WANT ME BACK. BREAK ME TWICE

Chapter 2

I didn’t know how long I had been lying in the dark.

At first, there was nothing. No sound. No pain. No thought. Just a vast, swallowing blackness.

Then slowly—too slowly—something violent dragged me back to the surface.

A brutal, throbbing agony exploded in my skull, each pulse sharp enough to make my stomach turn. When I tried to shift, a strangled gasp tore from my throat. My right arm felt entirely detached from my body, a white-hot spike of agony radiating from the shoulder. My leg was a heavy, useless weight.

"Don't move."

The command didn't come from Nina. It didn't come from a doctor.

It was a low, gravelly baritone that vibrated right through the mattress.

I forced my swollen eyelids open. The blurred lines of the room gradually coalesced into the dim, shadowy corners of my tiny servant's quarters. Sitting on the edge of my narrow cot, completely out of place in his pristine, expensive suit, was Rohan.

His tie was loosened, his hair slightly unkempt, and his jacket was thrown across the room's single wooden chair. He looked like a man who had been sitting in the dark for hours, letting his own anger poison him.

"R-Rohan..." I breathed, the word scraping against my raw throat.

"I told you not to move," he growled.

Before I could flinch, his large hand came down on my uninjured shoulder, pinning me flat against the mattress with terrifying, effortless strength. His touch wasn't gentle, but it was steady—holding me still so I wouldn't agitate my wounds.

"The doctor left an hour ago," Rohan said, his dark eyes boring into mine, flashing with a dangerous, unstable light. "Dislocated shoulder. A severe sprain in your knee. A concussion." He leaned closer, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle ticked beneath his sharp skin. "You fell down an entire flight of marble steps because you couldn't even manage to walk like a normal human being."

He was blaming me. Of course he was. To admit Treas shoved me would mean admitting the woman he chose over me was a monster.

"I didn't fall," I whispered, tears of pain and anger burning my eyes. "Treas—"

"Silence."

The word was a razor-sharp blade. Rohan’s grip on my shoulder tightened just enough to warn me.

"Do not utter her name with that deceitful tongue," he rasped, his face inches from mine. I could smell the faint trace of whiskey on his breath, mixed with his signature scent of cedar and rain. "I know exactly what game you're playing, Elara. You want my pity. You want me to look at you and regret the day I tore up our contract."

A bitter, broken laugh escaped my lips, catching in my throat. "Pity? From you? I know better than to ask for water from a stone, Sir."

His eyes darkened to a terrifying pitch. He hated when I called him Sir. He hated the reminder that he had stripped me of my title as his wife and reduced me to this.

"Let's remind ourselves of the truth, shall we?" Rohan sneered, his voice dropping into a chillingly calm, arrogant cadence. "Five years ago, your precious family was on the brink of absolute ruin. Treas's reputation was about to be dragged through the mud. It was you who came to my office. You who begged me to sign that marriage contract to save your sister's honor. I wanted Treas. I agreed to take her. But you traded yourself to protect her."

He leaned in so close his lips almost brushed my ear, his breath hot and malicious.

"You forced your way into my bed, Elara. You tricked me into believing you were innocent. You even gave me a daughter just to bind me to you forever. And then you betrayed me with the family inheritance. So don't play the martyr now. You chose this cage."

Every word was a calculated strike to my heart. He didn't know the truth. He didn't know that Marina and Treas had forged the betrayal documents. He didn't know that I had loved him—honestly, desperately—from the moment we stood at the altar.

"If I am so treacherous," I choked out, a single tear finally escaping and tracking down my temple, "why don't you just let me go? Throw me out. Make me disappear. You and Treas can have your perfect, peaceful life. Why keep a snake in your house?"

Rohan went entirely still.

For a long, suffocating moment, the only sound was the heavy rhythm of his breathing. Then, slowly, a dark, twisted smile curved his lips. It was the look of a man completely unhinged by his own possessiveness, hiding his obsession behind a mask of pure cruelty.

He reached up, his long, slender fingers wrapping around my jaw. He didn't squeeze to hurt, but his grip was unyielding, forcing me to look at the absolute authority in his face.

"Because death is too easy a mercy for you, Elara," he whispered softly, his thumb dragging across my lower lip with a terrifyingly intimate pressure.

"I will keep you here," he continued, his voice dropping to a dark, breathless murmur. "I will keep you so close that you will breathe the same air I breathe. You will stay in this house, and you will watch me choose her. Every single day. You will watch me touch her. Want her. Please her. You will stand in the shadows as a servant and remember exactly what you lost when you crossed me."

"You're a monster," I sobbed, my chest heaving against his hand.

"I am exactly what you made me," he replied coldly.

I tried to twist my face away from his hand. "I'll leave. I'll run away. I'll find a way out of this hell—"

"Try it," Rohan interrupted, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on my arms stand up. He let go of my jaw, but his gaze pinned me to the bed just as effectively. "Step one foot outside the gates of this estate without my permission, Elara, and you will never see Allegra again."

My breath caught entirely. The room felt devoid of oxygen. "She is my daughter..."

"She is a Margualie," Rohan corrected sharply, standing up to his full, towering height. He looked down at me from the shadows, an untouchable billionaire tycoon, cold and absolute. "And a disgraced servant has no right to a tycoon's heir. You want to see her? You want to hear her laugh? Then you will bow your head, you will scrub the floors, and you will endure whatever punishment I deem fit."

He picked up his suit jacket, throwing it over his arm. He didn't look back as he walked toward the door.

"Sleep fast, Elara," he said over his shoulder, his voice like ice snapping in the winter. "Tomorrow, the ballroom still needs to be cleaned. And I expect it to be spotless."

The door clicked shut behind him, locking me into the silence of the room.

I lay there in the dark, my body broken, my heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.

He thought he was punishing me out of hatred. He thought he was breaking me to soothe his wounded pride.

But as I stared at the ceiling, feeling the phantom pressure of his fingers on my jaw, a cold, quiet realization settled deep into my bones.

Rohan didn't hate me. If he hated me, he would have thrown me to the wolves years ago.

He was obsessed with me. He was keeping me captive because he couldn't bear the thought of a world where I didn't belong to him.

A slow, icy numbness washed over the heartbreak, replacing the love I had carried for him with something much stronger. Something patient.

Let him keep me here, I thought, closing my eyes against the pain. Let him think he has won.

Because when I finally break these chains... I will make him bleed for every single tear I shed tonight