Beautiful Heir (Beautifully Ruined #1)

Chapter 1

There was a man sitting on my chest.

With a gun pressed to my forehead.

And the worst part?

I recognised his eyes.

Grey. Empty. The eyes of someone who had ended lives and wouldn’t hesitate to end one more.

The barrel ground into my skin, hard enough to pinch. It would bruise. It might even break skin if he pushed. I didn’t move. I barely breathed. My lungs fluttered uselessly, like they’d forgotten what air was for.

His knee crushed into my ribs. My back screamed against the tile. Something stabbed into my shoulder—glass, maybe. It could even have been one of my own bones knocked out of place.

His hand didn’t shake.

Mine wouldn’t stop.

He leaned down, close enough that I smelled smoke soaked into his clothes.

“Don’t look at me,” he muttered.

But I couldn’t look away. He was the kind of man my father had warned me about—a man who stepped into a room and owned everything in it.

My vision blurred. My throat felt too tight. I didn’t bother pretending I was brave. I was terrified, and he could see every bit of it.

The gun pressed harder.

My ears rang. My chest ached under his weight. Sweat slid down my neck. My arms were pinned. My legs trapped beneath him. I was small, and he knew it. He used that to his advantage.

He shifted the gun, lining up a clean kill.

A broken sound clawed out of my throat. It wasn’t a scream, but just a thin, strangled breath that felt like a goodbye.

“Please…”

I didn’t know if the word left my mouth or stayed locked in my head.

Something flickered in his eyes. It didn’t look like mercy. It was just a crack—like a thought he hadn’t expected hit him too fast, and he didn’t have time to hide it.

Footsteps thundered down the hallway. A voice shouted.

His jaw clenched.

He looked at me again. He took in my blood-stained nightgown. The blood on my hands that wasn’t mine. I was trembling.

He hesitated.

The gun stayed on my forehead, but the pressure shifted. It wasn’t lighter—just uncertain. His breathing changed, too. It slowed, as though regaining control.

“Clear in here!” someone yelled from the next room.

He should have finished it. I could see the resolve in his face. He wanted to. But something stopped him.

Something he hated the moment it existed.

The gun pulled back an inch. Just enough for oxygen to burn my throat on the way in.

“Stay down,” he whispered.

He rose slowly, like he was testing the decision, as though considering if he were making a mistake. My body curled inward the second his weight lifted, instinct dragging me toward the shadows.

The footsteps grew louder.

“This room’s empty,” a man called.

Grey Eyes turned his head toward the voice, then he looked back at me. His jaw ticked hard, the muscle jumping. He was already regretting this.

I didn’t move or make a sound. I was too afraid to even breathe.

A heartbeat passed. Then another.

There was one second of hesitation. One second that told me he knew he’d made a mistake. One second that told me he knew exactly what kind of mistake it was.

I closed my eyes and stayed perfectly quiet while the last pieces of my life were torn apart around me, my hands pressed against a floor that was already slick with the blood of those I had known and loved.