Chapter 15 #3
Even as my chin remained trapped in his grip, even as something inside me trembled violently.
“What if... what if I didn’t take the pill? What if I get pregnant?”
My words came out softer than I wanted, but I didn’t let them break.
“Listen to me very carefully,” he murmured, voice intimate and venomous.
“You are not fit to carry my blood. Your father’s filthy legacy runs through your veins, and I won’t let it poison the next generation. I’d rather spill my seed on the floor than let it take root inside you.”
His thumb pressed harder against my lower lip, eyes glittering with cruel satisfaction at the way I trembled.
The motion could have been mistaken for tenderness if not for the words that followed.
“Take the pills every single time I fuck you. Because the day I find out you’re pregnant with my child...”
He leaned in until his breath ghosted over my ear, voice dropping to a lethal whisper.
“I will rip it out of you myself before it even has a chance to grow. And then I’ll make you watch while I ensure you never get the chance again.”
“Am I clear, Elena?”
The finality of it made something inside me go very still.
My lips parted slightly.
My voice came out barely above a breath.
He would kill his own child?”
The question lingered.
“I will never allow my bloodline to be tainted by that filth.”
He released my chin with a light, dismissive shove, as though touching me had burned him.
The absence of his touch left my skin cold—emptier than before.
Tears burned behind my eyes, hot and insistent, threatening to spill.
I forced them down, swallowing hard, refusing to give him that satisfaction.
Instead, I let a small, trembling smile touch my lips.
“Since I would remain your wife,” I forced out, “does that mean you’d rather die without an heir at all?”
Vincenzo let out a low, humorless laugh, the sound sending chills down my spine.
“Yes,” he said, eyes narrowing with pure disdain.
“I would rather die childless than let a woman carrying the blood of my violator bear my child.”
The rejection sliced deep, making my stomach churn with humiliation.
He looked at me as if I were tainted, dirty — something he owned but would never allow to bear fruit.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode toward the door.
He yanked it open and held it wide, his powerful frame filling the doorway like a wall I was no longer permitted to cross.
“Leave.”
The command was sharp.
Final.
Delivered with the bored authority of a man who had already erased me from any future he imagined.
I hesitated, and his voice dropped colder.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Elena.”
“Get out.”
“The sight of you standing there pretending you could ever be the mother of my children disgusts me.”
My eyelids fluttered shut for a brief moment.
Just enough time to gather what little strength I had left.
Then I opened them again.
Slowly. Painfully.
My legs moved first.
I swung them over the side of the bed, the mattress shifting beneath me as I prepared to stand.
The moment my feet touched the floor, pain lanced upward through my knees—sharp, immediate.
A gasp escaped me before I could stop it.
My body swayed.
Instinctively, I reached out, catching myself on the bedpost as my knees threatened to collapse again.
I stood there for a moment, breathing unevenly, waiting for the wave of pain to pass enough for me to move.
Then I forced myself forward.
Step by step.
Each one deliberate.
Each one costing me more than I could explain.
My breaths came shallow.
Trying not to think about how every movement sent fire through my body, or on his words that had cut just as deeply, carving through my chest with quiet, ruthless precision.
I limped toward the open door.
“Elena.”
His voice stopped me.
I froze.
My hand still braced against the wall, my body angled toward the hallway, but my head slowly turned back toward him.
Exhaustion weighed heavily on my features now—visible in the droop of my eyelids, the faint tremble of my lips, the way my shoulders barely held themselves upright.
He stood where I’d left him.
Watching me. Reading me.
“The rule I set,” Vincenzo said, his voice dropping into that dangerously quiet tone, “coming to my bed by ten every night — it no longer applies.”
Confusion flickered through the haze of pain.
I parted my lips to speak, but he cut me off before a word could form.
“You’re no longer worthy of sleeping in my bed.”
His gaze raked over me with open disdain.
“From now on, you’ll lie in the dark by yourself, night after night, remembering exactly what you will never have.”
“No warmth. No comfort. No love. Just you, alone.”
“You’ll spend the rest of your miserable life knowing the only man who owns you has decided you’re unworthy of even the basic comfort of his body next to yours.”
“Sleep alone, Elena. Get used to it. Because that’s all you’ll ever have.”
Something in my chest twisted sharply, like a blade had been driven in and slowly turned.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
The air caught somewhere between my lungs and throat, refusing to move as the weight of what he’d said settled deep.
The door behind me remained open.
A dark rectangle framing the empty hallway.
I stood there for one long moment.
Staring at him.
At his eyes—cold, steady, unbothered.
At the way he held himself, as if nothing he had just said carried any weight at all.
As if it cost him nothing. As if I cost him nothing.
My chest tightened.
My throat worked, trying to form words that refused to come together.
They were there—I could feel them pressing against my teeth, pushing at the back of my tongue—but the moment I tried to give them voice, they fell apart.
Disintegrated into something too fragile to exist.
My throat closed.
Constraining.
Swallowing everything back down into that hollow place in my chest where all his words had gone to live—and rot.
For a second, I thought I might say something meaningful.
Something strong. Something that mattered.
But in the end—
All I could manage was one word.
Barely a breath.
“Okay.”
It slipped out quietly.
Too small.
I hated it the moment I heard it. Hated how it sounded like surrender.
Hated how easily it fit into the silence between us, like it belonged there.
But I didn’t correct it.
Didn’t say anything else.
Because there was nothing left in me to argue with.
So I turned.
And walked out of his room.
The hallway stretched longer than it should have.
Or maybe I was just moving slower.
Each step felt heavier than the last, my body dragging itself forward while my mind lingered somewhere far behind, still trapped in the room I had just left.
“You’ll spend the rest of your miserable life knowing the only man who owns you has decided you’re unworthy of even the basic comfort of his body next to yours. Sleep alone, Elena. Get used to it. Because that’s all you’ll ever have.”
The words looped in my head like a broken record, each repetition carving deeper.
My fingers brushed against the wall as I walked—light, absent touches that I barely registered until I realized I was using them to steady myself.
To anchor myself.
To prove that I was still here.
Still real.
Still... something.
My knees felt wrong.
Unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with injury and everything to do with what I had just heard.
With what I had just accepted.
With what I had just been told about myself.
The words echoed.
Relentless.
From now on, you’ll lie in the dark by yourself, night after night, remembering exactly what you’ll never get.
My fingers tightened slightly against the wall.
You’re not worthy of sleeping in my bed anymore.”
My vision blurred at the edges.
I blinked.
Refusing to let it spill over.
Not here. Not in this hallway.
Not where he could somehow still be watching.
My breath caught.
I didn’t realize I had stopped walking until I forced myself forward again, dragging my body toward the door at the end of the hallway.
Toward escape.
Toward somewhere that wasn’t him.
When I finally reached my door, my hand trembled as it found the handle. I turned it slowly, the mechanism clicking softly under my grip, and pushed the door open.
The room inside was dark.
I stepped inside.
And the moment the door clicked shut behind me—
Something in me broke.
Quietly.
Like something that had been stretched too thin for too long finally giving in to the pressure it had been holding.
My body didn’t fight it.
Didn’t try to hold itself together.
My legs gave out before I even reached the bed, and I stumbled the last step, collapsing forward onto the mattress.
Face-first.
The impact wasn’t hard.
But it was enough.
I didn’t move for a second.
Just lay there.
Still.
Then slowly—like I couldn’t stop myself—I pulled the pillow toward me and buried my face into it, gripping it tightly as though it could keep everything inside from spilling out.
But it didn’t.
The sobs came anyway.
Broken. Muffled.
Shaking through my body in quiet, uneven waves that I tried—and failed—to suppress.
My shoulders trembled.
My chest tightened with each breath.
Small, fragile sounds escaped into the fabric beneath my face, swallowed by the pillow but still somehow too loud.
I had endured cruel words before, many of them from Vincenzo himself, but tonight was different.
These words didn’t just hurt—they pierced, tearing through me like a sharp needle sinking into my heart.
My head ached.
Not the kind that comes and goes, but something steady and heavy, pressing against my thoughts, dulling everything that tried to rise to the surface.
My chest followed—tight, sore, each inhale feeling slightly too small, like my lungs were working against me.
And my knees—
God.
My knees ached in a way I couldn’t explain.
It wasn’t just pain.
It was... deeper.
Like grief had weight, and it had chosen that exact place to settle—pressing down, rooting itself into my bones, refusing to let go.
I turned my face deeper into the pillow, as if I could smother the feeling there, as if I could push it down into the fabric and keep it contained.
But it didn’t stay quiet.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my fingers tightening around the pillow as if it were the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.
And then—
In that fragile, broken silence—
I made myself a promise.
A quiet one.
The kind you don’t say out loud because speaking it might make it less real.
I would never let him have this power over me again.
Whatever foolish hope I had carried, whatever feelings I had allowed to grow—I would tear them out, root and all.
I would build something cold in their place.
Something untouchable. So that no word of his would ever cut me again.
The thought anchored me, even as my body shook.
Somewhere between the pain and exhaustion, sleep took me without warning, pulling me under.