PROLOGUE
Blank eyes stared into mine. Damien's gaze pierced through me like a dagger, his emotionless eyes sucking the light out of the room. The eyes that once held love for me now seemed to hold a malevolent intensity, boring into my soul with an unrelenting ferocity.
“You made me this way, Mia,” he whispered, his voice gruff, like the rumble of thunder on a rainy night. This wasn't the man I knew. Gone was the man who looked at me like I put the stars in the sky. In its place was a monster, forged from the depths of darkness and hellfire, out to exact revenge for everything I did to him.
He walked around me with deliberate slowness, his heavy footsteps echoing through the silence. His movements were fluid, predatory, and calculated to inspire fear.
“I'm sorry,” I said, hoping my words would penetrate the armour of his anger, but they seemed to bounce off him like arrows off the steel.
His gaze never wavered, his eyes burning with an inner fire that seemed to consume him whole.
“You're sorry?” he repeated, his voice dripping with bitterness, each word laced with resentment.
His eyes flashed with anger, the veins on his neck bulging like cords.
“For what, Mia?” he growled, narrowing his eyes further.
He took a step closer, his movements deliberate, calculated.
“For manipulating me?”
Another step.
“For using me?”
His voice rose, crashing against me like a tidal surge.
“For destroying me?”
I swallowed hard, my heart racing in my chest.
Damien's face twisted into a snarl, his features contorted in a mask of rage. "What exactly are you apologising for?"
“Damien, please listen—”
"To what?" he cut me off, his voice slicing through mine like a knife.
His eyes blazed with fury, burning. "Tell me, Mia, did you f*****g listen to me?!" His voice cracked, the sound echoing through the room like broken glass.
“Did you listen when I begged you? When I knelt under the rain, begging you to take me back? Did you listen to me?"
My heart shattered into a million pieces. I struggled, feeling the cold metal biting against my bound wrist. He had me tied up, with my legs swinging.
“Damien, I—”
“Don't,” he growled, his voice low and menacing. “Don't say my name. You lost that right when you f*****g betrayed me!”
I struggled against the chains, fear creeping in like a thief in the night. The emptiness in his eyes scared me more than anything else had ever done.
Damien wasn't joking. I had seen what he was capable of, seen what a monster the only man I loved had become. And I had just myself to blame. I made him this way. I took his innocence from him and trampled on it until he was nothing but a shell of who he once was.
He lifted his gaze, his mouth opening up in a wide grin. “You will pay for everything, Mia. And when you do, I will discard you. I will spoil you for every man. I will f**k you and destroy your p***y, so no other man would want to be with you. I will make you crave death, but I will never give you that. You, Mia, will know the pain that comes from playing with my heart!”
No. This man right here wasn't Damien. This was a stranger — A monster.
“You're going to pay for what you did, Mia,” he vowed.
His words sent shivers down my spine, the promise of retribution hanging in the air like a guillotine.
“I'll make you regret ever crossing me. You'll beg for mercy, but it will be far. I will drag you down to hell with me, to the place you made for yourself!”
Looking deep into his emotionless eyes, I tried to find the familiar gaze I had gotten used to, to know that Damien was still there. I knew Damien, the real one, would never harm me. This monster, though? I wasn't so sure.