CHAPTER 10: I HATE THORNE
1011 Words
Thorne's gaze lingered like he was memorising every inch of her.
"Leave."
She backed toward the door, but her feet didn’t obey fast enough. Her pulse did.
Then something snapped. She stormed off, heart hammering. Her skin still carried the scent of violence, of sin… of him. Her chest heaved like her lungs hadn't forgiven her for surviving that room.
"Hey," Damon said when she bumped into him at the walkway.
"Hey," she breathed, still unsteady.
"Are you okay?" Damon studied her face.
"Kiss me," The words flew out of her mouth.
Damon blinked.
"Okay, let's go to my room." His voice dropped to a whisper.
"No. Here."
He smiled—a wicked boyish smile, then stepped closer. The air between them thickened; his breath brushed her cheek.
She tilted her face toward him but then stopped.
“Not there,” she whispered, glancing down at her thighs, her voice trembling. “Here.”
Damon sank to his knees, his hands moving up her legs in a motion that made her breath catch.
Then his phone rang—sharp, jarring, breaking the moment.
She flinched.
He groaned, pulling out his phone from his pocket.
"Give me a second."
But Sammy bolted down the hallway, past the golden chandeliers and into the suffocating silence.
Outside, the wind was cruel and honest. Unlike anything in the house.
But she needed more than air. She needed freedom.
Freedom from Don Thorne’s sick kingdom of ownership and power.
So she kept walking—barefoot, aimless.
The images wouldn’t stop. Everything in his dark room felt like a weapon built to command.
Was that what she was meant to be too? A submissive? The thought made her chest tighten. She could never give anyone that kind of surrender.
Her steps quickened as the questions crowded her mind.
Stop, or I’ll shoot!” a voice barked as she sprinted through the garden.
Sammy froze, chest hammering.
The guard stepped closer, eyes narrowing, then softening as he recognized her.
“s**t… I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re not supposed to—”
She ignored him and stepped past, through the open gate.
The city sprawled before her, lights glittering like a promise. It felt beautiful to breathe, free from the chokehold of Don Thorne’s mansion.
She walked, God, she walked far. Farther than the manicured driveways, past the city’s glittering façades, until grime and shadow swallowed the streets. Until the sky darkened and the heavens tore open, pouring down without mercy.
She never really loved the rain. As a child, it always left her shivering with colds, and her mother’s warning rang in her ears: “Prevention is better than cure.” But now, soaked through and trembling, she didn’t care. The rain plastered her top to her body, sharp needles of cold biting her skin. And yet, it felt… good. Not good like warmth, but good like release. Like it might wash away the filth, the fear, the memory of everything that had happened.
Her legs ached, but her heart did worse. For a moment, she imagined walking from Sicily to Piedmont, as if distance could save her, but it was useless. Her father had never had much use for her anyway. And her mother? Weak.
She turned back. Back to the hell she'd just fled, because at the end of the day, she had nowhere else to go. Even hell can feel like home when it’s the only place that remembers your name.
No army waited at the gate. The house stood still, like it knew she was coming and didn’t care.
She made it to her room and halted, breath catching.
The large velvet curtain had been drawn aside, revealing the floor-to-ceiling windows. Moonlight spilled across the room, sharpening his edges—Thorne, a storm ready to strike.
“I sent every man I had out there looking for you,” he growled, low and lethal. “Why the f**k do you never listen?”
She let out a short, bitter laugh.
“I don’t know, maybe you should just drag me to your dark room of possession and cuff me. Flog me. Like you did to that girl.”
He frowned. "Dark room of what?"
She kept mute, fist pinching into her palms.
His eyes roamed over her drenched body. Her n*****s poked against the soaked tank top, hair clinging to her face. Water traced down her skin like liquid sorrow.
"The next time I give you an instruction and you don't listen, I'll—"
"What are you gonna do?" She snapped, cutting him off. "r**e me again?"
The words shivered off her lips but it filled the room. The silence after that was deafening.
She cleaned the tears rolling down her eyes.
"What happened that night—" he said, voice even.
"What I did to you the other night—" He rephrased. That mattered.
Silence hung between them like a blade.
"It shouldn’t have happened."
For the briefest flicker, his eyes softened, just a hint of something almost human—regret. But it vanished as quickly as it came, swallowed by the arrogance and control that defined him.
"But it'd happened," She whispered, tucking her wet hair behind her ear.
She crossed the room, reaching for dry clothes. His gaze trailed her, dragging over her like heavy chains.
Admittedly, part of her was drawn to the way he’d protected her at the party, even though he was the one who had put her in danger to begin with.
More tears slid freely down her cheeks, and her teeth chattered from the cold.
“Everyone says I should be scared of you—”
“You should be,” he cut in.
“You don’t get it, do you?” She smirked through trembling lips. “I hate you,” she whispered, voice fragile, to the man who had anchored every pain and misery she’d endured in the last forty-eight hours.
“I hate you so much I can’t breathe looking at your face.”
And with that, she collapsed to the floor.
- Writer
