***

I didn't scream, nor cry. I didn't get angry even, I just felt numb. Like fucking always.

I forced a smile on my face, even with Courtney's smug smile. I watched as she leaned in and kissed Damien, her tongue practically getting shoved down his throat. Even when I saw him grimace at her, it still hurt. Good god did it hurt.

"Come here." I looked back over to Charles who held his hand out, sighing as I gave him mine. She pulled me into a hug and kissed my temple, brushing some of my hair from my face. "Play along."

He leaned lower and turned my face, making it so my hair covered our lips. His lips were centimeters away from my face with a mischievous smile on them, his eyes practically sparkling. He stuck his tongue out and poked my nose with it, earning a squeal from me, a very uncharacteristic squeal, might I say.

"He's absolutely livid and I'm pretty sure he'll stab me in my sleep later, but that was fun." He spoke lowly, that same grin spreading across his face.

"You idiot." I mutter before turning and making my way up the school steps. I could feel every stare on us, practically burning through my skin. I turned when I hit the doors and saw the face of Damien, his jaw clenched and his face full of such indescribable rage.

Why? I had absolutely no idea.

***

All day I felt his eyes on me, those dark eyes that haunted my very existence. I finally slipped away to the library, to my happiness, and immediately inhaled the smell of the books before me. I grinned as I picked up one of the worn down books I had loved so much, Jane Eyre.

I grinned as I took the book and walked towards the back of the library, my little corner that I had practically taken over. I moved to sit when an arm snaked around me, pressing me to a chest. My heat began to race as I shoved my elbow back and was met with a groan, thrusting my leg back to stomp on whoevers foot was behind me.

I spun around and blindly hit whoever it was with my thick and hard book, reveling in the sound of the thick pages making contact with skin. I kept hitting as my eyes shut and memories flashed through me, my skin crawling and my heart breaking.

"Wait! Fern it's me!" I stilled, my eyes cracking open to find Damien standing in front of me with his hands out.

I pressed myself into my corner, trying to put some distance between us. "What do you need Damien?"

He rubbed his skin slightly while watching me, his eyes practically studying my very soul. "Are you sleeping with Charles?"

"Are you sleeping with Cortney?" I retorted, my teeth grinding upon each other.

He practically growled at me, his eyes narrowing over to me. "You don't understand."

"Then make me understand!" I flung my hands up as I spoke, my book still in my hands. Exhaustion racked through my bones and muscles, reminding me that I hadn't slept except for the few hours I had been passed out from the night before.

His hand reached out to touch my cheek, causing me to flinch back wildly. His hand fell back to his side, his eyes watching mine. "Did Charles fucking do that?"

I snorted, shaking my head as I looked down. "Not that it's any of your goddamn business, but no, he didn't."

He looked conflicted, the gears in his head turning. He bit his lip in thought, sending pleasurable shivers down my spine. Good Lord was I losing it. I practically wanted to jump Damien right here in the fucking library, a school library none the less!

"Was that your art in the lobby?" I gave him a soft smile, before nodding slowly. "I always forgot how beautifully you could paint."

"If you're just going to play with my heart then I suggest you leave Damien." I watched him let out a breath before his eyes fell, his body turning. My heart broke all over again today, watching as he walked away.

My Damien. My beautiful Damien.

***

Damien

Fern Donnelly somehow managed to weasel into my heart in a matter of seconds.

From the moment I met her in my own car, she figured out a way to get over the icy fortress I considered my heart. She didn't even have to say anything, just look at me with her wild and exotic eyes. I had known her for close to a month now, and I was ashamed to admit it —

I had painted her, over and over again.

My attic was filled with canvases covered in her face, her eyes, her hair, the way her curves filled the linen covered canvas. I could practically feel her under my body in my own California King bed she loved so much. The way her breasts would shake, the way her body would taste, it made me want to groan and keep her locked in my room until my back ached with her fingernail scratches and her throat filled with my name in her breathless moan.

It probably wasn't good to get a hard on in math class, but here I fucking was. All because of Fern.

I had to push her away for her own safety. Riley was a lower classed leader, but I knew others already had their sights on my love. I received notes days before our actual date, but had dismissed them as mindless banter from pathetic leaders trying to intimidate me.

My gang was ruthless, the Asher Noir gang was known for the torture of our enemies and the deals we made. I'll be perfectly honest, gang life was not just pretty guns and teenage bad boys. It was the shipment of drugs and guns, the slaughter of innocent lives that didn't deserve anything they received.

None of the families did.

My family had received our own personal hell, almost all of it from my father. He never raised a hand to us, nor to my mother, but instead whipped us with his tongue. We were never good enough, never tough enough, never ruthless enough for his old Italian ways.

My mother left him soon after the first time his hand made contact with me, running away and escaping with me to his family in Italy. I came back when he died and left his gang to me in my adolescence, but left my mother behind in Venice where she had met a poor Gondola driver, but loved him unconditionally.

I hope one day she can meet Fern, my little Fern.

She truly wasn't little, standing at 5'8, but I still towered over her at 6'4. She had the bosom woman paid thousands for and the curves of a goddess, although she typically tried to hide them away and surpass them. She had the most luxurious dark hair and vivid eyes that shined to eloquently, I would never be able to express the pure beauty of them.

She didn't know how beautiful she truly was, and often hid behind a curtain of hair. She pulled pranks and chased fires and was so sarcastic it drove me wild, but she still sent my heart aflame all the same.

But the worst thing was the pain she held deep within her, that she thought no one noticed. To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't as creepy as I probably was. I spent every waking moment in my classes watching her, watching her strong eyes glaze over and the facade she put up crumble.

She would get this far off look deep within her eyes, like she was empty and numb. I didn't know what she had been through, what she had put up with, but it somehow had broke her. I wanted so desperately for her to open up to me, to show me any emotions besides the ones she kept on repeat throughout her day.

She didn't think I noticed the nightmares she got, even while in my arms. She didn't think I saw the faint scars that ran along her jaw line, or the small inch long one at her hairline. I didn't ask, because it was hers to tell. I wouldn't push her, couldn't push her.

If Charles was the one to give her the bruise along her cheekbone, I would kill him. Torture him until he begged for mercy, then splatter his blood all over the basement wall. I would need a new third in command, but I couldn't care less.

I stood before a new canvas hung up right in front of our art class, a black silhouette illuminate with flowers littering the ground below the dancing man. It looked familiar, but it was stuck at the tip of my tongue and I couldn't process whatever the hell it was.

"Like the painting I made of you?" It was a nasal scratching voice that surely haunted the nightmares to the worst men, although I'm not exactly sure what I had done in a past life to receive it myself.

"There is no one around us, I do not have to put up this act with you Courtney." I practically growled out her name, wrenching the hand she had snaked around my arm off.

She scrunched up her plastic face before me, her ugly mud colored eyes glaring back at me. "If you want me to make sure my daddy keeps your little plant girl off of the databases, and keep her hidden from your enemies, you will do it whether we are in public or not."

It seems I sold my soul to the devil, or should I saw the daughter of the devil, to protect my own angel. Or maybe I should say my own little vixen, even if we hadn't come close to reaching that point in our relationship. She was still mine, even if I had to keep up this pathetic act.

Courtney's father was a well known hacker to multiple gangs and mafias alike, although he wasn't as well known nor as talented as the hacker known as F.D. Whoever he was only came to help when he saw the gang was truly desperate and would pay handsomely, and he never disappointed. We had used him twice or so, and both times he had done more than requested for the same price.

"I sincerely doubt you painted that." I muttered as she brought herself under my arm, my hand reluctantly wrapping itself around her waist as we made our way into art.

"Well I did, so you better believe it." Courtney snapped at me, my temper almost immediately boiling under my skin. The only girl, the only person, that could snap at me like that was currently sitting in the corner of the art room trying to keep up her walls she surrounded herself with.

What I would do to be able to climb up those walls and encompass her heart within my hands, to give her mine. I couldn't say I loved her yet, well, maybe I did; I wasn't entirely sure. I had never known love, even from my mother who had done the best she could with the hand she was dealt, but I think the closest I had ever come to feeling was with Fern.

She didn't judge my actions, didn't hate the fact I was the leader to a pathetic gang. She didn't hate the way my cold demeanor lashed out at her at every turn, purely because of the fact I was afraid. At the very first sight I fell for her, the dark night while I slept in my car, purely by accident.

I skipped my last period to take a nap, and I was truly grateful for the mission we completed the night before that kept me up so late. I didn't believe in fate until that day, nor had I believed I had done anything good enough in my life to earn her crashing into my demented life.

As I sat in my art class, staring at the canvas before me, it dawned on my where I knew the painting from.

She had woken up late in the night from a nightmare, and I couldn't think of a way to comfort her. Instead, I put on one of her favorite singers, Stevie Nicks, and danced on the balcony with her until the sun rose behind us. She had planted flowers along the edges days earlier, and they had grown from her green thumb quickly and survived the oncoming frost that the harsh winters brought to us.

Fern had been painting me, maybe as frequently as I had been painting her.

***

A/N: I hope that gives some incite to Damien's brain! I never even intended to write his POV until well later on, and no one had even requested his POV, but it just kinda came out.

I hope you guys like it, because I did. A little more about our little gang leader. (:

Also I just really liked that photo up top, kindness and karma makes the world go round.