What It Means to Love

Book 1: What It Means to Love

NARRATOR

Emiliano Lombardo was a great architect.

His creativity, vision, and tenacity had led him to travel the world and make his construction company one of the most sought after internationally.

He had offices in Italy and Spain. He wanted to expand his company to Russia, and this was accomplished with the help of the least expected partner.

He didn’t care who Nikolay Dmitriev really was—only that his business was 100 percent legal.

He knew that some of his family’s secrets could cost him his life if he didn’t play his cards right.

But when his heart was broken in the worst way, he decided that living a little more on the edge would make him strong enough that no woman would ever play him again.

He decided to change the course of his life. He stopped being the sweet and loving guy he had been and became cold and calculating, capable of going to the ultimate extremes in order to get his way.

He cared little about dying. All he wanted was for women to pay for all the humiliations they had inflicted on him.

He felt that none of them deserved the slightest consideration because they were all liars, deceivers, fakers, manipulators.

Being a multimillionaire tycoon did him no good, as it seemed that he was cursed in matters of love.

Since he had turned twenty-six, he had been trying to start a family, but his dreams had been shattered by unscrupulous females who wanted to enjoy the benefits of his money in the arms of other men.

Gianna had made it very clear why she had strayed. He was too good and accommodating, too affectionate, too tender and romantic.

When he had sex, he always thought of the other person, not daring to be rough. On the contrary, he was always too gentle.

That was what the woman he had loved madly had mocked him for the most.

It had destroyed him to hear her laugh out loud as she said that she liked rough men and to be fucked hard—that he was too much of a teddy bear and he didn’t satisfy her completely.

His hopes had been finally shattered when Gianna had confirmed that she had liked him, but the one she really loved was Patrick.

That she had been with Emiliano because he was a means to an end. That her goal was to gain money and status while getting rid of the wife of the man she really wanted.

When he got out of that relationship, he vowed to be someone else. And in just one year, he had achieved it: there was nothing left of the old Emiliano Lombardo.

Now there was only a dominant man who didn’t allow anyone to talk back to him, especially not women.

***

Petra Dmitrieva was the sister of Nikolay, Emiliano’s new partner. In the past, she had been full of life, sweet, affectionate, always smiling, and very funny.

Her outgoing personality charmed everyone, especially oil tycoon Fiodor Novikov.

They fell in love almost without realizing it, and in less than two years they were happily married. The love they had for each other was clearly visible.

Many envied them for the rapport they reflected when they were together or looked into each other’s eyes.

But as everything in life is not rosy, a fatal accident separated them, breaking Petra’s soul into thousands of pieces.

From that moment on, her life was filled with darkness, a darkness she didn’t want to leave without Fiodor and her baby.

She cried day and night, thinking about how different everything would be if at least one of them had survived.

She didn’t know how she could go on without her husband. She loved him too much, and her chest burned at the memory of how happy they had been.

She couldn’t stop remembering the moment the two of them had gone to her parents’ house to tell them they would be grandparents…

Life sucked. There was no doubt about that. The more one tried to be good and not hurt anyone, the more one suffered.

The harsh reality was that good people suffered, while bad people enjoyed others’ misery.

That was why Petra decided to close herself off from love and everyone around her.

She decided to live to the limit without caring about anything: life had to be lived, after all. She was very aware that at the least expected moment, the grim reaper could arrive and end it all.

She had learned this the hard way, so she had decided to enjoy her existence without worrying about the consequences.

She would not limit herself in anything. Adrenaline would be her only companion, the cure for her immense pain. There was no point in being cautious anyway.

She no longer cared about putting her life at risk by practicing extreme sports, and neither did she care about getting into an accident.

She thought that if she was lucky, she would end up following her husband and baby into death, because without them…nothing was the same.