Seraphina
Men thought you were stupid. They thought that all women were the same and they could just tell you anything for you to believe it. But you see, I’d learned all too well that with one lie, there was always another you had to tell to cover up the tracks of the other.
To my point, I’d come home early from work, done with clients for the day.
All I wanted was a nice quiet evening with my man.
So I took my shower, started dinner, and began doing the laundry like I always did.
No biggie right? Fucking wrong. My phone rang from the kitchen counter, pulling me out of my routine.
Frowning, I glanced at the screen. It was an unknown number.
Normally I would’ve ignored it, but something told me to answer.
“Hello?” A chuckle came through the speaker.
“Jesus Christ, listen to that. Still answering unknown numbers like a good little girl. Tell me, sweetheart, does Cassian know you’re this easy to get on the phone, or is that privilege still reserved for the men who used to bend you over every available surface?”
My entire body stiffened. “What do you want, Marius? You already took everything from me. There’s nothing left to take.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice dripping with amusement.
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, already regretting answering the phone. “Whatever game you’re playing, I’m not interested.”
“Game?” He laughed, something about the sound made my skin crawl. “Sweetheart, if I was playing a game, I would’ve let you keep living in blissful ignorance. Unfortunately for you, I’m one of the few people in your life willing to tell you the truth.”
“Right, because you’ve suddenly grown a conscience.”
“No,” he replied. “I’ve just always found it amusing how everybody keeps lying to you while pretending it’s for your own good.”
“Get to the point, Marius.”
“Oh, I plan to.” The smugness in his voice was impossible to miss. “Because I know for a fact Cassian hasn’t told you the role he played in your father finding out that you let me fuck you every which way from Sunday.”
My stomach dropped. “Shut up.”
“I bet he also hasn’t told you who was behind burning down your mother’s clinic, either.”
“You’re lying.” I gripped the edge of the counter until my knuckles turned white. “I would never believe a word you say.”
“Wouldn’t you?” he taunted. “That’s funny, because lies usually make people defensive. The truth makes them curious.” I hated how calm he sounded. Hated how a small part of me was already wondering.
“Fine. Whatever you say. Check his phone if you don’t believe me.”
My chest tightened. “Fuck you, Marius. Don’t call me anymore or I’ll go to the police and let them know you’ve made contact with me. You know they’re still hunting you, right?”
A dark laugh echoed through the line. “Whatever you say, love. I’ve said my piece.
Be sure to have the night you deserve.” The call disconnected.
I stared down at my phone long after the screen went dark.
Every instinct told me Marius was a liar, a manipulator, and certified psychopath.
He was truly the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
But as much as I hated him, one thing about Marius had always remained true: the bastard never dropped information without a reason.
Trying to shake it off, I tossed my phone onto the counter and went back to what I was doing. It didn’t help. His words followed me from room to room, lingering in the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried to ignore them.
Check his phone if you don’t believe me.
The thought surfaced again and again, impossible to silence. By the time I made it to the laundry room, the thought was lodged so deep in my head that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Cassian had insisted we upgrade our phones since mine was considered outdated in the tech world, so I went with it.
While I traded in my old phone for a new one, Cassian had decided to keep his old phone but still upgrade to newest iPhone as well. Which meant he was always leaving the old one behind. So imagine my suprise as I'm washing his clothes, and find the phone buried inside the pocket of his jeans.
Taking it out, I tossed the rest of his clothes into the washer and plugged the phone up.
I wish it would’ve stopped there, but as nosey as I am, I still decided to snoop through the phone anyway.
Of course, like a dummy, he was logged into the same iCloud account on both devices, which meant everything synced from one phone to the other.
The moment I read the threads between him and Marius while Marius was supposed to be locked up, my entire world tilted.
He’d convinced me to stitch the tracker in his bag in case it ever got lost. I never knew it was helping Marius stay one step ahead of the people looking for him. Then the messages between him and Kade were no better.
Conversations about the clinic. Conversations about things I should’ve known.
Group chats between him, Kade, and Yayo talking about me, talking about my mother, talking about situations that directly affected my life while I sat in the dark clueless as hell.
It hurt me to my core finding out somebody I loved and cared about would go to these lengths to cover up a lie and actively participate in things that hurt me.
All the hard work I’d done to bring myself out of that dark place suddenly felt pointless.
The therapy. The healing. The rebuilding.
The days I forced myself out of bed. The nights I cried myself to sleep and still showed up to work the next morning pretending I was okay.
Every bit of progress I’d made seemed to come crashing down around me because the one person I trusted most had been standing in the middle of it all.
Not knowing what else to do with the pain, I destroyed everything.
I smashed the dishes, wrecked the furniture, tore down the pictures, and ruined every memory attached to them.
Anything my hands could reach became collateral damage.
By the time I stopped, my body hurt, my throat burned from crying, and his house looked like a crime scene.
When there was nothing left to break, I packed my things and left.
Now I sat alone in a rundown motel room staring at a voice recorder and a stack of papers I’d spent hours putting together.
Every secret I knew, every question I had, every connection that didn’t make sense, every reason I believed people should start paying attention.
If something happened to me, somebody would know where to start looking.
The room was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner struggling to stay alive.
Happy memories kept flashing through my mind against my will.
Cassian laughing in the kitchen. Cassian bringing me food when I forgot to eat.
Cassian holding me when I thought my entire life was over.
Cassian reminding me I was worth loving when I couldn’t see it for myself.
The problem was that both versions of him were real.
The man who stayed up with me through panic attacks.
The man who made sure I ate when depression hollowed me out.
The man who reminded me I deserved better than the life I’d been handed.
And the man who lied. The man who looked me in the eyes every day while helping bury the truth.
The weight of those two realities colliding inside my head felt unbearable.
Tears streamed down my face as I sat on the edge of the bed clutching the recorder in my hands.
I wasn’t angry anymore, screaming anymore, or breaking things anymore.
I was tired—tired of secrets, tired of lies, tired of everybody deciding what I deserved to know, and tired of rebuilding my life only for somebody else to come along and set fire to it.
More happy memories flashed behind my eyes as I sat there, frozen between everything I survived and everything I no longer had the strength to carry.
Faces, laughter, promises, moments that once made life feel worth fighting for drifted through my mind like scenes from another lifetime.
For a second, I let myself live in those memories, clinging to them the way a drowning person reaches for air.
My thoughts drifted to my parents and the things I wished I could say. To all the questions that would never be answered. The hurt, the betrayal, the disappointment, the exhaustion—it had all piled on top of me for so long that I could no longer tell where one pain ended and another began.
Tears slipped silently down my face as I closed my eyes.
I opened them, grabbed the rope, stood on top of the bed, tying the knot around the ceiling fan and tugging to make sure it was a firm hold.
I then tied the noose around my neck thinking about my parents before I closed my eyes and did the one thing I’d been thinking about since all this started.
“I just want peace,” I whispered.
That was the last thought that crossed my mind before everything around me disappeared into darkness.