Chapter 6 #3
Then his murderous gaze returned to me, darker and more hateful than before. My heart slammed against my ribs as terror clawed up my throat, making it almost impossible to breathe.
This was the man I had quietly saved twice — the one whose life I protected when his brother tried to drown him in the lake at nineteen, and again three days ago when I dragged him to safety and stopped him from bleeding out after my father’s men shot him.
He didn’t know about the first time, and maybe he still didn’t know about the second.
But none of it mattered.
The same man now stared at me with such deep, seething hatred that it felt like he wanted to rip me apart and bury what was left nineteen feet underground.
My first day as his wife, and I could already see the endless hell stretching out before me.
The living room felt suffocatingly small.
The scent of cedar and expensive cologne wrapped around me like a noose.
“Sit.”
The command was low, cold, and laced with barely contained resentment.
I didn’t move.
Instead, I lifted my chin and met his gaze, even as terror screamed at me to obey. “No.”
One dark eyebrow lifted in warning.
“You don’t get to humiliate me at the altar in front of everyone...
” My voice came out remarkably steady despite the fear gripping my lungs.
“Then bring another woman into this house on what was supposed to be our wedding night... and still expect me to obey your every command like I’m your worthless servant. ”
Romeo didn’t blink.
His stare only grew darker, heavier with pure, unfiltered hatred.
“We both agreed to this arrangement for one reason — to gain access to our grandparents’ inheritance,” I continued, forcing the words out.
“It was a ridiculous condition they forced on us. I hadn’t even agreed to go through with this marriage.
You did. You fixed the date. You planned the wedding.
You left me with no real choice but to show up. ”
A bitter smile tugged at my lips, though inside I was shaking. “And now, on the very first day of this marriage, you’ve done everything in your power to make sure I know exactly where I stand — beneath your heel.”
I shook my head, trying to ignore how dangerously still he had become.
“So tell me, Romeo... how much disrespect do you honestly expect one woman to endure before she refuses to take another step? Don’t stand there and speak to me as though I’m beneath you.”
I held his gaze, even as every instinct warned me I was pushing a man who could kill without remorse.
“And I never stole you from my sister.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“You threatened to do to my family exactly what you did to yours if I refused to show up on our wedding day. I didn’t choose this marriage any more than you did.”
Romeo’s jaw flexed hard, the muscle jumping with visible restraint.
His eyes burned with such intense loathing that it stole the air from my lungs.
This man hated me — truly, deeply hated me.
Slowly, he closed the distance between us until only a few feet separated us.
His emerald eyes were glacial, stripped of every trace of warmth.
“All these years,” he snarled, his voice a blade of ice dragged across raw flesh, “I rotted in that hellhole believing my brother hurled my sister from the eighth floor of the Flynn mansion like garbage.”
His lip curled back, exposing the savage disgust twisting his features. “Only to discover the truth—the filthy, stinking truth—that it was your father who shoved her off.”
His eyes, black with murderous fury, locked onto mine.
He looked as though he wanted to wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze until the blood stopped flowing through my veins.
“Your father murdered my sister.” The words dripped with venom, each syllable laced with ten years of festering hatred.
He spat the word father like it was filth in his mouth, and I felt it land on my skin like acid.
I stared at him, lungs seized, heart hammering against my ribs.
His gaze was pure violence—predatory, unhinged, as if he were already imagining the ways he could make me suffer for the sins running through my veins.
I could see it in the way his jaw clenched, the way his fingers flexed like they itched to crush something. Me.
“That spineless bastard didn’t vanish because his dogs failed to put a bullet in me three days ago.”
A harsh, contemptuous laugh scraped out of him.
“That spineless fuck ran like the coward he is the moment he knew I’d dug up every filthy secret he buried. He didn’t just kill my sister—he framed me for it. Ten goddamn years in Ravenhill because that worthless sack of shit made me carry his crime while he hid like the rat he is.”
His stare bored into me with such raw, unrelenting hatred that I shrank back instinctively, a cold spike of terror lodging in my chest.
I wanted to scream that my father would never do something so monstrous, that he couldn’t have thrown a seventeen-year-old girl to her death—but the words died in my throat.
The man before me—my so-called husband—had already slaughtered his own bloodline, wiping out generations of his family in a single merciless night.
Death was meaningless to him.
If he could murder his own father and relatives without hesitation, I was nothing. Less than nothing. One wrong breath from me and I would be next.
Panic surged through me, my heart hammering so violently I thought it would explode.
“And you...” His voice rose, thick with loathing, as he stepped closer, towering over me like a storm about to break.
“You carry that monster’s filthy blood in your veins.
While he’s still out there breathing, I’m going to break you.
I’ll ruin you so completely that nothing of you remains.
I’ll make you wish you’d never been born with his cursed name. ”
My chest rose and fell violently as I fought for shallow, panicked breaths.
The room felt smaller, the air thicker with his hatred.
I could practically taste his disgust—cold, merciless, and aimed straight at my soul.
“Your only salvation,” he growled, the promise in his eyes darker than death itself, “is if that bastard crawls out of whatever hole he’s hiding in so I can rip his throat out with my bare hands. Until then... you’re mine to destroy, piece by fucking piece.”
Romeo had to be mistaken.
His investigation had to be wrong.
But even if my father was guilty...
Why should I be the one to pay for his crimes?
Yarina was as much his child as I was.
Romeo turned his back on me and returned to his armchair without a hint of urgency, as if I were beneath his notice.
He sat, crossed one leg over the other, and leaned back with deliberate calm, every movement radiating the quiet, ruthless authority of a man who ruled through fear.
As though he had read the terror twisting inside me, he said coldly, “Yarina was adopted. She doesn’t carry your father’s tainted blood.”
My chest dropped.
With one devastating revelation after another crashing over me, it was almost impossible to breathe, let alone process everything.
How is that even possible?
Yarina — adopted?
All these years we had been raised together, treated by Mother and Father as equals, as real sisters.
Had she known this whole time?
And how the hell did Romeo know?
Of course he did.
His connections ran deep into the earth itself; he could unearth any secret he wanted.
My chest tightened painfully.
Had my parents been hiding this from us — from me — all along?
The betrayal stung sharply, but beneath it was a colder fear.
If they could hide something this big, what else had they concealed?
“I see you didn’t know that,” he added with a small, indifferent nod, remaining unnervingly calm.
My heart pounded painfully against my ribs.
Then his gaze snapped back to me, filled with that same murderous hatred that made my skin crawl.
“Where the fuck is your father?” Romeo snarled, his eyes burning with barely contained loathing.
I stared at him, stunned.
I had already told him my father had vanished.
Was he testing me?
“If I knew where he was, I would never have succumbed to your threats and agreed to this marriage,” I said honestly, my voice steadier than I felt. “His sudden disappearance is what left me vulnerable, and you exploited it. That is the only reason I stood at that altar.”
My eyes drifted away for only a second before I forced them back to his.
Romeo studied me in heavy silence, his expression unreadable.
“No.”
The single word landed like a verdict.
“If there’s one person your father would confide in, it would be you.” A brief, dangerous pause followed. “But of course, I don’t expect you to spit out the truth. You’re just like him — a fucking snake.”
“I don’t know where my father is,” I replied steadily, holding his murderous gaze. “And even if I did, I would never deliver him to you to be slaughtered. What kind of daughter betrays her own father to the man who already despises her very existence?”