Chapter Forty

She shouldn’t have found out this way.

It was strange how the same eyes that looked at him in love, adoration and longing could look at him now with anger and hate and something he never wanted to see in her eyes… fear.

She was afraid of him now, she was afraid of them all, she had told Shawn to stay away from her like they weren’t the best of friends a few hours ago.

Shawn was gloomy; this was the only life he knew, the only life all of them knew. Xavier’s life had been planned out for him, even from birth, it wasn’t a choice.

Seven years ago, when he met Shawn, by then he was eighteen while Shawn was only thirteen, he had been fascinated, how in their dark world a boy could still laugh and crack jokes like everything was fine, those weren’t at all characters of a child raised in the Mafia, so he had gotten close to him, little did he know that all his smiles, all his jokes were an attempt to run away from the reality that tormented him daily.

One day, he had gone to visit Shawn, onl