Chapter 30 #3
“You think Hayden belongs to you,” she said, her tone soft and cruel all at once. “But you don’t even know him. You don’t know the weight he carries, the history that binds him tighter than your sweet declarations ever could. Did he tell you about his sister?”
The room tilted. My body went rigid.
“No,” Alessia said lightly, answering her own question, her smile sharpening into cruelty.
“Of course he didn’t. Why would he? His sister, my brother…
they were engaged. Their love was pure, clean, untainted.
And then the accident happened. They both died.
Do you know what it’s like to watch entire futures turn to ash in a single night? ”
Her smile faded, her eyes darkening, voice turning low and venomous.
“Our families grieved together. And grief is binding, Edwina. It forges chains stronger than anything else. To honor them, to preserve what had been promised, our families arranged the next engagement. Hayden and me. To heal what was broken. To keep everything intact.”
She stepped closer, the faint scent of her perfume cutting through the rain still clinging to my clothes. Her voice dropped to a near whisper, every word a deliberate stab.
“That’s who we are. Not some fleeting affair.
Not some dirty secret waiting to be uncovered.
We are history. Blood. Obligation. And you—” her eyes flicked over me, slow and disdainful, her lips curling into a smirk that made my stomach twist, “you’re just the girl who spread her legs for her professor and mistook it for love. ”
The words hit like a blade through the chest. My breath stuttered, my body trembling as tears pricked hot and merciless behind my eyes.
“Did you actually believe that he loved you?” she continued, her smile curling cruelly. “No, little girl. He just wanted to have his fun before coming back to me. He always does. That’s what men like him do, they play until they remember who they belong to.”
My chest constricted, fury and humiliation flooding through me in equal measure, but she wasn’t finished.
“You think you love him?” Alessia’s voice rose, silk over steel.
“Then tell me, what will be left of that love when this comes out? When the university hears? When his reputation burns, when his career collapses, when your name is dragged through every filthy corner of gossip as the student who couldn’t keep her legs closed?
Will you still call it love then, Edwina?
Or will you finally see it for what it is? ”
She leaned back, smiling again, the perfect picture of composure while I felt my insides unravel. “A mistake. That’s what you are. A mistake he’ll regret when the smoke clears.”
Her words thundered through me, every syllable echoing, hollowing me out from the inside. I stood frozen, trembling, my fingers curling into my palms to keep them from shaking, but nothing steadied me.
Alessia’s smile deepened, her head tilting as her gaze swept over me, condescending and sharp.
“What did you think, hmm? Did you truly believe he could sever his ties with his family forever? That he could walk away from the blood that made him, from the history that shaped him, from the promises carved in stone? Did you believe he could abandon who he is—for you?”
The words sliced through me, each one sharper than the last, until I could barely breathe. And then she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone.
“I wonder,” Alessia murmured, her tone dripping with poison, “how quickly the whispers would spread if this were to find its way into the right hands.”
She turned the screen toward me.
My heart stopped.
There, glowing beneath the pale midday light, was us, me and Hayden in the rain.
His mouth crushed against mine, his hands gripping me with desperate possession, my body pressed against his as though he owned every breath in me.
A kiss that had gutted me and healed me all at once, caught in perfect, damning clarity.
I couldn’t breathe. My blood ran cold, my stomach twisting so violently I thought I might be sick.
“You see?” Alessia said softly, her smile curling higher.
“Secrets never stay buried. One photograph, and your little fairytale becomes a scandal. One leak, and everything he’s worked for burns to the ground.
His name. His career. Your reputation. Gone.
All because you thought you could matter to him. ”
I stumbled back, shaking my head as if I could undo what I was seeing, as if denial could rewrite what she’d said. But the image burned into me, the truth impossible to escape.
Alessia slipped her phone back into her pocket, smoothing a strand of hair over her shoulder, her voice turning colder, final. “Do him a favor, Edwina. Be a good little girl and leave this city before you destroy him completely.”
She gave me one last smile, sharp enough to draw blood, before turning toward the door, her heels clicking softly against the floor as she left me standing there, gutted, shaking, and alone.
Alessia paused at the door, her hand resting lightly on the frame. For a heartbeat, she looked back at me, that same polished calm still painted across her face, but beneath it, something colder, darker, gleamed in her eyes.
“You know,” she said softly, her voice almost gentle and that made it worse. “There’s something you should understand before I go.”
I said nothing. My throat was too tight, my chest too raw.
Her smile curved again, slow and cruel. “He didn’t love you, Edwina. He hated you.”
The air left my lungs.
“Do you know why?” she went on, her tone quiet, deliberate, each word striking with surgical precision. “Because of you, he lost his sister.”
My head shook before I even realized it, the denial spilling out on instinct. “No—”
“Yes,” she said, cutting through my protest sharpness of a blade.
“The accident,” she said softly, her tone dripping with poison.
“Remember? You were there too. And guess who pulled you out that night? Guess who had no idea his sister was in the wreckage while he was saving you?” Alessia’s smile curved.
“He couldn’t save her. He saved you instead.
You’re his biggest mistake, Edwina, his guilt, his hatred, the thing he can’t forgive himself for. ”
My pulse roared in my ears. The room tilted again. “You’re lying.”
Her smile didn’t waver. “No, little girl. I’m telling you the truth.
You were the reason she died. He saved you instead.
And he’s never forgiven himself for it. You think he came back into your life because of love?
” She laughed softly, a sound that scraped through me.
“No. He wanted revenge. To destroy you the same way you destroyed him.”
Tears blurred my vision, the edges of the room folding inward, my stomach twisting so violently I thought I might collapse.
“And as I see,” Alessia murmured, glancing me up and down with quiet satisfaction, “he already has.”
Her words hung there, poisonous and absolute. Then she turned, her heels clicking against the floor, each step pulling the air out of the room until the door closed behind her with a soft, final sound.
I stood frozen in the silence she left behind, her voice still echoing in my head, tearing through every memory, every touch, every word Hayden had ever given me, until all that remained was the hollow, unbearable question she’d left behind.
The silence after she left was heavier than the storm.
I slid down the hall until I was on the floor, my back against the wall, my knees drawn tight to my chest. My hands shook against my face as sobs tore through me, violent, unrestrained, the kind that left no room for breath.
Every word Alessia had spoken echoed through me, sharp and merciless, cutting into every place I had once felt safe.
She hadn’t just humiliated me; she had gutted me, hollowed me out until I wasn’t sure what was left beneath the ruin.
His love—or his revenge. I didn’t know which truth hurt more.
The thought coiled inside me, spreading through my veins with the slow burn of poison.
Had it all been a lie? Every touch, every kiss, every whispered promise in the dark, were they all just ghosts of something built on hate?
Had he ever loved me, or had I been nothing more than the collateral damage of his grief?
The girl he couldn’t save. The girl he should have left to die.
I pressed my palms to my temples, trying to force the thoughts out, but they only came harder, faster.
The memory of his hands on me. The way he said my name, the way his voice broke when he told me I mattered.
God, how easy it was to believe him. To let him destroy every wall I’d built and still call it love.
And yet, even now, even knowing what I knew, I still loved him. That was the cruelest part of all.
Love burned in me still, wild, reckless, unforgiving.
I loved Hayden with every broken piece of myself, and that love was a knife twisting deeper with every breathEven if he hated me, even while my anger burned through me, something fiercer lived beneath it, something I couldn’t tear out no matter how hard I tried.
I still loved him, and because of that, I could not be the blade at his throat.
To stay would ruin him; to fight would destroy him.
Alessia had been right about one thing: a single whisper, a single photograph, a single careless breath could turn his life to ash.
I refused to become the instrument of that ruin.
But I couldn’t face my friends either. Not with Aster’s sharp eyes or Gwen’s gentle concern.
They’d see it, the wreckage inside me, the pieces of a girl who had fallen for the wrong man and lost everything.
I didn’t have the strength to lie, not this time.
I needed silence. I needed to disappear before I collapsed completely.