are NOT getting one, I have taken all your little fucked up shit you had to offer, hoping that there is some good in you, now I am DONE. And when it comes to MY family, be them by blood or not you need my permission, now get in the car and leave, you are not welcome on that fucking Jet.” It breaks me as these words leave my mouth, I am hurting, I am in pain.

I lost a good friend. My brother is gone, maybe hurt somewhere, waiting for somebody to save him. My best friend has a target on her back.

Michael hates me, to a point we don't even talk.

And I am addicted to a man that will never love me. Vincent Stone isn't just my addiction but a sickness, and as I stare into his face one last time, I tell myself I am done with him.

It is now, as I march away from the man that for some unknown reason I love that I make a promise to myself- I will not let my unrequited love for Vincent Stone cripple me.

I will distance myself from this man and kill any feelings I have for my stepbrother.

I know I said it then, but when I look back on that day when they laid Reno's soulless body to rest, I think of how empty those promises were.

I think of how stupid and naive I was to just believe that I could starve myself from that craving of such a poisonous drug-like Vincent.

I tried don't get me wrong, but trying and achieving are completely different words.

I can’t say whether it was just me that made the decisions that turned my life because on one side it's said that we are our decisions, we make them, we live by them, and I have, but looking back on those times I always wondered whether those decisions really were my own.

Papa once told me that sometimes our choices were intertwined with other people's actions, we just couldn't help but go with the flow hoping to be breathing in the end.

Like a natural path of life. I don't know what to say to that.

Do I regret it now, no, I would have done it all again-the hurt, pain, loss, anger, I would've done every fucking thing again.

It was my heart that chose Vincent Stone how could I not.