His eyes dripped with contempt, his lips curling into a cruel sneer as he leaned in. The reek of alcohol and Vanessa's perfume hit me first, that cloying sweetness coiling around me like something venomous. My stomach lurched. The hatred I'd buried came roaring back.
I thrashed against him, but my strength was nothing compared to his. He had my wrists pinned, my body immobilized, every attempt to break free only making his grip tighten until my bones ached. Somewhere beyond the locked bedroom door, the estate was silent. No soldier would come. No one intervened in the heir's private rooms.
Desperation sharpened into something feral. I lunged forward and sank my teeth into his lip with everything I had.
"Ngh." Maeve grunted, the metallic taste of blood blooming between us. He released me instantly, shoving me back as he scrambled upright. His fingers came away from his mouth smeared red. The look he gave me could have curdled milk. Pure, undiluted venom.
"Adriana! Have you lost your goddamn mind?!" His voice exploded through the room, raw with fury. "You bit me? You, with that pathetic innocent act, that harmless little mask you wear, you think you have the right to touch me? To bite me?"
He glared at me like I was something rotting, his words sharp as broken glass: "Just looking at you makes me sick. This is how you've always operated, isn't it? Playing the wounded doe, wrapping the Don around your finger, making him protect you at every turn. You manipulated him into dragging me back here, and now you're pulling this hard-to-get bullshit? You think I'll fall for it? Pathetic."
His chest heaved. He jabbed a finger at my face, each word a nail driven deeper. His other hand went to his tie, smoothing the knot once, twice, harder each time.
"This is exactly why our daughters turned out the way they did. Learning from you, from that fake helpless act. That's why they had the nerve to disrespect Vanessa in public. That's why they needed to be sent away to St. Lazarus, to learn some discipline, to be taught how to behave!"
"Enough." My voice cracked through his tirade, hoarse, shattered, but cold as steel. I bit down on my lower lip until I tasted iron, using the pain to leash the grief and rage threatening to tear me apart. When I spoke again, each word was deliberate, precise:
"The children are dead."
Maeve's mouth snapped shut. The fury on his face froze, something flickering behind his eyes. Confusion, maybe even a flash of fear. But it lasted only a heartbeat.
Then he laughed. A sharp, mocking sound, dripping with scorn. "Adriana, is there any lie you won't tell? Any line you won't cross?"
He pulled out his phone, swiped the screen a few times, and thrust it in my face. Vanessa's ultrasound report glowed on the display, followed by his social media announcement. "You found out today that Vanessa is carrying my child, didn't you? And now you're so jealous you've gone insane. Making up stories, trying to curse me, desperate to make me feel sorry for you?"
His voice turned to ice. "Is this really how low you'll stoop? Using our daughters to curse me? Adriana, you disgust me. You don't deserve to be their mother. You don't even deserve to speak their names."
He didn't look at me again. He stood, brushing off his clothes as though I'd contaminated him, and walked toward the door. At the threshold, he paused. Didn't turn around. His voice flat with warning:
"You're the one who pushed me away, Adriana. You're the one who didn't want my attention, my affection. So stop running to the Don to complain. Stop playing the victim, crying about how I neglect you, how I mistreat you. It only makes me despise you more. It only makes you look cheaper."
The door slammed. The walls of the estate bedroom seemed to shudder. Silence crashed back into the room, so complete I could hear my own breathing, ragged and hollow. The stench of alcohol and Vanessa's perfume still hung in the air, clinging to everything, making my stomach turn.
I lurched off the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. The faucet shrieked as I wrenched it open, icy water thundering into the basin. I grabbed my toothbrush, loaded it with paste, and attacked my lips. Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing. Again and again, hard enough to tear skin. I needed to erase him. The trace of his breath. The humiliation. The revulsion. Every memory of him that had ever touched me.
The bristles jabbed into my gums. Pain lanced through me. Blood seeped out, its metallic taste mingling with mint, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Water ran down my chin, pink with blood and foam, dripping into the white porcelain basin like scattered petals, red as roses left on a grave, beautiful and hopeless.
I raised my head and met my own eyes in the mirror.
Hair tangled. Eyes swollen and rimmed with red. Lips colorless except for the blood at the corners. My gaze, empty. Hollow. Dead.
I looked like something that had crawled out of a grave.
Nothing remained of the woman I used to be. My thumb found the edge of the ash locket at my throat. The metal was warm from my skin. That was the only warmth left in the room.
