Page 135 of His Cursed Heart

The guards take Everette in their arms and start caring him in the mansion, while Keres glues herself to him. The look in her eyes makes me cry until I'm left to faint.

Don't Keres. Please don't take him away from me, because if he's falling for you, I'll have to let him go.

Please, Keres.

Don't.

Papa sees my face and comes next to me, taking my face in his hand, gripping hard until I feel his fingers disappear in my skin.

"Don't you even think about it, Althea." Tears are gathering in my eyes, my heart already too heavy for my chest. "Keres found him, didn't she?"

When I don't answer, his hand turns my face hard to left. My cheek is on fire, and I need to take all the power in me to look at him again. "Didn't she, Althea?"

"She did." I cry hard, my knees letting me fall on the ground.

My hands are gripping the dirt on the ground, while my eyes look back at Everette and Keres.

And just like that, I watch my own heart walk away from me.

Every piece of control that I had before Althea started the story left when her raspy, broken voice whispers:

“It tore me apart when you were carried past me and all of your attention was on her.” She sobs, her body trembling hard. “It broke me so much that my heart remained with a hole in it. Day by day, I had to watch you choose her. Be happy with her; and day by day, I forgot how to smile, how to laugh. Then Enrique and the rest happened, making me lose the last piece of humanity that was hanging by a threat.”

I can’t hear more of this without breaking something. Without tearing me apart in the process. Her voice is haunting me, her desperate cries are all I hear.

My fingers are gripping my hair hard, the image of her in her knees in front me, weak and broken makes me roar in frustration. My heart it’s too damn fragile when it comes to her. I want to scream, to yell, to kill myself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask desperately, my voice on the edge of breaking.

“Haven’t you listened? Every damn time I looked at

you, Hanibal beat the shit out of me. He made me lose consciousness until I didn’t even know what’s real and what’s not. And she looked so mesmerized at you,” Althea comes near me and her red, puffy eyes are the worst thing I’ve ever seen. “I couldn’t do that to her, to you. Keres could’ve given you everything you ever desired because she always been enough. She was kind and polite, funny and beautiful. Everything that I’m not.”

With a heavy, angry sigh, I grab the back of her neck, bringing her face just inches away from me. “I didn’t want her, Althea. I wanted you. My attention wasn’t on her, because my vision was blurry as fuck; my only care was to not die so I can meet you. The first time I met you and Keres was a week later when I came to propose. Imagine my fucking surprise to meet the lovely Keres, so not like the sassy woman who saved me.”

Althea eyes travel to her hand, eyeing the engagement ring I gave her two months ago. The same ring that I personally designed for the woman who captured my heart in a few minutes. If my father didn’t have a second ring, I would’ve made the biggest mistake of my life that night.

“If you had doubts, w-why didn’t you said anything? Why did you choose her when you knew deep in your brain that she’s not the one? Why do you blame only me when you are in the same position?

Yes, I lied to you for many years. Yes, I made you believe Keres saved you. Yes, I was a coward for not choosing myself and let you be with someone that I thought could make you happier than I ever could! But you accepted her within seconds. You made the decision to ignore what your brain tried to tell you.” Althea was half sobbing, half screaming. The anger in her eyes

feeding mine.

“And how was I suppose’ to know you were the one? You always made me feel unwelcomed, you always showed your hate toward me. Until I married you, I thought you are a heartless woman who doesn’t care about anyone, because you forced this image in my head. You, Althea.”

Her sudden distance from Keres.

The desperate eyes who made me lose in them.

Her sarcastic laughs.

Now I know that this was the only way she survived through the years.

The only way she can stop thinking about me.

I think the universe is laughing at us right now. All the hate we carried just to be in this moment, hurt and desperate like, trying to repair the damage that we didn’t even create.

Fate played us like two chess pieces.

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