Chapter 15 #2
His gaze locked on mine, sharp as a blade.
“Then I’ll bleed before I let it happen again.
” His tone was savage. “Twice I cut you where you were weakest, and it won’t happen a third time.
I can hate you. I can make you suffer. But I won’t cheat, and I won’t break you with lies about your body.
Those two lines, I don’t cross. Everything else—every punishment, every war between us—is endless. ”
His vow seared through me, as terrifying as it was intoxicating—the devil swearing loyalty, obsession wearing the mask of devotion.
I swallowed, stunned, his intensity shaking me. “You said I’ve been in your head since you were nineteen,” I whispered, probing. “Does that mean you haven’t... slept with anyone since then?”
His jaw tightened, his eyes darkening to midnight.
“No woman’s touched me since then—no woman’s turned me on except you, Penelope.
You don’t understand the hold you have. I hate that I hate you.
I hate that I forced you into this marriage, dragged you into my hell just to break you. I hate that revenge blinds me.”
He leaned closer, his breath hot, his voice a growl. “But believe this—I crave every curve, every roll, every mark on your skin.”
I stared, speechless, his words a storm of obsession, self-loathing, and a truth I couldn’t bear to hear.
He hated himself more than he hated me, and it drove me mad—my heart torn between his worship and his cruelty.
“So who is Seraphina?” I pressed, the name tearing out of me, a wound that wouldn’t heal.
His shoulders went rigid as he pulled back, lowering himself into the leather chair behind his desk, his silence a fortress.
“And are you saying you are a virgin, Dmitri?” I pressed, my voice sharp, demanding, my chest tightening with the audacity of the question.
“Get out of my office,” he growled. “I’ve had enough of your insolence.”
“I won’t just leave,” I snapped, trembling but resolute. “If I walk away, I’ll make sure you bleed for it. I can’t stand this—being forced here, tormented, and now your lies, your cheating you’ll never admit to, while I’m shackled with your ring.”
He stiffened, fingers clenching into fists, every muscle taut. “Three seconds, Penelope. Then you vanish—or I’ll remove your legs from under you myself.”
The air grew electric. Before I could react, a dagger flew from his hand. My scream caught in my throat as it embedded in the wall inches from my face, quivering.
“You test me?” His voice dropped to a deadly growl.
He drew another dagger, the blade catching the dim light. “One more move like that, and I won’t miss. You won’t leave my office breathing.”
I swallowed hard, my chest tight with fear and fury.
The device in my pocket burned against my leg, a bitter temptation. I stormed out, my pulse hammering.
Night swallowed the estate as I sank into the cinema room.
The screen flickered with a movie I couldn’t focus on, my mind spinning. My thoughts kept snapping back to the device in my pocket—plant it, betray him, and maybe finally save myself.
But his obsessions, his possessive vows, clashed violently with the cruelty I’d felt firsthand, leaving me trapped in indecision, my heart and mind warring over what choice to make.
The movie flickered and bored me, the dialogue muted beneath the roar of my thoughts.
I rose, pacing the marble halls.
My steps slowed outside Dmitri’s study when I caught his voice, low and venomous, slicing through the air.
“I bought my wife the same perfume you wear,” he said, every syllable sharp, deliberate. “At least now, when she walks in, I can pretend it’s you—and not a stampede.”
The words struck like knives to my chest, twisting with a cruelty I hadn’t expected.
My knees buckled, and the marble blurred beneath me as my body gave way.
Three nights ago, he had handed me a velvet box, inside it a crystal bottle of perfume—expensive, rare.
I remembered the warmth that had flooded me, the foolish spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, he was softening, that he had remembered my love for perfume, my obsession with scents.
I had cradled it in my palms like a treasure, smiling in the privacy of my room, inhaling it as though it were proof that beneath the monster, the boy I loved still lingered.
Now the truth gutted me.
It hadn’t been thoughtfulness.
It hadn’t been him reaching for me, remembering me. It had been Seraphina. Always Seraphina.
My gift was nothing more than her shadow wrapped in glass and ribbon, and my joy nothing more than a cruel joke.
The realization split me open. My stomach heaved, my chest seized, and tears burned hot down my cheeks as the memory of my own happiness turned rancid inside me, humiliation sinking its claws into my heart.
He continued, relentless, his voice the blade that wouldn’t stop cutting. “I’ll divorce her, send her back to her family, and take you as my wife once she bears my first child. That’s her only purpose here—beyond suffering for her sins and the shame of her parents.”
The wall scratched against my palms as I slumped to the floor, my body trembling violently. My heart raced, my lungs burning—not from asthma, but from panic, from the betrayal that hit me sharper than any physical blow.
The words clawed at me, gnawed at my chest, each syllable a reminder that Dmitri—the man I feared, hated, and still somehow longed for—could mock me in private, elevate another, and crush me with a single sentence.
Tears streamed freely, hot and helpless, tracing the curves I had always hated, soaking the fabric of my sleeves.
My body shivered, wracked with both fury and despair.
I hated how small I felt, hated the rush of betrayal that left me weak and exposed.
He had promised—sworn—that he wouldn’t mock me, wouldn’t body-shame me again. Yet here he was, speaking to someone else, a woman I was certain was Seraphina, laughing at me without shame.
All of it crashed over me at once—Antonio’s cruelty, the woman’s taunts at the ball, Dmitri’s hypocrisy—every insult cutting deeper than the last.
My stretch marks, my curves, my rolls—the things he had once called beautiful—felt grotesque, flaws branded into my skin.
Every promise, every twisted claim of ownership, felt like chains tightening around my soul.
I pressed my palms against the marble, grounding myself, hating how my body betrayed me—shaking, trembling, helpless.
My chest heaved as sobs wracked me, every inhale a sharp stab, every exhale a ragged whisper of pain. And yet, beneath it all, anger simmered, fiery.
When I crawled back to the cinema room, curling into a leather seat, I let the more tears fall freely, the hot streaks a release, a rebellion.
My hands gripped the edges, knuckles white, my body shaking with a mix of rage, and disbelief.
Hours—or maybe minutes—passed in a haze of grief and rage.
When my headache and sobs subsided enough for clarity, resolve hardened inside me like steel.
I stood, wiping at my tears, and marched to the bedroom.
Dmitri’s desk loomed in the dim light, his phone and wallet casually placed on the wardrobe’s edge.
I reached into my pocket, fingers brushing the cold metal of the device.
My pulse spiked, fear and determination coiling together as I pressed it against his phone, the magnetic snap reassuringly silent.
The deed done, I fled to the bathroom, the marble floor chilling under my bare feet.
I let the hot water cascade over me, burning away my tears but not the ache in my chest.
Every drop felt like defiance, every shiver like a heartbeat of freedom.
When I returned to the bedroom, Dmitri and his phone were gone, leaving only the quiet weight of my act and the lingering storm of what might come next.
Hours passed. I must have dozed, drifting between consciousness and a restless, uneasy sleep, only to wake with a start.
The clock glared 3 AM.
He wasn’t on the bed beside me.
The empty space felt like a cavern, swallowing me whole.
He had left me utterly alone—no friends, no warmth, no reassurance—just the suffocating weight of his absence pressing against my chest.
We were married, but there was no comfort in his silence, no acknowledgment of my presence, no trace of humanity.
I was a wife in name only, a vessel for an heir I didn’t want, a pawn in a war whose rules I barely understood.
My heart thudded painfully.
My mind twisted. Was he with Seraphina now?
Her perfume on his skin, her lipstick staining his collar? The thought burned like acid in my chest. Betrayal, jealousy, and a foolish, lingering love for the boy he’d been—sweet, laughing, gentle—tangled with the monster he’d become.
Sleep was impossible.
My eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed on the ceiling as the alarm clock’s red digits glared back like a judge.
When the shrill beep finally sounded, it tore through the silence, dragging me into a day I wasn’t ready to face. My body felt hollow; my soul felt crushed under the weight of gold-plated walls and cold marble floors.
I shuffled to the wardrobe, hands trembling as they reached for a Polaroid I had hidden—a fragment of my past.
Me at fifteen, Dmitri beside me, his smile soft, untainted, his hand holding mine.
I clutched it, tears hot against my cheeks, and with a trembling hand, tore it in half.
The rip echoed in the silence, a visceral punctuation to my heartbreak.
I sank to the floor, the fragments scattered around me like shards of my soul, my sobs stifled but raw.
Depression settled like a lead weight over my chest, a gilded cage that threatened to suffocate me entirely.