The Indifference of a Man Forgotten (BOOK I)

Chapter 1- An Unrequited Love

--Dahlia POV--

People always long for the forbidden things, and we desire what is denied to us.

That quote has never felt so real to me until the day I realised that I loved him. For I had made the singular mistake to fall for a man that I knew I could never call mine.

I was an orphan that came from nowhere, he was the heir to the biggest conglomerate in the world. And while I had the privilege to get adopted by a wealthy family and call him my friend, I never dared to ask for more for the sole reason that I felt I never belonged.

Marcos Romano was out of my league.

And he himself knew that. He never saw me as anything more than a friend, and he made it obvious; Why else would he ask me for help with his relationships?

We first met as children; He was a year older than me, and our parents had become new business partners, so we ended up coincidentally meeting, but he was the one that made an attempt to get to know me first since I was too shy to start any conversations.

I've always been an introverted girl, from the moment my birth parents abandoned me up to this day, there is always an underlying fear that if I talk too much people will get bored of me, and I didn't want that, so I simply didn't talk much.

But despite that, Oliver and Nico were my dads', they adopted me and gave me more than I could have dreamed of. The only thing my birth parents gave me was my first name, Dahlia, and I had never even seen a Dahlia, Oliver brought me one on the day that I was adopted and that was the first.

Before being adopted, I was stuck in the orphanage until the age of three, and in that time, I was always the quiet girl that sat at the back of the room, played by herself, and didn't have any friends. But when I was adopted, Oliver and Nico helped me discover myself, things I liked and didn't like, things I was allergic to, and things I feared.

And they realised that I loved the night sky, so they gave me my own room and decorated it with stars and planets in the galaxy. They figured out that I had a severe allergy to strawberries, so they got rid of the fruit from the house and covered my eyes whenever I saw one. And just like that, I grew up with not one, but two, loving fathers.

But despite all of that, I made sure to never ask for too much.

What if there comes a day when they too get bored of me like my birth parents, and abandon me? I knew for a fact that that would never happen, they weren't like that, but that didn't stop the negative thoughts from manifesting.

But I still tried. I hated my pessimism, so I always tried to look on the brighter side. I'd carve a smile onto my face, and put up the perfect, happy persona for all to see, and hopefully one day, it will no longer be an act.

I wasn't perfect, I was far from it. But I was, at the very least, grateful.

"Dahlia!"

Slapping myself back to reality, I jolted up, turning to see Marcos, the cause of my thoughts, standing there with the same cheeky grin that was able to make my heart throb.

"What is it?" I yawned, stretching my arms out to relax my muscles as he came to sit on the desk in front of mine, spinning his chair around so he faced me.

This was his last week in high school before he graduated to go to University in London, and that meant that I had an entire year to try my best in getting over him. Of course, I still plan to stay in contact with him, but it's as they say; Out of sight, out of mind.

"Did you fall asleep during class again?" He ruffled my hair.

"I can't help it. Mr Richards voice is like a soothing lullaby, every time he speaks, I just get tired, and before I know it, I'm sleeping... And I can't believe that nobody woke me up," I glared around the empty room where not a single classmate was present.