Dolton POV
For years, I thought Celine respected me. I thought she saw how much I fought for her, how I tried to shield her from my family’s cruelty whenever I could. But in her mind, I was just as monstrous as the rest of them. The thought fills me with fury, not at her, but at my family’s sick, twisted games. They’d used me as a pawn, turned me into a villain in her eyes without ever telling me.
Sebastian watches me closely, his expression unreadable. “I hated you so much because I saw,” he says after a pause. “I saw how much she loved you, even while she was telling me about what you had supposedly done to her. You didn’t deserve that love after what she thought you’d done. That’s why I hated you, Dolton.”
His words slice through me, reopening old wounds I didn’t even know I still ca
