Page 44 of The Beast's Broken Beauty

I can feel her gaze trying to pry my skull open, digging for thoughts she has no right to see. And Christ, I'm glad she can't. She'd run screaming from the hurricane of darkness swirling inside me.

The scent of meatballs that filled me with something like peace moments ago now turns my stomach. Those happy memories? Gone. Scorched and replaced with the ones I never speak about. The ones that claw at my insides during the darkest hours when sleep won't come. During daylight, I bury them so deep they can't control me.

Or so I fucking thought.

"Your father isn't only a proud man," I growl, each word dragged out like it's fighting to stay buried. "He's pathologicallyjealous. He kept Naomi's father close because he suspected betrayal. 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer' wasn't just a saying to him—it was his goddamn religion."

I pause, jaw clenching as memories flood back, each one bitter as bile. "Now I wonder if maybe he didn't think your mother and my mother had something with him."

The thought sends rage bubbling through my veins, hot and pulsing like lava. "It was jealousy so fucking blinding it consumed him," I continue, voice barely above a growl. "Like his pride had been gutted with a rusty blade."

My teeth grind together so hard I can hear them, muscles in my neck straining with the effort of keeping control. But I force myself to keep going, pulling words out one by one like shrapnel from an open wound.

"My mother arrived at that moment," I say, the memory playing behind my eyes with sickening clarity. "She heard him, and she started screaming at him that this wasn't part of their deal."

I can still hear her desperation. The terror. "He called her names, raised his voice, and when he raised his hand, I didn't see red. I saw nothing. Pure fucking darkness. I lunged at him, ready to tear him apart with my bare hands. His men swarmed me while he just stood there watching, like it was some kind of show put on for his entertainment."

My throat tightens at the memory of their hands choking me, my skin crawling with phantom fingers. "I fought through them, clawed my way back to him. By then, he had a gun pointed at my mother." The fear from that moment resurfaces—raw, primal—thinking I was about to lose her. That it would have been my fault. Again. "He looked at me with something like respect," I spit, the words acid on my tongue. "But also something else. And that's the first time he burned me."

I don't elaborate, but the memory sears through me anyway. The smell of my own flesh burning, my mother's screams cutting through me like knives, pain so intense it transcended pain and became something else entirely. The scars on my back throb in response, as if awakened by the memory of their creation.

"What do you mean?" Her voice is small, fragile.

"My back." The words taste like ash. "He burned me, then carved patterns with his knife. I refused to scream. But my mother did. Screamed and sobbed until I finally broke. Told him what he wanted to hear. Apologized for daring to protect her."

A bitter laugh escapes me, the sound closer to breaking glass than anything human. "He hugged me afterward. Said I'd proven myself to him. That he never would have actually hurt my mother. Never would have hit her or shot her. That his demands about Naomi and his reaction to my mother were just tests. Tests I passed with 'flying colors.'"

I shake my head, disgust rising like flood waters. Isabella watches me intently, her brow furrowed with something that looks dangerously like pity. I can see the questions swimming in her eyes, but I can't stop now. The poison's been festering too long.

"My mother looked at me like she wasn't sure either," I continue, voice rough with the emotions I've spent years burying. "And he spoke to her softly, promising this was all planned. That he should have told her. That no one needed to be afraid. That he married her because he respected her, because he cared for her."

I close my eyes briefly, his laughter echoing in my skull. It seemed so real, so fucking genuine. But I know better now. I know the monster behind the mask.

When I reopen my eyes, the despair in Isabella's gaze makes my chest tighten in ways I don't deserve. "He told me he loved my mother and would never raise a hand to her. Said he wasproud of me. That I had what it takes to be his son. His heir. To keep everyone safe."

I feel her studying me, searching for something. Truth? Lies? Weakness? I swallow hard, throat constricting. "Those words meant something to me back then," I admit, the confession barely audible. "I wanted so fucking badly to believe him. To think I could earn his respect. His pride."

Even saying it now, I feel the hollowness spread through my chest, the sickening realization that his 'pride' came with a price tag written in blood and scars. That becoming the son he wanted meant becoming something monstrous—something I've spent years perfecting.

I can still feel the phantom burn of that first lesson, the sting of the blade tracing patterns only he could see. And yet, in that moment, with his arms around me, I'd felt a flicker of something like hope. A desperate, pathetic longing for the father I never had.

The fucking irony…craving approval from the man who'd just tortured me. But that was his power. He twisted emotions, desires, loyalties until north was south and pain was love.

Isabella's eyes overflow with sorrow and grief—like she's mourning someone she never really knew. Is it me she's grieving? Or the father she thought she had? Either way, I don't need her pity or her understanding, not when I've become the monster I swore to destroy. Not when I've hurt her in ways that would make even her father proud.

"Where was I?" Isabella finally asks, voice breathless and small. "How did I not see what was happening?"

"You were dancing," I say softly, the memory of her twirling, hair flying, laughter ringing out, a blade between my ribs. "Your father was a master at making everyone see exactly what he wanted them to see."

I need to keep talking, need to run from these memories that claw at me like rabid dogs. Even if she doesn't believe what comes next.

"My second truth?" My heart pounds like it's trying to escape my chest, palms slick with sweat. "I wrote music for you."

"Wh-what?" she stammers, eyes searching mine, trying to separate truth from the web of lies between us.

"Music," I repeat, the word barely a whisper. A confession torn from somewhere deep. "I wrote pieces for you. More than one. Several. Many. Light and airy and filled with all the fucking longing I couldn't express any other way."

I force myself to hold her gaze, even as the truth claws its way up my throat. "I think your father always knew how I felt about you. Even before I had the slightest clue myself. And he played me like those piano keys."

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