He Married Me but Loved Her

Chapter 4

"Then today, I'll make damn sure this accusation sticks. I'll have her pay with her life!"

"Victoria, don't push your luck." Damian's eyes narrowed dangerously as they raked over my useless legs.

"Remember your place, and you're just a broken thing that can't even walk now. I'm all you've got left in this world. I've got a hundred ways to make you beg for death. Don't make me do this. You won't like what happens next."

With a brutal shove, Damian knocked my hand away and stalked out, leaving me trembling in his wake.

Later, Martha whispered how Damian's personal surgeon had extracted the bullet from Eva's flesh.

The iron-hearted man who'd never blinked at gunfire had clung to her delicate hand throughout the procedure, his eyes suspiciously shiny.

Memory ambushed me: that same man once holding my hand just as tenderly.

I'd teased him then, "Big tough guy crying over little old me?"

He'd crushed me against his chest, voice thick: "If it'd heal you, Victoria, I'd drown in my own tears."

...

My fingers whitened on the wheelchair as I slid to the floor, gathering scattered soil like broken dreams before gently nestling the crushed jasmine back into its grave.

I sat cradling the murdered plant, frozen there, hollowed out, until midnight swallowed the room whole.

When the phone shattered the silence, Eva's breathy panic slithered through the receiver: "Damian, if she ever discovers the truth that you deliberately got kidn*pped on that ship to save me, that you played along with their sick game so she'd come charging in alone... do you think she'd slit my throat? It's all my fault. If not for me, her baby would... God, Damian, I'm so sorry."

Damian's voice softened to silk: "Hush now. She still believes it was business rivals. That child? The moment I met you, I decided it would never draw breath. Perhaps it knew how this would end between Victoria and me. Its leaving was mercy, not your burden."

The line went dead.

My heart iced over, cracking with every beat as realization gutted me.

That night four years ago when I'd bled out my soul to save him was just a pitiful jester's act, spicing up their grand romance.

Laughter burst from me, raw, jagged. Tears carved rivers down my face as fury coiled around me, a viper poised to strike.

My shaking fingers dialed the forbidden number.

"Ethan," I whispered, "I've decided. Love or power? I'll take the throne."

The voice on the other end didn't hesitate: "Ten days. Then Westfield bows to you."

Dawn brought Damian's grotesque peace offering a hundred jasmine plants crowding my doorstep.

"Every rare variety money can buy," his note read. "Let's call this generous and be done."

"You crossed the line yesterday. For Liora's memory, I'll overlook it this once."

"But so much as breathe near Eva again, and you'll regret it. She's fragile, unlike you. She can't handle such shocks. Do I make myself clear? This is your final warning."

My fingers brushed against the petals of a jasmine blossom as I let out a hollow laugh. "Unlike me? Damian, what exactly am I in your eyes? A killer who pulls the trigger without flinching? Or the woman who took twenty stitches raw and didn't so much as whimper?"

My heart felt pierced by a thousand needles, no blood, just excruciating pain driving me to madness.

"These fingers once danced across concert grands, remember? There was a time when an inchworm could reduce me to tears..."

"Enough about the past!" Damian cut me off impatiently. "If ten billion isn't enough, will twenty sever every last tie between us?"

"Is she really that perfect?!" My voice cracked with fury. "Worth breaking your vows? Worth becoming a pariah in the syndicate? Damian, I won't swallow this injustice! What was my sacrifice for? What coin could ever measure Liora's worth?!"

"Don't you dare say her name!" He snarled like a wounded beast. "You're the one who let her slip through your fingers! How dare you blame me!"