Owned By The Psychotic Billionaire (Mafia BL)

Chapter 117: We Can Be Nothing

ADRIEN’S POV

SEVEN YEARS AGO...

My breath leaves my body all at once. The entire world stops moving. My heart freezes mid-beat.

Timothy is lying flat on his back, his legs twisted at an unnatural, sickening angle. Beside his head, the sharp wooden corner of the heavy bedside table is covered in dark, thick, fresh blood.

Brain matter, bone fragments, and thick red fluid are splattered across the dark wood and onto the white carpet beneath his head, where he lies completely still, his eyes open and staring at nothing.

My mind goes entirely blank. A strange, unnatural, horrifying sense of calm washes over me, keeping my hands still and my body frozen in place as I stare at my dead best friend.

My seventeen-year-old brain can’t process the image in front of me. It refuses to accept it.

Orion slowly turns his head, his dark eyes locking onto mine.

Fresh, warm blood is splashed heavily across his left cheek, dripping down his sharp jawline and staining the pristine white collar of his tailored shirt.

A bright, gentle, genuinely relieved smile spreads across Orion’s face as he looks at me from across the ruined room.

"Ah," Orion says, his voice terribly soft, light, and conversational, as if we were merely meeting in the library. "Was this one really that important to you? Don’t be so sad, Adrien. It is his own fault for not taking your feelings into account before acting on his desires."

I stand frozen in the doorway, the cold glass vial still trapped tightly inside my trembling, sweat-slicked fist.

"His desires?" I whisper brokenly, my voice so small, so fragile, so destroyed that I can barely recognize it as my own. "What... what do you mean?"

Orion steps lightly over the broken leg of a wooden chair, his soft smile widening slightly as he approaches me. "His desire to kill me, of course."

Orion pauses, tilting his head as he looks at me with a sickening, pure warmth. "Anyone who has ever been part of a plot to kill me, or has ever desired my death, will never be allowed to live. There is nothing on this earth that would make me let them breathe another breath. He came in here with a knife, Adrien. He thought he could surprise me."

Orion takes another slow step toward me, his dark eyes softening with an intense, painful devotion as he reaches out a blood-stained hand.

"You don’t need to look so terrified, Adrien," Orion continues softly, his tone almost pleading. "You have never once been involved in any plot against my life. If you had been, I would already know. I know everything about you. Even with all the intense hatred and killing intent you show me every single day, you have never once actually tried to harm me. You are pure."

I freeze solid.

The air turns to solid, agonizing ice in my lungs. I stare down at the small, clear glass vial pressed tightly inside my palm—the deadly liquid sitting just inches away from my skin.

He thinks I’m innocent. He thinks I’m pure. He just murdered my only friend in the world because Timothy tried to protect me, because Timothy wanted him dead, while I stand here holding the exact weapon meant to end his life.

I look back down at Timothy’s lifeless body, bleeding out onto the ruined white rug. I look at my friend—the poor, non-elite boy who hated the rich, the only person in this entire hellish academy who ever held my hand when I was bruised, the only boy who ever cared if I ate—lying dead in a pool of his own brain matter.

And then I look up at Orion, who is smiling at me with pure, unhinged, terrifying love, covered head-to-toe in the blood of the boy he just called an inconvenience.

I take a shaky, desperate step backward out into the hallway.

Orion’s gentle smile fades slightly, replaced by that same pale, heartbroken shock from earlier. He takes a fast step forward to follow me, raising his blood-stained hands in a gentle, cautious gesture.

"Don’t come close to me," I whisper, my voice breaking into a breathless, ragged sob. "Please... don’t come near me."

"Adrien, wait," Orion says softly, his dark eyes wide as he reaches for me. "Let me wash off the blood from this filth first, duckling. Don’t look at me like that."

I look at Timothy’s lifeless, vacant eyes staring blankly at the high ceiling. I look at Orion’s bloody face.

Every single sound in the entire world fades away into a deafening, roaring white noise in my ears.

The fragile, desperate hope that had flared in my chest just minutes ago shatters into a million jagged, bloody pieces, carving through my heart and leaving behind a cold, paralyzing terror.

I’m not even a pawn, I’m nothing.

I’m just a seventeen-year-old boy trapped in a world of monsters who can tear my life apart, murder my friends, and crush my soul for nothing and everything all at once.

There is no help coming. There is no justice. There is no safety. Whether I stay, whether I lie, whether I keep this poison, or whether I speak the truth, I’m going to die either way.

My life was never mine to keep.

My mind stops thinking entirely. Every logical thought, every desperate plan, and every single shred of reason vanishes into the void, replaced by a violent, animalistic instinct to survive.

I turn on my heel and bolt down the hall.

I run as fast as my trembling legs can physically move, my boots slamming wildly against the carpet. As I sprint past the dark marble pillar near the elevator, a soft, sweet voice whispers gently from the shadows.

"What’s the use of running away now, Adrien?" Leon whispers softly, his soft voice trailing after me like a haunting ghost. "You should just have taken my hand when I offered it."

I don’t stop. I don’t look back. I throw my weight against the heavy emergency doors, tear down the concrete stairs four steps at a time, and burst out into the freezing afternoon air.

I run away from the hotel, away from the luxury, away from the resort, and away from these monsters, leaving the blood, the poison, and my dead friend behind me in that damned hotel room.