Chapter 20 #2
I slammed into the creek with a sickening thud, my bones jarred, my flesh torn. Pain ripped through me. My breath hitched. Blood mingled with water. I lay broken, shuddering, half-drowned in cold and shame.
The sobs that tore from my throat weren’t theatrical this time.
They were real.
“Balthazar will protect me!” I shrieked, my voice warbling with desperation. “He’ll find and save me; you’ll be nothing!”
Zara threw back her head and howled with laughter—loud, merciless, unhinged. “You just called him a monster, you dumb, spineless little whore! And now you think he’s going to ride in and rescue you? After all your lies, your betrayal? After you fucked another man behind his back?”
I curled in on myself in the streambed, the current dragging at my limbs as if nature wanted to pull me under and be done with me. My head spun with panic.
Could I get away?
Would Balthazar even want to save me if he knew the truth? If he knew Zara had returned?
Probably not.
I was so fucking screwed.
I dragged myself from the water, my clothes heavy with shame and frost, my body shaking with pain. I thought—hoped—she might have had enough.
I was wrong.
Zara’s voice cut through the trees like a thunderclap of damnation.
She screamed the names of the men I’d seduced, used, and destroyed. Davide. Tomaso. She bellowed them like a death sentence. She painted my sins in detail—my lies to Balthazar, the betrayal in my voice, the way I gasped Raul’s name during every goddamned orgasm.
It was like she’d watched me.
My hands shot up to my ears, useless against the blades of her words. They ripped into me, flaying every shield I’d ever built.
“Stop!” I cried. “Stop it! For the love of God, stop!”
Zara laughed again—deep, feral, triumphant. “God? You think He hears the likes of you? Oh, sweetheart, we are far past prayers and redemption.”
Her gaze bored into me, savage and wild. “You’ve only begun to taste the pain you’ve dealt out for years. This is just the foreplay, you fucking snake.”
I dug my fingernails into the cold earth and dragged myself upright, my body screaming in protest, my veins pulsing with fire.
With a roar of defiance, I lunged forward, slipping through the trees, leaves slashing at my face, pain howling through every joint.
Zara was right behind me, her presence thick like smoke, choking the air.
But I couldn’t run anymore.
I spun, breathless and wild, fury exploding in my chest like a bomb.
“Every fucked-up thing I’ve done—every lie, every betrayal—it was all for him!” I screamed, voice raw. “For Balthazar! We share the same dream. We’ll drown the world in darkness together. We’ll rule it. And we’ll make it evil.”
Zara’s expression twisted into something monstrous—anguish, rage, grief, all tangled into one brutal snarl.
“You think Balthazar loves you?” she hissed.
“You think he’ll ever love you the way he loved me?
” Her voice splintered with fury. “I gave him children. I gave him a family. We were gods in the shadows—two halves of a perfect, unholy whole. And now you think opening your legs and pretending to understand his pain makes you worthy of him?”
My heart stopped. I stumbled back, breath caught in my throat.
“You… you gave him children?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice low, trembling now. “We had a life together. A dark, beautiful life. But it was all taken from us. Everything. You’re not his partner—you’re his distraction. A sick fascination born from your father’s betrayal. And he knows it.”
I reeled. I didn’t want to believe her. But her words burrowed under my skin like worms, writhing with doubt.
“He never told me,” I whispered. “He never said anything about you. About… this.”
“Of course he didn’t!” she screamed, stepping closer. “Because he doesn’t want you to know how deep his love once ran. How much he still aches for what we lost. If he truly loved you, would he have hidden the truth? Would he have kept me a secret?”
“He said you were gone!” I shouted, throat ragged. “He said you were dead!”
Zara’s eyes flared like twin embers. “And yet here I stand.”
The weight of her presence crashed over me, suffocating me. My legs wobbled, but I refused to fall.
“He makes mistakes when angry,” she said coldly, eyes gleaming like moonlit knives. “He probably believes I’m dead. He doesn’t realize I’m still breathing. And we’re going to keep it that way… for now.”
Before I could react, she lunged, her fingers clamping around my arm like a spiked manacle. Her nails bit deep, slicing through flesh. I shrieked, thrashing—but her grip was relentless.
“Who sent you? What the fuck do you want from me?” I screamed, panic clawing at my throat.
Her lips curled into a cruel, poisonous smile. “Oh, you poor, pathetic thing. Every mistake you make, I will feel it. I will know it. And I will hunt you for it.”
She leaned in, her voice dropping to a velvet whisper. “Balthazar is still bleeding from wounds I gave him… wounds you keep reopening. He’s blind now. Lost. But I am not. And you—” her grip tightened, “—are going to pay.”
I opened my mouth to curse her, to shred her face to ribbons—but it was too late.
Her hand snapped back and struck me hard.
Pain exploded across my face like a firestorm. My vision splintered. The trees, the sky, the creek—all shattered into blackness.
And then, there was only the dark.
I came to, my head pounding and my vision swimming. Disoriented, I was lying on a coarse bed in a small, dimly lit room. The air was thick with the scent of pine and dust. I jolted upright—then gasped in pain as my battered body protested.
The walls were rough wooden planks, grain warped and splintering with age.
The pine floor was partially covered with straw mats that cracked beneath every movement.
A single window—draped with a torn, stained curtain—filtered in a thin, sickly beam of light.
Against one wall sat a plain wooden dresser holding a chipped porcelain basin and pitcher, their contents still and cold.
I groaned and collapsed onto the straw-stuffed pillow, wincing at its scratchy texture. Dread crept through me like a slow bleed. Had Zara brought me here? Was this some new chamber of torment? A fresh hell dressed in rustic charm?
Before I could form a plan to flee, the door creaked open.
A man stepped inside.
I let out a panicked screech and curled into myself, every bruised nerve screaming. My limbs barely obeyed. I was too broken to fight, too exhausted to run.
The man raised his hands nonthreateningly. “You’re safe here. You’ve been hurt. Who did this to you?”
I didn’t answer—I couldn’t. Not truthfully. And I wasn’t about to let him know I understood his words. Not yet.
He was tall, around thirty, with sun-darkened skin and a laborer’s frame—broad shoulders, sinewy arms. His eyes caught what little light there was, revealing stormy green and blue swirls like a sea before a tempest. His chestnut hair was swept back from his brow, accentuating sharp cheekbones and a squared jaw dusted with stubble.
He wore a plain linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and worn boots caked with dirt.
“Where are you from?” he asked. “Can you tell me your name?”
His voice was gravel-rough, but there was warmth—a gentleness beneath the grit.
“Non ti capisco,” I muttered, curling deeper into the blanket, my voice barely audible.
He tilted his head, brow furrowed, lips tightening with mild frustration. Hands on hips, he studied me like a riddle missing half its lines.
“Hmmm,” he grunted, then raised a finger and left the room.
I lay there, breath ragged, body trembling—panting like a bitch in heat, ashamed of how wrecked I felt.
When he returned, he carried a damp cloth and the porcelain pitcher. He poured the water into the basin, knelt beside me, and dipped the cloth in. He wrung it out with careful hands, then reached to touch my face.
“No!” I snapped, shoving his hand away with more force than I thought I had.
He sighed, then offered another “Hmmm,” before disappearing again.
When he came back this time, he held a broken shard of looking glass. Without a word, he knelt and held it up so I could see myself.
I gasped.
My reflection was barely recognizable bruises bloomed like wildflowers across my cheeks, my nose and lips swollen and split. Thin cuts covered my jaw and neck, and a long, angry gash snaked down from my ear to my collarbone. Blood, thick and sticky, had crusted at the edges of the wound.
My hands shook as I brushed my tangled hair away, revealing the extent of the damage.
And then I saw it—Layla.
Her face, misshapen and grotesque from my torture, hovered in my mind like a ghost. And now... I looked like her. I was her. The agony. The humiliation. The raw terror. All of it echoed through my broken body.
Oh, God. This was what she felt like before the end.
Rage surged through me—white-hot and directionless. I wanted to scream. To throw something. To rip the world apart. But I was too weak. All I could do was lie there, wrapped in the pain I had once inflicted.
The man dipped the cloth again, then paused, holding it up, silently asking for permission.
“No,” I said again, softer this time, my voice barely more than a breath. I pushed his hand away, tears in my bruised eyes. “I don’t deserve that.”
I didn’t deserve kindness.
With a soft plop, he let the cloth slip from his fingers into the basin. Then he stood there, watching me with that unreadable frown. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t cold. But it pierced deeper than any blade.
Even though it looked hurt.
I had desired my entire life—envied, praised, chased. I wasn’t used to pity. I didn’t want to be examined like some wounded creature barely clinging to life.
Turning my back on him, I rolled away and dragged the thin blanket over my head, shielding myself from his gaze.
His footsteps moved away, a heavy rhythm across the wooden floor. The door creaked open, then clicked shut. Silence followed.