Chapter 8 #3
My hands trembled as I fumbled for my phone.
“There.”
I unlocked it and thrust the screen toward him, the recent call log from Yarina glowing brightly between us.
“She called me this morning.”
Romeo didn’t even spare it a glance.
His gaze never left my face.
It was as though the evidence didn’t matter because he had already reached his verdict.
That unwavering stare was far more terrifying than shouting. It felt like he was silently deciding whether I deserved to walk out of this room alive.
Panic tightened around my chest.
Desperate, I grasped at the only truth I had left.
“She’s pregnant.”
The words escaped before I could second-guess them.
For the first time, the silence seemed to shift.
So I kept going.
“Yarina is carrying your late brother’s child.”
My voice shook, but I forced the words out before fear could stop me.
“She’s at the hospital right now. If you think I’m lying, have them run a pregnancy test.”
I swallowed hard, my heart pounding violently against my ribs.
“You’ll have your proof.”
Nothing.
No shock. No denial. No anger.
Just those cold green eyes studying me as though I were an insect pinned beneath glass.
Then he took one slow step toward me.
Instinctively, I stepped back.
“I swear...” My throat tightened. “I’m not the evil one here.”
Another step.
“My sister is.”
He kept coming.
Measured. Unhurried.
I retreated again until my back struck the wall with a dull thud.
The impact stole the last of my escape.
There was nowhere left to run.
Romeo stopped inches away.
His towering frame swallowed the light around me, making the room suddenly feel much smaller.
“What a vile creature,” he said at last.
His voice was quiet. Almost conversational.
Yet it carried more menace than any shout.
“You attacked Yarina while I stood right here. Knowing I’d protect her.” His eyes never left mine. “Tell me, what do you do the moment I’m not watching? How many times have you already tried to harm her behind my back?”
My pulse hammered painfully against my throat.
“I—”
The words died before they could form.
His gaze slowly drifted downward.
From my eyes...
...to my lips...
...then lower.
It settled briefly on my chest.
Heat crawled uncomfortably beneath my skin.
He stood so close I could feel the cold weight of his presence against me, the quiet, controlled fury that never left him when I was near.
The man who hated me with such precision was close enough that the faint scent of his cologne and the heat of his body brushed my space like an unwanted claim.
It felt strangely intimate in all the wrong ways—like standing too near something that wanted me gone, yet refused to step back.
Every breath I took seemed to press against the space between us.
He stared down at me like he was cataloguing every weakness I possessed.
Then he slipped a hand into his trouser pocket.
My muscles instantly tensed.
After everything that had happened between us, my mind immediately imagined a knife.
Or a gun.
Instead, Romeo withdrew his phone from his pocket.
He stared at the screen for several seconds, his expression unreadable, before slowly lifting his eyes to mine.
Those dark, merciless eyes held mine.
“I’ve just received confirmation about your father,” he said.
My stomach tightened.
“The man who’s been running for his life, convinced he’ll never be found? He’s in Poland.”
The words struck me like another blow.
I still hated the way my father had disappeared from our lives without a goodbye, without a single explanation.
No warning. No message. Nothing. Some foolish part of me had continued to believe that one day he would return and give us a reason—a justification that would somehow make his abandonment bearable.
But now Romeo had found him first.
And that changed everything.
My father wasn’t simply a fugitive.
He was a man Romeo had believed was responsible for his sister’s death. A man he had vowed to destroy. If Romeo got his hands on him, I had no doubt my father would pay for that murder in the most brutal way imaginable.
Romeo studied my face, watching every emotion that crossed it.
Then he spoke.
“You’re going to Poland. You’ll find his exact location and report it to me.”
For a moment, I couldn’t comprehend what I had just heard.
Then the meaning sank in.
“You want me to find my father for you?”
My voice came out barely above a whisper.
“You want me to pinpoint his exact location in Poland so you can go there and kill him?”
My chest tightened. “What kind of daughter would that make me?”
Romeo said nothing.
His silence was almost worse than an answer.
I could feel the heat of his body so close to mine, the unbearable intimacy between us making it difficult to think clearly.
Fear tangled with something else I refused to acknowledge, something that made my pulse race for reasons that had nothing to do with the threat in his eyes.
Yet somehow, I forced myself to hold his gaze.
“I may hate what my father did,” I whispered, “but I won’t be the one who leads you to his grave.”
My voice barely rose above a whisper.
He stepped even closer.
The little space that had remained between us disappeared entirely.
His chest nearly brushed mine, and I could feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing against my own.
My breath caught.
I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, suddenly far too aware of how close he was.
The heat radiating from his body seemed to seep through me, turning my fear into something dangerously tangled with the intimacy of the moment.
Yet his expression remained cold.
Unreadable.
As though the closeness meant nothing to him.
“This is your only chance to prove that being his daughter doesn’t make you loyal to him.”
His voice was low, but there was nothing gentle in it.
“Find him. Locate him. Give me his exact whereabouts. Do that, and perhaps you can finally separate yourself from the sins of the man whose blood runs through your veins.”
His eyes hardened.
“Because make no mistake, Juliet—I will never forget what your father did to my sister.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
“Complete this task, and maybe I’ll stop looking at you as nothing more than a thief and the daughter of a murderer.”
His jaw tightened.
“Fail me, and whatever little mercy I have left for you disappears.”
The offer lingered between us.
It should have been tempting. Instead, it broke something inside me.
I lifted my chin despite the fear clawing at my chest.
“My father abandoned us. He disappeared without warning. He left my sick mother. He hurt me more deeply than he’ll probably ever know.”
I shook my head.
“But none of that means I’ll help someone kill him.”
Silence stretched between us.
Then...
The corner of Romeo’s mouth lifted ever so slightly.
Not a smile.
Something far more unsettling.
A calculating smirk.
As though I’d answered a question he’d already known the outcome of.
Slowly, he lifted one hand.
His fingers slid beneath my chin.
Firm and warm.
He tilted my face upward until I had no choice but to meet those piercing green eyes.
“I’ll drag your father out of whatever hole he’s hiding in. With or without you.”
His thumb rested against my jaw, almost gentle if it hadn’t felt like a threat.
“But you will live with the knowledge that I offered you redemption from his sins... and that I will never offer it again.”
His gaze held mine with pure, quiet contempt.
Romeo’s hand shot out and clamped around my arm.
His grip was iron, his fingers digging into my flesh as he pulled me toward him.
With one sharp tug, he spun me around so quickly the room blurred.
A gasp escaped me as my balance vanished.
An instant later, my back slammed into the solid wall of his chest.
Heat radiated through the thin fabric separating us.
His body surrounded mine—unyielding muscle, controlled strength, and barely restrained fury.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even think.
Then came the sound.
A violent rip.
My eyes flew wide as his hand tore down the front of my shirt. The fabric split apart beneath his grip, falling away in ruined strips.
Cool air rushed over my exposed skin, leaving me standing in nothing but my bra.
Shock robbed me of speech.
My heart battered against my ribs so violently it hurt.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, panic strangling my voice.
His left arm wrapped firmly around my waist, hauling me back until there wasn’t even an inch of space between us.
My spine pressed against the hard planes of his chest, every steady beat of his heart reverberating through my body.
I had never been this close to him before.
Never been this aware of him.
Fear coursed through every nerve, yet beneath it lurked something infinitely more dangerous—a longing I had buried for years.
It terrified me.
His breath skimmed the side of my neck.
Warm. Steady.
Far too close.
“You’ve made it perfectly clear where your loyalty lies,” he murmured, his Irish accent roughened into something colder. “But I will not tolerate a wife—even a temporary one—whose allegiance belongs to another man.”
His hand came to rest against the center of my chest, lingering just long enough to make my pulse race before sliding upward with slow, deliberate control.
Every muscle in my body locked.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
This was wrong.
Everything about this moment was wrong.
He hated me.
He had humiliated me in front of both our families.
He had vowed to make my life miserable.
Yet being trapped against him like this awakened emotions I despised myself for feeling.
Heat pooled low in my stomach.
My breathing became uneven.
I hated that my body refused to separate fear from the years I’d spent secretly loving him.
I hated myself even more for it.
Then his lips brushed the side of my neck.
The contact was fleeting.
Barely a kiss.
Yet it sent a violent shiver racing through me.
A small, involuntary sound escaped my lips before I could stop it.
His breathing grew quieter.
Without warning, Romeo spun me around again.
The movement was so sudden that a startled gasp escaped my lips before my back slammed into the wall with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.