Sinful (WICKED #2) | ✓

30

WHEN HE CLOSED HIS eyes, Levi could almost still hear the ringing in his ears as his head hit the floor of his living room. That man was yelling, the stench of alcohol clinging to him and expression scratched out in black again. He remembered a lot about his youth, but never his face. It didn't matter in the end, because every time he thought about him he felt like bruises bloomed on his skin. Even the mention of his name alone disgusted him.

Vince, the man had said, but he remembered that name being said a different way. Every time he had heard it it had been screaming, pleading, like it was the only piece of humanity of him his mother could hold onto.

"Please, Vince," she always begged, eyes never seeming to fully focus even when she was panicked," he is your son."

She should have known better than to say anything at all. With or without a name, a monster remained a monster. He might have been his father, but if it was up to Levi, that man could choke on the same blood they had running in their veins. The resolution tasted like iron between his teeth when he came home one day, finally strong enough to take him on, only to find he had left.

There had been no big weight lifted off his shoulders, no spectacular ending at all. No, that man simply had hit his mother, said he was done with all of it and left. Just fucking left. He hadn't even had the chance to yell at him, to say anything at all. Not like there were still a lot of words to spare between them. There were many other things that man had left empty in their house, Levi's heart one of them.

Yet here that chapter of his life was again, opened up in the form of a man he had never seen before, but who apparently knew him all too well.

"You look exactly like your father," he grinned, the both of them knowing exactly that was no compliment at all.

"Fucker," Levi hissed, stepping forward.

"You might think twice about hitting me," the man said, tilting his head upwards," your father owes me a lot of money, you know."

"That's great," Levi said," add this to his credit then."

Without any hesitation he punched the man in the face, knocking his head against the floor from the sheer impact. His vision was red as the man's words repeated. You look exactly like your father. The thought made him want to claw away at his skin, until nothing of that monster was left.

"You -" the man spat, dizzily pushing himself up," I am going to call Vince right this second, maybe he can teach you some manners."

For a moment Levi froze. A part of him didn't care at all about that man anymore and another was still enraged, burning inside his mind until the heat was warm enough to keep him up at night. But most importantly, there was that part of him which was still weak and small, that part of him which remembered him hiding away under his bed as an eight-year-old.

Fuck, he hated that part of him.

Someone softly pried open his fingers, his nails pressed so hard in his palms he had made himself bleed without noticing. He looked up, eyes locking with Eleanora, and finally breathed out again.

"You want me to make him shut up?" she said, looking at him in that warm way she always did, the one which made him want to sweep her off her feet right there and then.

"Does your mother know you're hanging with these kinds of thugs?" the man said, clicking his tongue distastefully," what was her name again? Vince never mentioned it. I suppose he doesn't care about her."

"Levi."

His temper had flared up again, but the arrival of one of his best friends made him able to focus again. Will seemed to have caught enough to know what was going on, Mia behind him. Usually any crowd that gathered would make him annoyed, but the three people he cared most for were here, so that was calming enough in it's own. Still, that didn't mean he wasn't going to give him a concussion for talking about his mother.