Her upper lip twisted into a sneer. "Why should I care what happens to you? What do you want, Enzo?"
I couldn't answer her, because I didn't know. Not exactly. I just knew I had to see her to see if…what? If she hated me? If she still wanted me?
When I still didn’t release her, she shoved at my chest. “Get off of me. Let me go.”
Her protests didn’t faze me. After what I’d done to her, I expected her to be angry. But what tore a fucking hole in my chest was the complete and utter lack of emotion in her eyes and voice as she tried to get me to release her.
Words hung on the tip of my tongue. Things I needed to say. But after her initial struggle, she turned her face to the side and just…waited. I stilled as a cold shiver traveled down my spine. But then I got angry. I was not some fucking green boy she could just ignore and I would go away.
Opening my arms, I released her so fast she would’ve fallen backwards if I hadn’t caught her. Her hair was down except for a diamond clasp on the crown of her head holding some of it off her face. I fisted the silky pink strands in one hand and forced her head back. She grunted with pain and closed her eyes, her lips pressed tightly together.
That wasn’t going to fucking work for me.
Grabbing her jaw, I pressed my fingers and thumb into her cheeks between her teeth until she opened for me, and then I took her mouth, kissing her with all the self-loathing and frustration inside of me. She tasted sweet, like wine, and I moaned, fucking her mouth with my tongue the way I wished I could fuck her body, unable to get enough of this woman I wouldn’t let myself have.
I was so hungry for her that it took me a minute to realize she wasn’t responding to me the way I was to her. Frustration ripped through me, and I sank my teeth into her bottom lip until I tasted the salty copper of her blood, trying to force a reaction from her. I didn’t give a shit what kind of emotion it was. I just needed something, anything, that would let me know she was still in there. Somewhere. That my rejection hadn’t completely destroyed the girl she was.
Hadn’t completely destroyedus.
But other than a hiss of pain, there was nothing. She didn’t even try to push me away again. She just hung there in my arms, limp, like some kind of drugged-up rag doll.
Wrapping my hand around her throat, I shoved my face down into hers. “Stop pretending you don’t feel anything. Because I know you fucking do.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she rasped, and I realized I was squeezing a little too hard. I loosened my fingers just a bit. Slowly, she opened her eyes…
…and my heart stopped. They were dead. Emotionless. My skin broke out in gooseflesh as she told me in that same flat tone, “I did. Once. Feel something for you. But now I know how little I mean to you. So, you want to fuck me one last time? Is that what you want, Enzo? Then do it and get it over with. My husband is waiting for me.”
Each word sliced through my skin with the pain of a dull knife. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “And when I go back in there, I’ll tell him that you raped me. Just like you did that night in front of your guards.” Disgust twisted her mouth. “I guess I should be grateful there’re no witnesses this time.”
I stared down into her unblinking eyes, searching for the light that once sparkled within them. The light that lit up my darkness and made me crave things I had no business wanting. But there was nothing. Not even a glimmer.
Roughly, I shoved her away from me. And I was glad that I hadn’t taken off my sunglasses and let her see how she tore me up inside. “I will not apologize for being a monster. After all, no one has ever told me they were sorry for making me this way. I am the way I am so I could survive. And that is exactly what I’ve done.” I let my eyes roam over her face one more time. “Have a good life, Sera.”
Turning on my heel, I left her standing there in the empty restroom, surrounded by white tiles as cold as she was.
CHAPTER4
Serafina
After he left, I stood frozen for a long time, afraid to move for fear I would break into a million tiny pieces. But I couldn’t stop the tears from silently tracking down my cheeks. Or the way my hands shook when I finally reached for a tissue out of the box in the middle of the sink.
My eye makeup was running down my face, revealing streaks of the purplish bruise that darkened the skin below my left eye. A parting gift from my father when I’d tried one last time to talk him out of this farce of a marriage. Tired of my arguing with him, he’d hauled back and slammed his fist into my face. I’d fallen into the chair behind me, my father’s home office fading in and out of the edges of my vision.
“What is this, Fina? Hmm? Why can you not appreciate what I’ve done for you?” he’d asked me. Then he bent down over me where I sat sprawled out in the chair, pain ricocheting through my eye socket and cheekbone. “The daughter I knew before you ran off would never have been so ungrateful.”
I’d glared up at him. “What exactly do I have to be grateful for? That you forced me back into a life I hate? And are now forcing me into a marriage I will hate even more?”
“This life you hate so much kept you in clothes with a roof over your head and food on your table. It paid for you to go to college—”
“It made me a prisoner!” I’d yelled into his face, then I’d squeezed my eyes shut and thrown up my hands, bracing myself for another hit, but it never came.
Instead, my father had just smirked down at me, then straightened to his full height. “I told you, I’m finished fighting with you, Fina. Let your new husband have that pleasure.” A smile had broken out onto his face. “I told him you were a feisty one! He’s looking forward to breaking you in.” Walking back around his desk, he’d sat down and started shuffling through the papers waiting for his attention. “Go clean yourself up and get some sleep. You’re getting married tomorrow.”
After a moment, I’d sat up and gingerly touched my eye and checked my nose ring to make sure it hadn’t gotten ripped out of my nose.
“Out, Fina,” my father had ordered.
