My Fault - Adrienette FF

The Beating

ADRIEN

I couldn't stop thinking of my fist crashing into that fool. The whole dinner, I'd been fantasizing about slamming him into the wall and using him as a punching bag.

Luka couldn't be with Marinette—that was that.

I didn't want anyone to be with her, actually, and I didn't care to think about why. I couldn't take my eyes off her the whole meal. The way she laughed, so different from me, how easy she was to talk to, that way she unconsciously rubbed that part of her neck where she was tattooed, all of that drove me crazy the whole night.

After seeing her leave with Luka, I had gotten up and taken Chloe home, and I now found myself on the way to a bar. I couldn't stick around Chloe's place; it was unbearable. I'd been spending too much time with her these past few weeks. If I didn't want things getting serious, I'd need to find another girl to hang out with.

I headed for a club I'd been to a lot in recent years, in a rough part of town where many less than respectable people hung out.

The door guys knew me, so I didn't have to wait in line.

Inside, the music was deafening, and the blinking lights gave a strange, even eerie glow to the sweaty bodies dancing there.

Who knew what they were all high on.

I walked over to the bar and ordered a whiskey while glancing around at the crowd.

Since the year I'd lived with Nino in that neighborhood far from my father, his money, and everything the Agreste name represented, I'd found my place among these people. They respected me, they accepted me, and they were the perfect escape route from everything I hated about the life I was now being forced to live.

I'd run away as soon as I'd turned eighteen. Since Mom had left, my relationship with dad had dwindled away to nothing, and I didn't think anyone would care if I just up and disappeared and tried to go it alone.

But Dad had wound up sending his security chief, who we had nicknamed "Gorilla" to find me. It had been ironic, seeing a tall bulked guy in a suit showing up at the house I'd been living in then, and even more so when he'd realized that if he wanted to make me go back, he'd need an army.

Gorilla had worked for my father since I was a kid, and he knew me well enough to recognize there was no way he could force me to go home against my will. But then the thing with my sister had happened, and I'd needed my father's help.

The day after Gorilla showed up, all my credit cards had been canceled, and my checking account had been blocked. I'd had to get a job at Nino's dad's garage to make a living. But I had never felt freer or more myself.

Life in that neighborhood had been tough.

I'd gotten the shit kicked out of me as soon as I'd shown up there, and I'd realized that I would never make it, being a millionaire's son, unless I turned into one of them. I had started training every day without fail: no one was going to put their hands on me again without knowing I'd hit back. Nino had shown me how to defend myself, how to throw a punch, and how to take one. My first real fight had come two months after I'd started training. I'd left Raoul laid out on the ground covered in blood, and that had gotten me the respect of all present.

The races and the gambling had come a while later, and Raoul and I had made a truce, but that meant people started choosing sides. There were Nino and our guys and I and then Raoul and his dealers and delinquents.

He knew it worked out better for him to be cordial with us, especially after my father got us out of jail when we'd been charged with disturbing the peace.