His Gentle Cruelty

Chapter 6 A Brutal Reckoning

Lyra shook her head slowly, her eyes brimming with tears as she let out a soft whimper.

"Please don't blame them," she said, her voice trembling. "It's all Ms. Shaw's doing. She's still holding a grudge over what happened the other day."

"A grudge?" Wesley's laugh was hollow and cold. His eyes, dead and glacial, flicked toward Zoe. For just a moment, his throat tightened almost imperceptibly. "Zoe, do you really have the nerve to cause trouble at my event?"

"I didn't do anything," Zoe said, her voice cracking with fear.

"Didn't?" His fingers dug into her chin, forcing her to meet his frozen stare. "Have I been too soft with you? Have I let you off easy every time you cross the line? Maybe it's time you learned the hard way not to act so recklessly."

His grip turned vicious as he twisted her face toward Lyra.

"You upset Lyra," he said flatly. "Now you'll pay for it."

Zoe's eyes blazed with defiance despite her fear.

"I'm not guilty of anything," she said. "Why should I have to—"

"Guilty or not, I'm the one who decides." His voice could have frozen hell itself. "You will kneel and press your face to the floor in front of Lyra. Ninety-nine times. Then we're done here."

A collective gasp swept through the crowd of onlookers. Phones came up instantly, capturing every humiliating second. Whispers rippled through the room in waves.

"Oh my God, is Mr. Cirrus actually serious about this?"

"Making her do that ninety-nine times in public? That's absolutely brutal."

"She played with fire and now she's getting burned."

Zoe's nails dug into her palms until they drew blood. The ice in Wesley's eyes sent a shiver straight down her spine.

"No," she ground out through clenched teeth. "No, I won't."

Without a word, Wesley signaled to his assistants. Two men lunged forward immediately. One wrenched her shoulders down while the other crushed a hand against the back of her neck, forcing her knees to hit the cold marble floor.

Her skull cracked against the stone.

"One," the assistant droned, his tone flat and robotic.

"Two."

White-hot pain seared through her head. Blood oozed down her face, sticky and warm against her skin. The murmurs of the crowd, the constant clicking of cameras, his icy expression—all of it hacked away at what remained of her pride, blow by brutal blow.

She thrashed and struggled, but their vise-like grip held her down like a ragdoll. Each time they forced her face to the floor shattered another piece of her dignity.

"Fifty-six."

"Seventy-nine."

"Ninety-eight."

At the ninety-ninth thud, her forehead was a raw, pulpy wound. Blood dripped onto the white marble beneath her. She crumpled forward, shaking like a leaf, her world tilting dangerously into blackness.

"Wesley, please just let it go now," Lyra piped up with fake sympathy. Her voice dripped with honeyed malice.

Wesley's eyes flicked down to Zoe's broken body sprawled on the floor. For just an instant, a shadow of guilt flashed across his features. Then he coldly signaled the assistants to back away.

"Learn your place," he hissed down at her. "Never cross Lyra again."

Without another word, he marched toward the center of the banquet hall, Lyra's hand clutched tightly in his. He left Zoe behind like a broken doll tossed aside on the cold marble floor.

That night, the assistants hauled her back to the mansion and dumped her on the bed. Zoe's body burned with fever, sweat-slicked and trembling, as hallucinations of her mother's voice clawed at her exhausted mind.

When she finally woke, the mansion stood dead silent around her.

It turned out that Lyra had landed a major blockbuster role. Wesley, ever the devoted knight, had dropped everything to play her personal bodyguard on location.

Alone at last in the empty house, Zoe began laying the groundwork for her revenge.

Three days later, the call from the hospital came like a gut punch straight to her stomach. Her father was coding. They were losing him.

"He didn't make it. You need to sign here," the doctor said flatly, thrusting the death certificate toward her.

Her fingers shook as she took the pen. Not from grief, but from the weight of the lie she was about to sign into existence.

Meanwhile, somewhere over the Atlantic, her so-called dead father, now wearing a new name on a new passport, was already sipping champagne in first class on a flight to Westhaven.