“And when he was shaking, sweating, barely conscious… his body still recognized mine. Still got hard for me. Forgetting you ever…existed.”
I feel it happen—something vital inside me snappingclean in two. My stomach drops. My lungs forget how to work. The bakery box slips from my fingers and hits the pavement, muffins spilling like small, golden failures.
It’s a full, catastrophic halt, the way a heart monitor flat lines, the way a building doesn’t fall so much as it simply ceases to be standing.
For a second, the world is nothing but white noise and the echo of his words.
“You have no idea what I’ve done.”
“You have no idea how profoundly I fucked up, Cherry-red.”
Something in my chest goes completely quiet. Not numb. Quiet. The way a room goes quiet when someone has just dropped a glass and it hasn’t shattered yet, when everyone has stopped breathing and is just watching it fall.
Then it does.
A sound tears out of me—small, broken, inhuman. Not a sob. Not yet. Just the sound of something dying.
Valeria watches me like she can see me break in real time. Her smile widens, the smile of a woman who knows she’s already won.
She leans in, savoring it. “He will never be yours, Sophia. Every time he looks at you, he sees exactly how broken he is. That’s why he’ll always crawl back to me. Because with me, there’s no shame in the monster. And we both know… that’s exactly what he is.”
“Burn in hell,” I seethe.
“You might love the man, Sophia. But me? I love the monster.”
Rage and pain collide so violently I can’t tell which is which.
I swing.
My fist connects with the side of her face—dull, meaty,real. Her head snaps sideways. Blood blooms on her lip. The sight of it should satisfy me. It doesn’t. It only makes the hurt deeper, uglier, because nothing I do to her will undo what she did to him.
“You lyingbitch,” I hiss, voice cracking. Andrei’s arms lock around me from behind, hauling me back, but I’m still thrashing, still screaming. “You pathetic fucking parasite!”
I twist violently, elbow flying, heels digging into the ground. “Let me go! Andrei—let me go!”
Security rushes us. Valeria lifts one elegant hand, blood on her teeth, and stops them with a smile that belongs in nightmares.
“Leave her,” she says softly. “She’s not worth it.”
“Fuck you!” I scream, lunging again even as Andrei drags me toward the truck. My voice shreds itself raw. “Stay the fuck away from him! Do you hear me?Stay away!”
The car door slams.
I collapse into the seat, knees to my chest, arms wrapped so tight around my shins I can barely breathe. The sobs come then—ugly, violent, tearing out of me like they’re trying to claw their way free of my body. I scream into my knees until my throat gives out, until the only sound left is ragged, broken gasping.
Nothing can fix this.
I can’t fix him. I can’t erase what she did. I can’t stop the image of him—shaking, desperate,hard for her—from carving itself into my mind.
The sobs tear through me harder, until my whole body shakes with them. I clutch my knees like they’re the only thing still holding me together, while the truck pulls awayand the streetlights blur into streaks of gold through my tears.
Her voice keeps looping in my head, soft and satisfied, like a poison I can’t spit out.
She thinks she’s won.
She thinks she owns him.
And maybe…maybe she’s right.
