Amelie (ON HOLD)

XIV

  ᴠɪɴᴄᴇɴᴢᴏ sᴛᴏᴏᴅ ɪɴ the main sitting area of the room, admiring the empty shelves on the wall before he turned to meet my gaze.

   "What are you doing here?" I said coldly and walked further in, ignoring his eyes studying me.

   "I am here to check on you since you seem much calmer. You look beautiful, by the way." He nodded at my dress and hair. I tried not to let it show how much his complement made my stomach flutter. I hated how it did that, but I had no control over it.

   "You look..." he looked gorgeous as always. His white shirt was the kind men in the Victorian era wore and showed off his sculpted and strong torso underneath. His hair was perfectly ruffled and the rings on his fingers showed off his strong but smooth hands, the veins popping out as he tensed them. This was stupid. All of this was. Why was I so attracted to this man when all he's done is terrorise me? Stupid, stupid –

   "Stupid." I said aloud. My eyes went wide at the realisation.

   "Stupid?"  he said with an amused gleam in his eyes. "My love, I've been called many things but never stupid."

   "Well maybe it's time someone did." I muttered harshly under my breath.

   "I am sorry." He said as I walked past him. I let out a bitter laugh.

   "Aziel told you to say that, didn't he?"

   "Amelie, I –"

   "What do you want?" I interjected and turned to him.

   "I said I came to check on you."

   "Well, I'm fine so you can leave now." I said and walked through the pillars to my bedroom. Vincenzo followed.

   "Amelie," he warned. "We need to talk."

   "We are talking." I retorted and kept walking away from him."

   "About us." He still followed. I sat on the edge of my bed and started to take off my heels. The damn buckle wouldn't work.

   "There is nothing to discuss 'about us'." This stupid buckle.

   "On the contrary, there is." Vincenzo walked in front of me and took my hands away from my shoe. "Here." He got down on his knees and helped undo them. "I understand how this has all been hard for you, but we cannot keep denying the obvious."

  I huffed, "What obvious?"

   "Did you or did you not tell my mother that we were 'very happy'." Was he spying on me now? "I wasn't spying, I talked to my mother a few minutes ago."

   "Stop getting inside my head." I snapped. "And maybe I did, I didn't want to upset her."

   "So, you lied to her instead?"

   "Enrica encouraged me to!"

  Vincenzo sighed and took off my shoe before working on the other. "You shouldn't listen to everything my sister says. She is a child, much younger than me and barely knows anything about this world."

   "You belittle her so much." I remarked. "And how much younger is she than you? Haven't you guys been alive for hundreds of years?"

  Vincenzo chuckled softly, "We were born vampires meaning we grow at a very slowly rate. Put it this way, we age one of your years every twelve years. A month is like a day to us." That somehow made sense.

   "So how old would Enrica be?" I questioned.

   "In human years, two-hundred-and-fourteen. But for us, she is a mere seventeen-year-old girl." Two-hundred-and-fourteen?! I wondered how old Vincenzo must be. "So, technically speaking, you are much more mature than her."