Chapter 17 #3
My thumb slid across the screen too quickly, almost clumsily.
“Hello?” My voice cracked immediately, betraying me. “Rafael?”
But before any answer can come—
The hotel room door exploded inward with a deafening crack that split the air like a gunshot.
Wood splintered violently against the frame.
For half a second, my brain simply refused to process what I was seeing.
Then everything hit at once.
I flinched so hard the phone slipped from my fingers and clattered onto the floor, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the chaos that poured into the room.
Standing in the shattered doorway was a man who shared Rafael’s sharp bone structure and dark, aristocratic features—yet the resemblance wasn’t exact.
Even so, I knew him at once. This was Bruno, Rafael’s brother.
And he did not look like a man coming to talk.
He looked like something far worse.
His eyes locked onto me instantly—burning, sharp, unrestrained hatred.
His lips curled into a slow, vicious sneer that made my stomach drop before I even understood why.
Behind him—
More men.
Black suits. Heavy boots. No hesitation in their movements.
They flooded into the room like a disciplined wave of darkness, each one carrying a heavy axe that caught the artificial light in dull, threatening flashes.
My breath stopped completely.
I scrambled backward across the bed until my spine slammed into the headboard, my hands gripping the sheets like they were the only solid thing left in the world.
My eyes darted wildly from face to face.
How?
How were they here?
This wasn’t possible.
This was a secured hotel.
Staff. Cameras. Protocols. There should have been barriers, questions, delays—anything.
Unless...
Money. Fear. Power.
Or all three, used to strip every layer of security until nothing remained.
My throat tightened painfully.
And then the worst thought of all—
Bruno.
He shouldn’t be here.
He should have been in Rafael’s custody.
Or worse.
Dead.
He betrayed Rafael two months ago. I remember it clearly—Rafael ordering him to be brought in for execution, even asking me to witness it.
But I had pulled back.
Out of fear.
He hadn’t been killed. He’d been spared.
A man who should have been dead... was still breathing.
My pulse thundered so loudly I could barely hear anything else.
Bruno stepped further into the room.
“Look at you,” he said softly, almost amused.
His voice carried a sick satisfaction that made my skin crawl. “So this is what he risked everything for.”
I swallowed hard, forcing air into lungs that refused to cooperate.
“Rafael forbade me from his company because of you,” Bruno snarled, his voice sharpening into something vicious and ugly.
“Forbade me from his own house because of you. And now the bastard has disowned me—denied me as his blood, stripped me of every asset, every inheritance, every fucking thing I bled and sacrificed for... all because of you.”
He took a step closer, eyes blazing with pure hatred. “You worthless, fat bitch. You waddled into his life and ruined everything.”
My fingers tightened against the mattress behind me.
“I don’t know what filthy spell you’ve cast on him, you disgusting whore,” Bruno spat, his face twisting into pure revulsion. “But I’m about to rip it apart right here and show him exactly what you really are.”
The room seemed to shrink around me, the air turning thick and suffocating.
The men behind him shifted forward in eerie unison.
Bruno turned his head just enough to address them, but his dead, hateful eyes never left my face.
His voice dropped into something icy and venomous.
“Bind the wretched creature so tightly that not a single inch of her soft, flabby flesh can twitch or resist,” he ordered, lips curling with cruel delight.
“I want her rendered utterly helpless—strung up and displayed like the worthless piece of meat she truly is.”
A wave of ice-cold terror slammed into me.
My heart seized, then exploded into frantic, painful hammering against my ribs.
“No—” The word tore from my throat, hoarse and cracking. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
But they keep moving.
Step by step.
Closing in anyway.
My pulse spikes violently, fear flooding every part of me at once.
A scream ripped from my throat before I could stop it, raw and unfiltered, torn straight from somewhere primal inside me.
“No—!”
The sound bounced off the walls uselessly.
The men advanced toward the bed like a coordinated shadow collapsing inward, boots thudding softly against the carpet, eyes empty of anything human.
I pressed myself harder against the headboard, curling inward, hands instinctively flying to protect my stomach.
My stomach.
The thought hit like a second shockwave.
The baby.
Rafael’s baby.
Panic surged so violently it blurred my vision.
“Stop—please—don’t—” My voice broke completely, dissolving into fractured sobs.
I tried to move further back, but there was nowhere left to go.
The headboard pressed into my spine. The mattress trapped me forward. The room had become too small, too suffocating, too final.
My breathing turned erratic and broken.
I shook my head desperately, tears spilling uncontrollably now as I looked at Bruno through a haze of terror.
“This is insane,” I choked out. “Rafael will—he will—”
My voice failed.
Because I didn’t even know what Rafael would do.
Not anymore.
Bruno tilted his head slightly, watching me struggle with quiet satisfaction.
“That’s the problem. You keep thinking he’ll save you. And maybe he would,” he added, almost thoughtfully. “If he knew in time.”
The men reached the edge of the bed.
My body locked in place.
Every instinct screamed at once—run, fight, hide—but there was nowhere to go, nothing to grab, nothing to use.