Beneath His Heart

chapter 5

April's pov

After the final dance, the final toast, and the final performance of the perfect couple, we were escorted to the penthouse suite.

The elevator ride to the penthouse was silent — but it wasn’t peace that followed us. It was dread, thick, and suffocating, clinging to the walls like smoke after a fire.

Alexander didn’t speak. He didn’t look at me. He simply held my wrist like a leash, his grip firm enough to bruise, but calm — too calm. The kind of calm that came before a storm.

The doors opened with a soft chime, and I was pulled into a world built for opulence and emptiness.

The penthouse was breathtaking. Floor-to-ceiling windows displayed the glittering cityscape like a painting. Everything inside was pristine — cold marble, black leather, and silence. It didn’t feel like a home. It felt like a museum. A prison with golden walls.

He loosened his tie, threw his jacket onto a chair, and poured himself a glass of something amber and burning. I stayed near the window, arms crossed over myself, shivering though the room wasn’t cold.

He sipped, then finally turned.

“You thought marrying me would be your victory parade.”

His voice was low. Mocking.

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t be used against me.

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. Just bitterness. Like every word was dipped in poison.

“This isn’t your fairy tale, Gwen. This is my world. And you?” He stepped closer, drink still in hand. “You’re just a puppet who pulled the wrong strings.”

He stopped inches from me. I could feel the heat of his breath, the ice in his eyes.

“You wanted a husband,” he said. “What you got is a curse.”

I flinched before I could stop myself, and that made him smile — not kindly, but like a wolf pleased with how easily the lamb trembles.

“I’ll make sure you never forget what you did,” he whispered. “Or what you didn’t do. Every breath you take under my roof, every step you think of taking away from me — you’ll feel me. I will haunt you.”

His words weren’t a threat. They were a vow.

Still, I met his gaze, swallowing the fear rising like bile.

“Then we’re both cursed,” I said softly, but the weight of it made the air between us shatter like glass.

He stared at me — something flickering behind those storm-dark eyes. Recognition? Regret? Rage? I couldn’t tell. And then he turned away like I was no longer worth the energy.

He vanished into the adjacent room, leaving behind the scent of scotch, smoke, and something far crueler: silence.

I didn’t move.

I stood in that penthouse — our marital suite — like a statue carved from grief. The city blinked at me through the glass, a constellation of lights in a world I was no longer part of.

I touched the ring on my finger.

It didn’t feel like commitment.

It felt like chains.

Later, I found myself curled on the edge of the massive bed, the veil long discarded, my skin marked with the weight of the day. He was somewhere else in the suite. I could hear him moving — deliberate, controlled — like a man used to war.

Maybe this marriage was just that: a battlefield.

And I had been forced into the frontlines.

But I wouldn't break. Not yet. Not tonight.

Because whatever war Alexander Black thought he was fighting — I’d already survived worse.

And I wasn’t done writing the end of this story.

Alexander’s POV

The suite was dark, save for the flicker of city lights spilling in through the windows. I stood at the doorway, watching her.

Gwen.

She looked so small curled on the edge of the bed, the white silk gown crumpled around her like a shroud. The veil had slipped halfway off, her hair tangled, her makeup smeared — not from joy or celebration, but from exhaustion and fear.

My wife.

That word used to mean something sacred to me.

But now, it sounded like a punishment.

I gripped the tumbler in my hand, the scotch inside trembling as my fingers clenched around the glass. I wanted to feel anger. I needed to feel it. Because if I didn’t — if I let myself look too long — I’d start to feel something far worse.

Regret.

She didn’t deserve my sympathy. She didn’t deserve anything except the cage she now lived in. After all, she’d put herself in it.

I took a slow sip, watching her chest rise and fall, steady and shallow. She didn’t stir. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was too broken to even pretend anymore.

For a moment, she looked like someone else. Someone untouched by scandal. Someone soft, unruined. And it ruined me to see her like that.

Because it reminded me of the night everything fell apart.

The drugs in my drink.

The room I don’t remember walking into.

The woman in my bed the next morning — her.

I had been set up. I knew it. And yet… every time I look into her eyes, I see confusion. Real confusion. Like she’s trapped in a nightmare, she never agreed to live.

But that couldn’t be real. Could it?

I moved closer to the bed, each step slower than the last.

My eyes trailed the bruises blooming faintly along her wrist — my doing. My jaw clenched. I hadn’t meant to hold her so hard. I hadn’t meant to throw her like that. But she’d looked at me — lied to my face — just like her mother.

I sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under my weight. She stirred slightly but didn’t wake. Her breath hitched. She was crying in her sleep.

Something twisted in my chest.

I reached out, hesitated — then brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. She flinched even in sleep. My hand froze midair.

what the hell I'm I doing. I withdraw my hand back.

I refuse to feel anything soft for her—not pity, not forgiveness, not even contempt. She’s the reason I’m shackled to this twisted fate. Because of her, April is pulling away from me . April, who should have been my wife… April, who should have been lying here beside me, her warmth grounding me instead of this cold, bitter emptiness.

But she—that serpent in borrowed skin—shattered everything.

She stole what wasn’t hers to take.

And for that, I’ll make her pay.

I will not let death come gently for her, even if she begs for it, even if she dreams of it every waking moment. No, I’ll strip it from her reach. I’ll make her suffer so exquisitely that even mercy will be too ashamed to touch her.

Let her rot inside the gilded coffin she clawed her way into.

Let her drown in the ashes of what she pretended to love.

I stood, the venom coiling in my blood, thrumming like a war drum in my chest.

If I stayed a moment longer, I’d tear her apart — not out of rage, but something darker. Something intimate.

And I wasn’t ready to break her.

Not yet.

So I walked out — into the dark — with the taste of scotch on my tongue and the weight of vengeance anchoring my soul.

Let her rot in the ruin she built for herself.