CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN His PastMine
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
His Past or Mine
I told myself I would only look for a moment, only to quiet the noise inside my head.
But twenty minutes passed with nothing but frustration.
Drawers yielded dust, telling me he didn’t use this room very much.
I didn’t know if I should be relieved or not.
But the ledgers and books I could not decipher.
I tore through the artefacts of his secrets until exhaustion claimed me, until my body sagged against the bed with the bitter taste of defeat.
Maybe I was looking in the wrong place. Or maybe he didn’t leave any proof of his past anywhere in this mansion.
Tired and defeated, I got up and looked around once again, finding nothing and was about to leave when my eyes landed on a half-hidden object, pushed behind the frame of an old mirror; a plain wooden box, unremarkable to the world.
Yet before I touched it, my blood recoiled, as though my very bones knew what waited within.
My fingers trembled, the hinge groaned open, and my world collapsed.
Photographs. More photos.
Not recent. Old. Older than the weather.
Weather-worn, fragile at the edges. A boy, solemn and sharp-featured, his eyes carrying shadows older than his years.
And beside him, there was a girl. Brown haired, dark-eyed, and wearing a pastel blue dress, princess-style with a wide smile on her lips as she looked at the person clicking the photos.
Mischief or tenderness painted on her face.
But it was not her presence that struck me; it was his gaze.
The boy looked at her as if she were the only thing worth looking at.
He was taller than her by a few inches, wearing shorts and a matching shirt. I didn’t have to investigate to know who that boy was. I could recognise those stormy-grey eyes even if I lost my memories.
Every photograph, every angle, his eyes were fixated on her, drowning in her. Love unhidden, devotion raw, as though his young bones had already been carved for her alone.
My throat closed. Air became heavy. Was this her… his first wife? The first and true one? His childhood love and his chosen soul? The one he loved dearly?
I pressed my palm against my mouth to keep from sobbing aloud. It was ridiculous, was it not? I had no right to this ache, to this hollowing pain. I was nothing but an interloper in his story, and still, my heart fractured.
Why did I care? He loved another. He was someone else’s.
He was there. In those photos. Even younger, yes, but those storm-grey eyes had not changed.
They were the same eyes that looked through me now, cutting, scorching, unravelling.
Except here, in these frozen pieces of time, they weren’t stormy at all.
They were soft. Open. Alive with something terrifying in its purity… love.
Not lust. Not possession. Not hunger disguised as desire.
Love.
The kind of love that swallows you whole and remakes you from the inside out. The kind of love I had never tasted from him, not once, not even in those rare, fleeting moments when he held me like I mattered.
Did he whisper her name when the world was silent? Did he dream of her when I lay beside him, foolish enough to believe the weight of his arm meant anything? Did he keep me close because I reminded him of her, or because I was convenient enough to ruin without consequence?
I pressed my palm against my mouth to keep the sound inside, but the sob clawed anyway, desperate, relentless. My ribs ached from holding it in. My eyes burned, but I couldn’t look away.
The way she leaned toward him. The way his gaze never wavered, as though she was gravity and he was helpless to resist her pull. The way time itself seemed to bow to them, as though the universe had chosen them long before I ever existed.
I was nothing but a trespasser. An intruder. A name written in the margins of a story that had already been told.
And yet, why did I care? Why did it feel like something inside me was tearing, splitting into jagged halves that could never be stitched back?
I had no right. No claim. He had never been mine to lose. And still, the hollowness spread, blooming wide and merciless in my chest.
Would he ever look at me like that? Would he ever breathe my name like a prayer instead of a command? Would he ever drown in me the way his boyish eyes drowned in her?
No. The answer was no. And I hated myself for asking.
I hated the jealousy burning through me, ugly and desperate. I hated the envy I felt for a girl I didn’t know, a girl who had already been immortalized in his memories while I… What was I?
A fleeting distraction.
A shadow pressed against his walls.
A secret he could throw away whenever he pleased.
The photographs blurred as tears finally slid, hot and merciless down my cheeks. I wanted to tear them apart, to shred them until her smile was gone and his gaze erased. I wanted to destroy her, erase her existence from his story so there could be space left for me.
But even in that desire, the truth suffocated me.
He had already chosen once. And it hadn’t been me.
I wiped my tears furiously, scolding myself, whispering foolish girl in my head. So very foolish. I pushed the photographs back into their coffin of wood and closed the lid as though it might silence the wound inside me too. I gathered myself, stood on my shaky legs and stared at the box.
Was this my end? Was I not… enough? But why did I want to be enough for him? He killed Adrian, so why?
I turned, desperate to escape before my shame drowned me completely and a scream escaped me instead.
All air left my lungs as I stumbled back and stared wide-eyed at the door.
Leaning casually against the frame, arms folded across his chest, dressed in a dark grey suit with a lighter shirt beneath. The scar bisected his expressions, hiding him as it always did. Making him unreadable. But the weight of his gaze, I felt it pierce straight through me.
My knees went weak. Words tumbled out. “I… I didn’t mean to… I was just looking for… I got lost, I swear, I didn’t know…”
He straightened. My pulse thundered.
“Are you satisfied?”
Silence cracked open between us. My lips trembled. “I.. I was searching for…”
“You were,” he stepped closer and I took one back. “You’ve been scratching at doors that were never meant for your world.”
My mouth dried. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
I knew he’d punish me. How was he home so much sooner than I expected? Why didn’t I hear his footsteps?
“You meant,” he cut in. his tone was strangely calmer. “Do not insult me with your stammering.”
Heat surged in my cheeks, shame curling my spine. I wanted to vanish into the floor, to erase the evidence of my trespass. “I was only curious…”
“Curiosity,” he said, now close enough that I could smell the faint trace of sandalwood and steel on his suit, “is the first betrayal. You forget whose house you walk through. Whose silence feeds you. You think there are no consequences?”
I swallowed hard. “Will you punish me?”
His eyes narrowed. Before I could take a step back, he reached out, caught my wrist, and dragged me closer. My body crashed against the wall of his chest. My breath stuttered, his hand tilted my chin upward, forcing my eyes into his as his raked down my flimsy sheer robe.
“I should,” he murmured as my breasts pressed against him, and the fabric faltered. His eyes caught the motion, and they darkened. “I should teach you what happens to those who dig where they do not belong.”
Tears burned the corners of my eyes. I could not speak. His gaze held me captive, burning with something I could not decipher.
“But I won’t.”
His hands dropped away, leaving me weightless. The abrupt absence of his touch was worse than his grip. He stepped back, smoothed the front of his suit, and in the same measured tone said. “Get ready. My guests are here.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I ran from there to our room, panting and sobbing.
When I reached the room, I locked the door and stood alone in the middle of the room.
Why hadn’t he punished me? Why had he spared me, when cruelty would have been easier?
The absence of wrath felt more terrifying than its presence.
My hands shook as I pressed them against my chest. Trying to hold myself together. Hyperventilation tore through me, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
Why had he let me go? Why did mercy feel so much sharper than violence?
And why, despite everything I had seen, did the hollow ache in me only grow deeper?