Chapter Seven #2
Desperate, utterly shattered, Azar turned to the head of the table.
"Raphael," she whispered, her voice breaking. She looked at the man she loved. The man whose bed she shared. The man whose darkness she had embraced. "Raphael, look at me. You know me. You know my mind. I would never put this family in danger. I would never hurt Odessa. Please. Tell them."
Raphael Castellan-Marchetti slowly raised his eyes.
When Azar looked into them, her heart stopped beating. There was no warmth. There was no secret understanding. There was only the cold, abyss of the Iron Saint.
He looked at her and saw the brilliant data analyst who had flawlessly dismantled the Russian Bratva. He saw the erratic, emotionally driven woman who had thrown tantrums in his office, who had demanded he listen to her complaints about Laila, who had practically begged for his exclusive attention.
He saw a motive. And he saw his dead cousin.
"You warned me about the Ferros," Raphael said, his voice a low, mechanical scrape that lacked any trace of humanity. "You stood in my quarters and demanded I send them away. And when I refused, you told me they were a security risk. It seems you were determined to prove yourself right."
"Raphael, no..." Azar breathed, the words barely making it past her lips. He didn't believe her. He was abandoning her to the wolves.
"If you can prove your device was mirrored," Ezra interjected coldly, "if you can provide the forensic logs that exonerate you, we will review them. But the data on this table is damning, Azar. It points to you."
"How can I prove it when you have already branded me guilty?" Azar cried, her voice echoing off the stone walls. "You have built a narrative out of gossip and my past mistakes! I didn't pull the trigger!"
A sudden, sharp movement caught her eye.
Beatrice Marchetti-Rossalini had risen from her chair. The grieving mother moved with a haunting, ethereal silence, crossing the floor until she stood directly in front of Azar. Beatrice’s face was hollowed out, her elegant features twisted by an agony so intense, it was difficult to look at.
Azar swallowed hard, her chest heaving. "Beatrice, I am so sorry. I loved Odessa. I didn't—"
Crack.
The sound of the slap was as loud as a gunshot.
The force of the blow snapped Azar’s head violently to the side. Her cheek erupted in a blinding, white-hot sting. She staggered backward, her hand flying to her face, the metallic taste of blood instantly flooding her mouth where her teeth had cut the inside of her cheek.
The room fell into a sudden ringing silence.
Beatrice stood trembling, her hand still raised in the air.
"You loved her?" Beatrice whispered, her voice a ragged, broken hiss.
"You loved nothing but your own obsession.
You brought the monsters to my baby's door because you could not bear the thought of another woman wearing a crown you were never meant to have. "
Azar stood frozen, her hand pressed to her burning face. The physical pain was nothing compared to the catastrophic, shattering realization crashing down upon her.
She looked at Beatrice’s agonizing grief. She looked at Camilla’s disgust. She looked at Vittoria’s patrician fury.
And finally, she looked at Raphael.
He watched her bleed with eyes like flat, black glass.
He felt nothing for her. Ewan had been right.
Every single word the old Scottish groundskeeper had spoken was the horrific truth.
She was not Raphael’s queen. She was not his equal.
She was a convenient body, a tool he utilized until she became a liability.
And the moment the data pointed against her, he had discarded her without a second thought.
The romance novel burned to ash in her mind. There was no prince. There was only a butcher.
The crushing humiliation of the moment stripped away the last remnants of the naive girl who had loved the Iron Saint. The fire died in her hazel eyes, replaced by a cold, hollow void.
Azar did not defend herself. She did not argue. She did not cry.
She slowly lowered her hand from her cheek. She looked at Raphael one last time, a silent, damning gaze that accepted the death of her delusions.
Without a single word, Azar turned on her heel and walked out of the war room. The oak doors swung shut behind her, echoing like the lid of a coffin.
She walked through the grand corridors of the manor, ignoring the armed guards who watched her with suspicion. She pushed open the brass doors of the main entrance and stepped out into the driving rain.
She didn't run. She walked with a slow, mechanical precision, letting the freezing rain soak through her clothes, washing away the warmth, washing away the scent of the manor. The sky above the Castellan estate was a bruising, apocalyptic grey.
She followed the long gravel path toward the edge of the property, her shoes crunching methodically against the stone.
When she reached the small, weathered stone cottage near the tree line, the door was already open.
Ewan stood in the doorway. He didn't ask what happened. He saw the red, swelling handprint on her cheek. He saw the rain plastering her hair to her face. But mostly, he saw the devastating emptiness in her eyes. The girl he had raised was gone. The Don had finally broken her.
Azar stopped at the base of the wooden steps. She looked up at the old man, the rain streaming down her face like a second layer of tears.
"You were right," Azar whispered, her voice hollow, devoid of any warmth or fight.
Ewan let out a tragic sigh. He stepped down into the rain, wrapping his thick, calloused arms around her, pulling her against his chest.
"I know lass," Ewan murmured into her wet hair, holding her tightly as she finally, silently, began to shake. "I know."