Page 22 of The Mafia Husband's Loveless Marriage

I don't want to cry.

But when she saw his lips tighten, she knew that she already was, and it just hurt, seeing how he now despised the sight of her tears when he used to be the first one to wipe them away.

"Are you also saying that you c-can n-never love me back?" she choked out.

Silence.

The word hung between them, and the silence that followed it was the cruelest thing she had ever heard, because silence could mean anything, and she was terrified of what it meant coming from him.

"M-Mykos, please..."

"Why do you even bother asking?"

The words hurt, but not as much as it hurt to hear the way he was speaking to her. It was almost as if this whole thing bored him. Her heart was breaking, and it bored him—

"We both know you're the kind of idiot who'll keep loving me anyway even if I don't love you back."

And then he was walking away. Past her. Up the stairs. Without looking back.

Because everything about her now...bored him.

She sat at the foot of the stairs for a long time after his footsteps faded. Her coffee had gone cold. Her tears had dried on her cheeks, leaving her skin tight and stiff. Somewhere upstairs, a door closed.

She pressed her forehead against her knees and wrapped her arms around herself, because there was no one else to do it.

God?

Are you still there?

Because I don't know how to do this.

MYKOS PUNCHED A HOLEin the wall of his study as soon as the door closed behind him.

Why?

Why, dammit?

Why?

They had a good life together.

In fact, the past two months they had been together were the best time of his life. From the moment she became his wife, the demons from his past had been silenced, and sleep no longer eluded him at night.

She had done what she was supposed to do.

She had kept the monsters at bay.

Not just the ones that haunted his memories, but even the one inside of him, the one that simply wanted to give itself up to the chaos of violence because it could no longer see any hope and goodness in this world.

It could have stayed that way, too.

If she just hadn't said...

I love you.

Those words didn't just change things.

Instead, they ruined everything.