Chapter 7 #5
I couldn’t stop them.
“And don’t call that desolate bungalow my home.” I swallowed hard, fighting the tremor in my voice. “It’s a graveyard, Romeo. A place where you’ve sentenced me to live alone, and I won’t stay there by myself.”
Something in his expression shifted.
Not concern. Not guilt.
Disgust.
It settled over his face with a clarity that hurt more than anger ever could.
His voice was ice.
He took one step toward me. “Your incessant whining changes nothing. Go home willingly, or I’ll have you taken there myself.”
My chest tightened.
His gaze moved past me toward the sleek supercar waiting outside the warehouse.
“I have matters to attend to.”
I snatched the keys, my fingers trembling with anger.
“One day, you’ll regret this.”
My voice shook, but I forced myself to keep looking at him.
“One day, you’ll remember every time I risked my life for you. You’ll remember that you wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t been there.”
My entire body was trembling now—from my hands to my knees, from the force of everything I was desperately trying to hold inside.
Tears burned behind my eyes.
I refused to let them fall.
But Romeo only stared at me.
Unmoved. Unfeeling.
Then his mouth hardened.
“Every second I look at you,” he said, “I’m reminded that you wear a title that should have belonged to Yarina.”
My breath caught.
“She stood by me while I was rotting in prison. She remained loyal when there was nothing in it for her. She endured years of my absence.”
His eyes were merciless.
“And then there is you.”
The contempt in his voice was almost tangible.
“The daughter of my sister’s murderer. The woman who took Yarina’s place and now wears the ring that was meant for her.”
My throat tightened.
“I hate you.”
He said it without hesitation.
Without even the slightest crack in his voice.
“I hate you enough that nothing you do will change it.”
He stepped closer.
“You could save my life a hundred times. You could throw yourself in front of a bullet meant for me. You could die for me.”
His eyes remained fixed on mine.
“And I would still feel nothing.”
The words hollowed me out.
“I don’t want your sacrifice. I don’t want your loyalty. And I certainly don’t want your affection.”
His jaw tightened.
“The thought of touching you disgusts me. Even as my wife.”
He looked at me as though he had just delivered a verdict, not shattered the woman standing in front of him.
“So go home.”
His voice dropped into a final, merciless command.
“Don’t call me. Don’t wait for me. Don’t come looking for me.”
He turned away.
“I’ll return when I have a reason to.”
He was already turning away when I forced the words past my throat.
“Did you believe me?”
He stopped.
My voice trembled with sorrow. “Any of what I told you earlier?”
I had told him everything. Every truth I had carried alone, every secret I had been too afraid to reveal. I had finally laid it all bare before him, hoping—foolishly—that knowing the truth might change the way he looked at me.
But he had said nothing.
And now, looking at him, I realized why.
He still looked at me with the same cold hatred.
As though I hadn’t told him the truth at all.
As though nothing I had confessed had changed a single thing.
Romeo didn’t hesitate. “No.”
The word landed with such immediate certainty that for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
He simply watched me absorb the answer as though my pain had nothing to do with him.
“I see a desperate woman trying to steal her sister’s man,” he said, his voice cold and measured. “And when she couldn’t have him, she invented whatever lies she thought might turn me against Yarina.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
“Stories so ridiculous they insult my intelligence.”
His gaze moved over my face with quiet contempt.
“And I don’t blame you for lying.” A faint, dismissive curve touched his mouth. “Desperate women will do desperate things. They’ll manipulate. They’ll deceive. They’ll destroy anyone standing between them and the thing they believe they deserve.”
His eyes hardened.
“And you are no different.”
I felt my throat tighten.
“I know exactly what you’re capable of. That’s why you will stay away from Yarina.”
He leaned down slightly, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“Yarina is gentle and kind. Everything you are not. And everything you’ll never be. If you ever cause trouble for her...”
His emerald eyes locked onto mine, burning with a hatred so deep it felt almost tangible.
“...if you ever hurt her in any way, I will never forgive you.”
My chest tightened until every breath felt like it was being dragged through a wound.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
His words struck somewhere deeper than flesh.
Just like that, he turned and walked away.
No backward glance.
No sign that my tears, my trembling hands, or the devastation written across my face meant anything to him.
I stood frozen as his broad shoulders disappeared into the darkness.
The car door opened and he climbed inside.
The engine roared to life. And seconds later, the supercar disappeared into the night, its taillights shrinking until even they were swallowed by the darkness.
I remained where I was.
Alone.
My fingers curled into fists at my sides, but they had no strength left in them.
The tears I’d fought so desperately to hold back finally spilled over.
One.
Then another.
Until I could no longer see clearly.
A broken sound escaped my throat, and I pressed a trembling hand against my mouth to silence it.
It didn’t work.
My chest hurt.
Not the sharp pain of a wound.
Something deeper. Something that seemed to tear through every place inside me that had once believed I mattered to him.
I had saved his life three times.
Three times, I had chosen him over my own safety.
And I had been there for him during the darkest years of his life—the years he spent behind prison walls.
Not Yarina. Never Yarina.
I was the one who had stood beside him when his world collapsed, from the day he was accused of throwing his sister from the top floor of the Flynn mansion to the years he spent behind prison walls.
I was the one who remained when there was nothing to gain from staying, the one who answered every letter he sent from prison—the letters addressed to Yarina, letters she never even bothered to open, let alone answer.
And yet, somehow, in Romeo’s eyes, I was still the one who had never been there for him.
He didn’t see the woman who had saved him.
He didn’t see the woman who had stood by him when no one else did.
All he saw was the woman he hated.
And now, standing alone in the darkness he had left me in, I finally understood that the pain and suffering I would endure at the hands of this man had only just begun.