Page 122 of Cruel Deception
“She did. She always did. And our father let her.”
Silence settled like ash between us.
Elodie crossed her arms, her voice dipping lower now, threaded with something almost reverent. “Jade tried... she tried to save them. She arranged for Luca and Cassian to live with her brother. Far from the madness. Far from the pain. But Cassian refused.”
I blinked, barely breathing. “He... refused?”
She nodded slowly. “He said he wouldn’t leave her. Not alone. Not in that house. Not with our father. He was only a boy, but he stood there, stubborn, protective... like he was already a man. Already broken.”
My heart splintered at the edges, each beat a jagged crack. “He stayed... to protect her?”
“To stand between her and the monster,” Elodie said. “Even when he knew he couldn’t win.”
“He watched his mother get degraded every day,” Elodie said quietly, her voice cracking like old glass. “Watched her cry herself to sleep, chained and bleeding. Watched Seraphina become his nightmare. Jade would bleed from lashes she never earned, and still whisper lullabies to Cassian just to keep him calm.”
I couldn’t speak. My throat was a vice, tightening with every word.
“He never had a childhood, Charlotte. Only war zones. Only screams. Only the sound of his mother begging to be spared.”
I hugged myself, shivering, even though the room was warm.
Then I asked it. The question that had been trembling at the edge of my mind.
“How... how did Cassian kill your father?” I whispered.
Elodie was silent for a long moment. Her lashes fluttered, and then, as if unlocking a vault in her soul, she spoke—slowly, softly, each word a knife.
“One night, Matteo beat Jade so badly she passed out. Her body went limp on the floor. Blood everywhere.”
She swallows. “Cassian was nine. He watched. He snapped. Took a kitchen knife. Snuck into Matteo’s room in the middle of the night and...”
She trails off, but I already know.
My breath catches.
“He stabbed him?”
She nods.
“Over and over. His little hands covered in blood. His heart already hardened. It was the only way he could save our mother.”
I sob. Quietly. Hopelessly. The image of him—just a boy, not even ten—murdering a man to protect the only person who loved him... It crushes me.
Cassian was made, not born. A child warped into a monster by the people who should have protected him.
Elodie takes a breath.
“Our grandfathers—mine and yours—built the Moretti empire together. They were good men. But their sons?” She shakes her head. “Matteo, my father, turned violent. Grayson, your father, turned into a coward. Seraphina turned our home into a nightmare. She broke our mother. She broke Cassian. Our father, Matteo treated her like a slave. A thing. Until Cassian ended it all.”
I close my eyes, my entire world shifting under my feet.
Seraphina wasn’t just cruel—she was his villain.
His scars, his chains, his hate... they all lead back to her.
And now I wonder—
Is she the one locked in that cell?
