Owned By The Psychotic Billionaire (Mafia BL)

Chapter 139: When I Close My Eyes...

WHAT ORION SAW...

The night air in the courtyard garden has a sharp edge to it, but I barely feel the cold.

I came out here because I know where he is. I always know where he is. Adrien is sitting alone on the long stone bench, his knees pulled tightly against his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs as if trying to shrink his body down into nothing.

Seeing him try to make himself smaller like that makes something in my chest wrinkle in irritation. He always does this when he thinks he is alone, folding in on himself, trying to occupy as little space in the world as possible.

I walk across the gravel, stepping quietly so I do not startle him. I sink into the carved stone beside him, taking up my usual space, letting my frame settle against the backrest.

I stretch my legs out into the gravel, intentionally shifting my weight back so I do not loom over him. I want him to breathe.

I want him to stop trying to hide inside his own clothes.

The cold night air around us shifts as I sit down, catching the heavy scent of dark cedar, wool, and the faint metallic tang that always seems to stick to my clothes.

Adrien turns his head to look at me. The silver light of the high moon hits his face, casting a soft, pale glow across his pale skin.

The moonlight traces the delicate line of his jaw, catches in the soft strands of dark hair falling over his forehead, and highlights the sharp tension in his features.

He is staring at me with that guarded, prickling irritation he puts up like a shield whenever I get too close.

He is beautiful under the moon. He has always been beautiful, but out here, stripped of the panic that usually consumes him, he looks almost fragile. It creates a strange, hollow feeling in my gut, a quiet ache that I refuse to name.

Adrien snaps his head away from me, fixing his glare on the giant stone fountain in front of us. The stone angel carved in my likeness sits at the center, sword lowered, staring blankly into the dark basin of water.

"What did you mean by your question?" I ask him, keeping my voice smooth and untroubled. "Why should I guess what your problem is? Just tell me, what is it?"

He lets out a sharp breath through his nose, his shoulders tense. "You, obviously. When has my problem ever not been you? Every time I close my eyes to sleep, it is you. When I am awake, it is you."

He throws every drop of dramatic energy he can muster into those words. I can see what he is doing.

He wants his words to hit me like a physical shove, to drive a wedge between us, to push me off this bench and make me walk away.

Instead, a laugh bubbles up in my chest, breaking out into the open air.

It is a rich, unobstructed sound that echoes off the tall stone walls of the courtyard garden. I tilt my head back against the night sky, exposing my throat, laughing right at the marble statue sculpted in my exact image.

The sound is loud in the quiet space, carrying a warmth that I rarely let anyone hear.

"Does my existence really occupy that much space inside your head?" I ask him. My laughter tapers off into a low, amused hum as I turn my head on the stone to look back at him. "Did you sit down out here in the cold just to gaze at my statue and think about me, duckling?"

Adrien gives me a slow side-eye, his lips pressed into a flat line. I can practically read the thoughts racing behind his eyes.

He is sitting there internally marveling at what he thinks is my endless narcissism, convinced that I am just an arrogant fool who thinks the world revolves around him.

It makes me want to smile. He has no idea how much I enjoy the way his mind works.

Instead of answering my question, he shifts his weight on the cold bench and changes the topic. "Where did you go?"

"I went to go look for Leon," I respond simply.

I watch his face closely. I see the exact moment the words register. He freezes. His dark eyes widen a fraction before he can stop himself, the cold mask slipping just enough for me to see his raw shock.

He did not expect an honest answer from me. He expected a riddle, a smirk, or a cold comment telling him it was none of his concern.

Delivering the plain truth to him, so casually, throws him completely off balance.

A quiet chuckle escapes my lips as I watch his brows pull down in confusion. "Why do you look so surprised, duckling?"

"Because I am surprised," he says, his voice tightening. "Why would you tell me the truth? Aren’t you supposed to lie to me and keep me in the dark? Isn’t that how this works?"

I tilt my head, resting it against the stone backrest, watching the way the wind lightly rustles his hair. "How this works? What exactly do you think this is?"

Adrien goes quiet. He turns his face away from me again, tilting his head back to look up at the empty sky. The silver moon hangs high above the dark hedges, throwing a pale, milky light over his throat and the quiet water in the basin.

"How a relationship between an elite and a nobody works," he whispers softly.

I feel my brows pull together in genuine confusion. "How exactly are you a nobody? If we are talking about bloodline, you are a Dubois. You come from money. We moved in the exact same circles right up until... well, until you ran away like a rat."

Adrien lets out a dry, bitter sound from the back of his throat. "The only reason we moved in the same circles was because my father kept pulling money out of his businesses just to keep both me and Louise in that academy. He drained his own accounts to keep us in the same circle as you."

He stops talking, his eyes growing distant as if he is suddenly chasing a thought down a dark tunnel. I watch the shadow of a realization pass across his features.

He is wondering why his father would double his debt to send him along with Louise, why a family that hated him would spend so much wealth to place him in the same halls as the Vassilis heir.

I don’t like seeing him get lost in those thoughts. I don’t like the way his mind twists around the ugly dynamic of his birth family.

"I know that," I say, cutting through his thoughts before he can spiral down that path. "I was only speaking by bloodline. But going by personality... you are the furthest thing from a nobody."

He turns back to look at me, his eyes narrowing into suspicious slits. "What exactly do you think my personality is like for you to say something like that?" He scoffs softly, leaning his head back. "I am not, at my core, the sarcastic, dramatic person you seem to think I am."

"I know that," I say quietly.

I do not add any sharp edge to my voice. I do not smirk, I just look at him with a quiet, open honesty, letting him see that I am not playing a game right now.

"I know you are calm, sarcastic, and dramatic," I continue, keeping my tone low, almost gentle against the night chill. "But I know that is not who you are when everything is stripped away. I know that what you truly want is a place where you can be calm. A place where you can finally be at peace."

He mutters sarcastically under his breath, turning his eyes back to the fountain. "Saying that all I want is a place to be at peace makes it sound like I want to die. I very much want to live, so don’t go getting any ideas."

A low vibration of laughter rolls through my chest. "Of course I know you do not want to die. Even if you wanted to, I would not let you."

Adrien looks back at me, letting out a long, cold breath that turns to mist in the freezing air. "See? This is exactly how a relationship between an elite and a nobody goes. No matter what I want to do, you would never let me. It will always be what you want, how you want, and when you want."

His voice drops lower, losing the sharp, bite it usually carries. He leans back, resting the back of his neck against the cold stone of the bench, staring up into the vast black sky above us.

"I have seen enough to know how little power I have over myself in the face of someone like you," he says quietly. The weight of seven years of running, hiding, and surviving seems to settle onto his chest, pressing the air from his lungs. "I know how small, how less it can make a man feel."

Hearing him say that— hearing him lay out his own perceived insignificance— makes something deep in my gut twist into an uncomfortable knot.

I shift my position on the bench. I adopt the exact position he has taken, leaning my head back against the carved stone, resting my gaze on the silver moon and the scattered stars above.

I match his posture so he doesn’t have to look up at me. I want us to be on the exact same level, sharing the same sky, breathing the same freezing air.

"Is that the reason why you thought, at that time, that sucking my dick was what I wanted?" I ask him casually.

I ask it without any crude intent, without any desire to humiliate him. I ask it because I genuinely want to understand the tangled, desperate logic that governed his mind back then.