🔥 Chapter 15 - "Desire Bent To Purpose"
1493 Words
Alina's (Liana) POV
People think fear makes you weak.
They’re wrong.
Fear educates.
It teaches you how to watch without being seen. How to breathe without making sound. How to turn pain into a weapon.
I learned that the night the Morettis killed my family.
Not just my parents. Not just my friends.
My husband. My future. The child I was carrying.
And he was one of them.
Marco Moretti didn’t pull the trigger himself.
He didn’t have to.
Men like him never dirty their hands when blood will flow anyway.
That was the first lesson.
By the time I was brought into his house, I was already someone else.
Liana Ashwin died in that m******e.
I cut her out of myself piece by piece.
I changed my hair. My posture. My voice. The way I looked at men.
Most importantly—I changed the way I reacted. Fear made me observant. Grief made me precise. I studied Marco the way children learn numbers. One. His temper—controlled, never impulsive. Two. His violence—clean, efficient, distant. Three. His weakness—he liked women who didn’t beg.
Women who burned quietly. Women who resisted just enough to feel real. So I became that woman.
He thinks he noticed me first. That’s almost funny. I noticed him the moment I realized he didn’t look away from fire. So I became it. I let my body speak before my mouth ever did. Silence. Stillness. Bare feet. Distance.
I learned what he watched. What made his jaw tighten. What made him stop breathing.
He liked women who didn’t offer themselves. Women who made him wait. Women who looked breakable but never bent.
So I starved myself carefully. A little hunger. Not too much. Enough to look fragile. Enough to make him think he was saving me.
He brought food himself. I ate just enough to live. He brought clothes. I wore the ones that made him forget how to think. He smiled like he was winning. I let him.
I watched him kill those boys. That wasn’t the first time I’d seen death. It was the first time I’d seen how easily he erased people.
No anger. No pleasure. Just decision.
That’s when I knew—this wouldn’t end with escape. Men like him don’t lose people. They lose control. So I stayed.
I tested him at night, not to run—but to learn.
How fast he found me. How he touched me. How he spoke when he thought I was tired of hating him. He never hurt me. That was the real danger.
The night I held the knife, I wasn’t shaking. I wasn’t afraid. I was calm in a way that scared even me. He was awake. Of course he was. Men like Marco never truly sleep—they rest with one eye open, one hand near violence.
When he caught my wrist, it wasn’t violent—it was so controlled that tore through me.
I let the breath leave my lungs like shock, let my body twist just enough to sell resistance. Fire always looks better when it pretends to fight.
His hands closed around my wrists, pinning them above my head.
I felt his dominance before I felt his heat.
My breathing fractured on purpose. Fast. Uneven. My chest brushed his with every inhale, and I knew he felt it. I wanted him to. I let my body speak before my mouth betrayed me.
Our faces were too close. I could count his breaths. Feel the moment he stopped controlling them.
I manipulated him to lose control of himself.
Then he kissed me. It was dominance wrapped in hunger.It was possession wrapped in restraint—his mouth hard against mine, controlled but hungry, as if he’d been holding himself back for far too long.
I let my body respond. That was my choice.
I gasped into the kiss—not from surprise, but because I knew that sound would undo him. Let my lips part. Let him feel the shift in me and mistake it for desire.
The moment my resistance faltered, I felt his control tighten.
That was the exchange.
My mouth moved under his—not fully yielding, just enough to confuse him. Just enough to make him think I was responding, not calculating.
He wasn’t kissing an enemy anymore. He was kissing a woman he wanted to understand him. And that was when I knew— I had won something far more valuable than his life.
But suddenly my breath hitched. My body warmed. Heat curled low in my stomach, real enough to be dangerous.
I hated how easily he mistook reaction for surrender.
When my hips shifted—barely, instinctively—I froze, as if I’d caught myself wanting.
I felt him notice. Felt the way his body reacted before his mind caught up.
Then he pulled away.
I was in shock. My mind was saying one thing, but my body was doing another. It had already reacted him.
This couldn’t be. It was a betrayal by my own body. Once I understood this, I rose in silence and walked out of the room without looking back.
I couldn’t sleep a wink that night.
For the next few days, no matter how hard I forced myself, I couldn’t leave the room. I didn’t even want to see his face. Aiden haunted my dreams. It felt as if I had betrayed my family, and most of all, him—my husband. I wasn’t supposed to cry; I wasn’t supposed to show him my weakness, but I did. I cried until my eyes turned bloodshot.
Later— he came to my room, saying he wanted to check on me. I didn’t look at him when he entered. My eyes burned. They looked like I had been crying for reasons he could never fully know. I was too broken to respond any of his words. The door closed. And I cried into my knees.
I recalled every single detail. My family, my loved ones, my husband, my child...
Marco is one of the main culprits of that m******e.
Suddenly, it was as if I woke up from a dream.
What am I doing here, in his house, around him? This is my revenge.
I shook myself off and came to my senses.
I went into the bathroom and took a shower.
The blood of my loved ones will not go unavenged. And one day, Marco will be certain of that too.
Because that night, I had crossed a line he didn’t even see. He had offered himself emotionally. And men like him never survive that.
The most difficult part was arousing him lustfully. After his coming home tired he found me reading on the sofa, I knew exactly where to sit. How to curl. Where to let my hair fall. Which finger to rest against my lips.
I felt his hunger before he moved.
I let it grow.
Men like Marco mistake patience for power.
He asked questions.
I gave silence.
Because silence makes men fill the gaps with hope.
Then it was time to manipulate the feelings he had hidden deep within. I spoke about my family and it wasn’t weakness. It was construction.
I knew he already knew something—files always tell a version of the truth. So I gave him the version I needed him to believe.
Alina Seraph had a family on paper. A car crash. A violent father. A quiet, broken mother.
Clean. Believable. Familiar.
I shaped that lie carefully, mirroring his own wounds so he could recognize himself in mine. A father to fear. A childhood built on survival. Pain that sounded like his pain.
After the crash, I said I grew up in an orphanage.
No relatives. No history. No one coming for me.
I needed him to believe there was no past strong enough to pull me away from him.
No hands left to claim me.
No one to save me.
He thinks that makes me his.
It doesn’t.
It makes him mine.
Because now he believes I understand him. That I feel what he feels. That I belong in the same darkness.
And when a man like Marco believes that— he lowers his guard.
I won’t kill him quickly.
I’ll take him apart the way he dismantled my life. Slowly.
Deliberately.
Piece by piece.
“I can read you,” I told him. And I meant it.
I knew what he liked. What made him hesitate. What made him crave. He thinks I’m choosing him. He thinks this is desire.
Fire.
Obsession.
He’s right about one thing. This is only the beginning.
But he’s wrong about who is in control. I won’t take his life yet. I’ll take his certainty.
His restraint.
His belief that he’s untouchable.
I’ll make him love me more than anything. And when he finally breaks— He’ll understand.
Revenge isn’t loud.
It’s patient.
- Writer
