It was her.
Alessia.
She stood in the hall as though she owned it, her pale coat pristine despite the drizzle outside, her golden-brown hair sleek and shining, her eyes bright with a calm that chilled me more than any storm. Her lips curved into a faint, deliberate smile, the kind that told me she wasn’t here by accident.
For a heartbeat, the world around me dulled. The light, the air, even the rhythm of the rain outside blurred into nothing but her presence.
“Hello again, Edwina,” she said, her voice smooth, threaded with quiet amusement, as if this meeting had been inevitable. “We need to talk.”
Alessia didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped past me with the poise of someone who had always been told the world belonged to her, her heels clicking softly against the floor, each step a declaration of ownership. She glanced once around the apartment, her lips curling in faint amusement at its smallness, its simplicity, before turning her full attention back to me.
“So this is where you keep him,” she said lightly, her tone dripping with disdain wrapped in silk. “How quaint. A little secret tucked away in the corner of the city. Tell me, Edwina, do you truly believe something this fragile, this reckless, can last? That stolen afternoons and whispers in lecture halls won’t collapse the moment someone decides to drag your little game into the light?”
My throat burned, my fists tightening at my sides, but her words kept coming, each one cutting with the precision of a blade honed for this exact purpose.
“You think Hayden belongs to you,” she said, her tone soft and cruel all at once. “But you don’t even know him. You don’t know the weight he carries, the history that binds him tighter than your sweet declarations ever could. Did he tell you about his sister?”
The room tilted. My body went rigid.
“No,” Alessia said lightly, answering her own question, her smile sharpening into cruelty. “Of course he didn’t. Why would he? His sister, my brother…they were engaged. Their love was pure, clean, untainted. And then the accident happened. Theyboth died. Do you know what it’s like to watch entire futures turn to ash in a single night?”
Her smile faded, her eyes darkening, voice turning low and venomous. “Our families grieved together. And grief is binding, Edwina. It forges chains stronger than anything else. To honor them, to preserve what had been promised, our families arranged the next engagement. Hayden and me. To heal what was broken. To keep everything intact.”
She stepped closer, the faint scent of her perfume cutting through the rain still clinging to my clothes. Her voice dropped to a near whisper, every word a deliberate stab.
“That’s who we are. Not some fleeting affair. Not some dirty secret waiting to be uncovered. We are history. Blood. Obligation. And you—” her eyes flicked over me, slow and disdainful, her lips curling into a smirk that made my stomach twist, “you’re just the girl who spread her legs for her professor and mistook it for love.”
The words hit like a blade through the chest. My breath stuttered, my body trembling as tears pricked hot and merciless behind my eyes.
“Did you actually believe that he loved you?” she continued, her smile curling cruelly. “No, little girl. He just wanted to have his fun before coming back to me. He always does. That’s what men like him do, they play until they remember who they belong to.”
My chest constricted, fury and humiliation flooding through me in equal measure, but she wasn’t finished.
“You think you love him?” Alessia’s voice rose, silk over steel. “Then tell me, what will be left of that love when this comes out? When the university hears? When his reputation burns, when his career collapses, when your name is dragged through every filthy corner of gossip as the student who couldn’t keep her legsclosed? Will you still call it love then, Edwina? Or will you finally see it for what it is?”
She leaned back, smiling again, the perfect picture of composure while I felt my insides unravel. “A mistake. That’s what you are. A mistake he’ll regret when the smoke clears.”
Her words thundered through me, every syllable echoing, hollowing me out from the inside. I stood frozen, trembling, my fingers curling into my palms to keep them from shaking, but nothing steadied me.
Alessia’s smile deepened, her head tilting as her gaze swept over me, condescending and sharp. “What did you think, hmm? Did you truly believe he could sever his ties with his family forever? That he could walk away from the blood that made him, from the history that shaped him, from the promises carved in stone? Did you believe he could abandon who he is—for you?”
The words sliced through me, each one sharper than the last, until I could barely breathe. And then she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone.
“I wonder,” Alessia murmured, her tone dripping with poison, “how quickly the whispers would spread if this were to find its way into the right hands.”
She turned the screen toward me.
My heart stopped.
There, glowing beneath the pale midday light, was us, me and Hayden in the rain. His mouth crushed against mine, his hands gripping me with desperate possession, my body pressed against his as though he owned every breath in me. A kiss that had gutted me and healed me all at once, caught in perfect, damning clarity.
I couldn’t breathe. My blood ran cold, my stomach twisting so violently I thought I might be sick.
“You see?” Alessia said softly, her smile curling higher. “Secrets never stay buried. One photograph, and your littlefairytale becomes a scandal. One leak, and everything he’s worked for burns to the ground. His name. His career. Your reputation. Gone. All because you thought you could matter to him.”
I stumbled back, shaking my head as if I could undo what I was seeing, as if denial could rewrite what she’d said. But the image burned into me, the truth impossible to escape.
Alessia slipped her phone back into her pocket, smoothing a strand of hair over her shoulder, her voice turning colder, final. “Do him a favor, Edwina. Be a good little girl and leave this city before you destroy him completely.”
