Chapter 51: Psychotic

Fabio’s POV

The dead man walking spoke first. "Hi."

Marco raised his brow in that exact way he always did whenever he was intrigued or taken aback.

"Hello," Marco answered, and his smirk wiped away instantly. That was supposed to be my job. I was genuinely going to erase this stranger from existence in no time.

"Are you... alone?" the corpse asked, his voice dripping with a sickeningly sweet, fake tone.

As the man asked the question, Marco shifted his gaze upward, looking right in my direction. I wanted to hear his answer, but Marco remained totally quiet.

"If you are, then..."

I stepped forward before that dead man could get another word out of his mouth.

"No, he is not," I uttered, trying as hard as I could to sound entirely natural and completely unbothered.

I did not care what else the man wanted to say. I reached out, grabbed the collar of Marco’s leather jacket, and dragged him along with me, walking in whatever direction as long as it took us far away from that spot, far away from everyone, far from any soul having any thoughts of him.

We had barely walked a short distance when a familiar voice called out behind us.

"Fabio!"

I looked back to find myself face-to-face with a group of my friends, the same ones I had been conversing with earlier.

"Yo, man. You ditched us earlier without a single explanation, and now you wanna do it all over again? We haven’t seen you for months, dude," one of them said.

I let out a quiet sigh, preparing to excuse myself away from them, but then Diego, a long-time pal of mine, stepped right into the middle of the circle.

"You aren’t even going to introduce tonight’s champ to us?" Diego said, turning his head to look directly at Marco. "He has got serious skills. He defeated Mad Cosimo, man. Mad Cosimo!"

I turned to glance at Marco and caught something subtle right away. He was smiling lightly on the surface, yes, but I caught that specific side-eye that I knew all too well meant pure dislike. And that look was directed squarely at Diego.

"Well then," I said, turning back toward the guys with a quick shift in plan. "Party at my place tonight."

"Now that’s the Fabio I remember," Diego said, laughing as the other guys chimed in with agreement.

"I’ll be bringing a few other guys along as well," I added.

"Of course, man. The more the merrier."

Once Diego and the rest of the group had finally turned around and left, I turned back toward the man standing right beside me. His smile had completely fallen now, his intense gaze still fixed on the path where their disappearing figures had gone.

"All good?" I asked, finally drawing his attention straight back to me.

I fully expected him to flash that smirk right back at me again, but he just glared instead. I watched his eyes flash and blink repeatedly for a moment, as if his mind was working through something heavy.

Then he finally spoke up. "You are still injured. No partying tonight. Let’s go home."

He even turned his entire body away, ready to walk off, but I reached out, yanked him back by the jacket, and forced him to stand right in front of me again.

"I’ll stay put. No drinking, no mischief," I murmured, keeping my voice low.

"No, you won’t," he answered back almost instantly.

I searched his eyes carefully. There was not a single trace of amusement in them now. That realization made my heart swell with absolute pride. I finally had him down, I had him completely cornered, and for once, he was not even attempting to hide it. He had clearly misunderstood the situation between Diego and me.

"If I say I will stay put, then I will," I pushed further.

Marco bit down on his lower lip hard, as if he was forcibly restraining himself from speaking his mind out loud.

I smirked inwardly, then added fuel to the fire. "Diego knows I have an injury anyway, so he won’t let me mess around."

Marco parted his lips to say something, and he even reached his hand out, looking like he was about to grab me by the neck, but he abruptly stopped himself midway through the motion.

Giving me one final glance, he muttered a single word. "Whatever."

Then he spun right around on his heel and began walking away from me fast. He was mad. He was deeply bothered by this. He was losing his sanity just like I had lost mine earlier, and I loved every single bit of it. It made my head feel completely blissful, almost like I was already high off a substance. A highly addictive substance called Marco.

"Marco," I called out after him as I rushed over in his direction. "Wait!"

He did not slow down or stop walking. I increased my pace, cutting ahead of him until I stood directly in front of his path, blocking him entirely.

"What do you want? Your friends are waiting for you over there. Don’t keep them waiting."

The way he gulped right at the end of that sentence, the way his brows knitted together in frustration, and the way his hands clenched tightly into fists; what could I possibly say right now that would not make me sound entirely psychotic?

I reached out, grabbed him firmly by the throat, and forced him to look at me, and only at me. And he actually did it

Leaning in so low, holding him so close, and speaking deliberately slow, I asked him, "Are you jealous, Marco?"

I did not blink a single time, refusing to miss even the smallest reaction from him to my question. His eyes flickered once, and his lips pressed tightly together in a faint tremor, looking as though they were practically itching to say something out loud, but he was stubbornly refusing to let the words escape.

Well, I was going to make him say it no matter what.

I added, "Say it. Does the thought of Diego touching me bother you? Tell me... and I just might tell you how insane I went when I saw you walking away with Alessia."

Marco parted his lips, letting a short, shaky breath escape into the narrow space between us.

With his lips still trembling faintly against my touch, he finally said, "I wanna kill him."