NEMESIS

better be joking

“We're late, almost three weeks later than we planned and you're saying it's okay?” she barked, couldn't believe her ears just hearing Mason say that it really wasn't a problem — seemingly carefree.

Oh, is being one of the leaders really like this?

“Calm down, Giuliana. It's not like things won't go smoothly without you, we have Paolo if you forget.”

In fact, she hadn't forgotten that she wasn't the only Consigliere in The Orphic. But leaving her job to be handled by Paolo worried her, not because she didn't trust him. But since she wasn't used to this, usually when she left she would take all her work with her and Sebastian — now she was alone and not doing her task.

She left her job behind and was kept busy having fun. What the f**k?

“I know, but I feel anxious even though Sebastian says everything is safe and under control, even though the commotion between the Rogue Mafia and the members of The Orphic continues.” she replied, “we have to go back, it's unethical for us to go on vacation while the others are struggling to keep their lives.”

Mason was silent, his mouth shut tight and he just stared at her deeply for a split second — for some reason. Ah, is she too talkative?

“Alright, let's go back the day after tomorrow.” he said in a low voice, “only if you want to spend the whole day with me tomorrow.”

Oh, even in the midst of the chaos going on in their hometown, Mason still thinks about spending time with her — tell her, he is joking, right?

Yeah, he’d better be joking.

So now, they are strolling around, they leave in the morning by car and sometimes walk after parking their car. Mason took her to the top for paragliding, took her out to a restaurant, then bought her lots of chocolate — not only that, he also let her buy whatever she liked and wanted.

Mason pampered her.

It feels weird.

“Why?” she muttered under her breath, her head looking straight at Mason who was focused on driving.

Her mind kept wondering, because she didn't understand why Mason was this good to her — she remembered that he hated anyone who had anything to do with Darcio and, sadly, she was one of them.

“Why what, Giuliana?”

Her name just slipped out of his mouth smoothly. Strangely, when her name was called she felt a strange turmoil inside her — she wanted to hear her name spoken by the man beside her, it sounded so hot that it made her addicted.

“Practically, I'm a member of the Darcio family and don't you hate us?”

Not only Darcio, Mason blatantly disliked her when she was made Consigliere The Orphic — he didn't say it outright, but the way he looked at her always made her uneasy and understood that he disliked her.

“What if I tell you that I like you?”

She was silent, her mouth was tightly shut – she was speechless, her brain couldn't even process the words that just slipped out of his mouth so easily. While Mason looked her intensely right in the eye.

"I like you." He repeated one more time, then he stood up from his seat and walked over to her. "It's weird, a Lorelai likes someone from Darcio when they say our hatred will never go away, but I mean it."

Darcio and Lorelai's previous never got along, maybe even now after many years of The Orphic being formed. The main rule that exists within their organization does require that each member of the various families get along and not quarrel with each other as they are one family.

But a relationship called hatred will not just disappear, it will not be that easy to disappear, even if it is an organizational rule. Deep down, there will always be something tightly hidden and things like that can never be guessed. The human heart is like the waters of the deep sea – no one will be able to dive into it. But actually, it would be better that way. Because if hearts were easy to dive into, we'd find lots of darker hearts and more monsters the deeper we dive.

"Why?"

That was all that managed to get out of her. She didn't completely understand what and why he was suddenly like that?

This is weird and it would be better if he was joking now.

“Something in me was attracted by something in you.”

Mason explained a lot to her - about how the hatred inside him that was still there grew over time and then magically turned into a feeling of curiosity that filled the recesses of his heart, then the desire to protect her from his nephew just happened and was formed into an unexpected love. Everything happened just like that and it feels strange.

Does love happen that quickly?

"Something like this is very strange to me - I'm used to getting a lot of attention from the opposite s*x, but not with declarations of love." she replied carefully, not wanting to offend any influential person in The Orphic or something bad would happen to her. "So can we take it slowly?"

He chuckled after hearing that, his hand moved to stroking her hair. "Yes, we have to be like that and sorry to startle you with my sudden confession."

But actually she wasn't surprised by his sudden confession like that, she was surprised because Mason actually liked her and she never even thought about that. Her brain didn't even seem to work for a few seconds and she was having a hard time digesting it all -the only thing on her mind was why and how could Mason like her?

The problem was, a Lorelai couldn't possibly like a Darcio.