Chapter 142: Chapter 142: Have you been in love?
Lucian’s POV
I kicked the heavy oak coffee table, sending it crashing violently into the television screen. The glass shattered into a million pieces, mirroring the jagged, chaotic mess inside my chest. I ripped the curtains from the walls, threw the porcelain lamps across the living room, and left the entire house looking like a goddamn war zone.
"Lucian! You need to calm the fuck down!" Boca shouted from near the kitchen doorway, dodging a stray piece of wood.
"Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!" I roared, my hands shaking with an adrenaline-fueled fury as I grabbed a chair and slammed it into the wall. "You heard what he said, didn’t you? You stood right fucking there and heard every single word that came out of his pathetic mouth!"
"Yes, I did," Boca said, keeping his voice leveled, which only made me angrier. "But don’t you think he is purposely trying to ragebait you right now?"
"I don’t fucking care!" I slammed my fists onto the kitchen counter, my breathing ragged. "I cannot let him have Alina. No matter what. I will kill him before I let that happen. And why the hell were you being so damn calm out there, Boca? He was disrespecting everything, and you just stood there!"
"Because we were in a place where we are explicitly not fucking wanted, Lucian!" Boca snapped back, his own patience finally wearing thin. "You know exactly how that pack feels about us. The only reason I even agreed to follow you to that elite party in the first place was because you practically begged me, saying you just wanted to see Alina’s face. If we had engaged in a full-blown war with Aiden right there on his own territory, we wouldn’t have won."
"I don’t fucking care about winning a war!" I yelled, my voice echoing through the ruined house.
"Lucian, you need to keep it together," Boca insisted, stepping closer. "Don’t let that man get under your skin like this."
"How do I fucking keep calm when she is with him in that godforsaken house?!"
The anger drained out of me as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a hollow, terrifying ache. My voice cracked, dropping into a broken, desperate whisper. I ran my hands over my face, feeling the stinging cuts on my knuckles from where I had broken Aiden’s jaw.
"She will come back," Boca said softly.
"And what if she doesn’t?" I asked, looking up at him, completely exposed. "She already agreed to let him into her life. He said it himself."
"Did she actually tell you any of this?" Boca questioned, raising an eyebrow. "Did she explain to you exactly why she is doing this?"
"She did," I muttered, pacing the floor. "But that doesn’t change a single fucking thing. Because I don’t want her doing any of it. God... fuck. I am a complete mess."
"You are," Boca agreed bluntly.
I let out a bitter, humorless laugh, leaning my head back against the wall. "This is exactly what I fucking hate about love. It completely derails you. It makes you insane." He added.
The room fell quiet for a moment, the heavy silence settling over the wreckage. I looked over at Boca, his calm, stoic demeanor suddenly standing out against my chaotic emotions.
"You’ve never been in love before, have you?" I asked, my voice finally leveling out into a calm, curious tone.
Boca shifted his weight, staring out the window. "I have. Once in my life. And it ended incredibly badly."
I blinked, genuinely caught off guard. "Really? I honestly didn’t picture you as someone who would have ever been in love before."
"Who the hell is in love?"
The front door kicked open, and Ragnar walked into the house, stopping dead in his tracks as he looked around at the obliterated furniture. "What the actual fuck happened here?"
"I don’t want to talk about it," I snapped at Ragnar, before immediately turning my attention back to Boca. "Go on, Boca. Who have you been in love with? Because now I really want to know."
Boca sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "If telling you this story will get you to stop acting completely crazy and throwing a tantrum, then fine."
"Fine," I said, crossing my arms.
"It happened when I was sixteen," Boca began, his voice devoid of any real warmth. "And he was a little bit older than me."
"He?"
The word left my mouth at the exact same time it left Ragnar’s.
"As in... a man?"Ragnar added, his eyebrows shooting up
"Yes," Boca replied calmly, completely unbothered by our reaction.
"You were into men before?" Ragnar asked, leaning against the doorframe, his interest thoroughly piqued.
"I wouldn’t say I was into men," Boca clarified, his expression completely flat. "But I did love him. Or, at least, I thought I did at the time. Honestly, who cares? He was nice to me, and he was the first person in my entire life who ever showed me a shred of care. So, of course, my naive teenage self thought it was love. And because I was so desperately in love with him, he made me do all of his dirty work. I never complained once."
"So where is he now?" Ragnar asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Dead," Boca said with a perfectly straight face.
I frowned, the tension in the room shifting entirely. "What happened to him?"
"I killed him," Boca stated, his voice completely chilling in its lack of hesitation. "I caught him molesting a woman. A man like that doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of this world. So, I ended him. And that was the official end of my love story."
Ragnar stared at him for a long moment before letting out a low whistle. "Have you ever been with another man since then?"
"No," Boca said firmly. "And I’m not interested in men."
"Oh. Disappointed," Ragnar joked, shaking his head with a smirk.
Boca completely ignored him, turning his intense, unyielding gaze back onto me. "Lucian, listen to me. Do not let Aiden’s words get to you. You know exactly what we have planned for tonight. We are on, and you absolutely cannot lose your focus."
I took a deep, steadying breath, feeling the absolute weight of our mission crashing back into reality. The rage was still there, burning a slow hole in my stomach, but the distraction was gone.
"I won’t," I promised, my jaw clenching. "I won’t lose focus."
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