Page 136 of Cruel Deception

---

But I realized it too late.

Because by the time I saw her for what she truly was—not Seraphina’s daughter, not my enemy—just Charlotte... the only person who ever looked at my ruin and still reached for it—

I had already shattered her.

Crushed her under the same weight that broke me.

Now I’m just the wreckage.

The monster alone in the dark.

And the only person who ever made the monster feel like a man, is gone.

I’ve been in therapy since the second day I met her.

Since the moment I saw her sitting across from Luca in that penthouse dining room—her eyes sharp, unaware, and I knew.

She would be mine.

To ruin.

To own.

To burn and be burned by.

From that day, I started clawing at the darkness in secret therapy rooms—grimy offices tucked behind locked doors, places where men like me go to pretend they still want to be saved.

I wanted to forgive myself.

I told myself I was trying to forgive her too.

But maybe I was lying.

Because the truth?

I wanted her to bleed first.

Before I healed.

I wanted her to pay for everything Seraphina did.

But I kept going back to therapy, because some part of me started to hope.

That maybe... just maybe...

if I could forgive the past—

I could be the kind of man who deserved to keep her.

I thought it would help, thought I could be more than the monster who killed at nine.

But twenty days ago, she left, her words—“You think I can’t leave? Watch me.”—a blade in my heart.

I’ve searched every corner of the world—New York’s slums, Chicago’s docks, London’s alleys, my men scouring, my empire’s resources drained. Nothing. I’ve never failed to find someone, but Charlotte’s gone, vanished like a ghost, and it’s killing me.

The penthouse reeks of it, bottles littering the floor, my study a shrine to her absence

I no longer recognize the man in the mirror—when I bother to look.

---