Page 79 of Cruel Deception
My chest caved.
Something inside me broke wide open. The dam burst.
“I need to see my mother!” I sobbed, finally losing the composure I’d been strangling myself to keep. “Please, please—Cassian—I’ll do anything. I’ll obey you. I’ll be silent. Just once. Let me see her once!”
My hands trembled as I clutched my knees. My breath hitched with every desperate cry. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop.
But Cassian?
Unmoved. Stone. Still.
When he finally spoke, it felt like a blade to the throat.
“It’s part of your punishment,” he said calmly. “You won’t see her until I decide it’s time.”
I froze, tears spilling silently.
“And that time,” he continued, “might never come. It could be when you’ve stopped breathing.”
I shook my head in disbelief, more at myself than him. “You’re sick...”
“You should know by now,” he said, his voice low and final, “I hold your leash, Charlotte. I decide your pain. I could bring your mother here. I could ease her suffering, end yours. But you defied me. Broke my rules. If you want to earn my favor... obey. Every. Fucking. Instruction.”
The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful—it was suffocating.
Then he stood, as if done with the conversation. He turned halfway toward the hallway, but paused.
“And no,” he added, voice cold. “It wasn’t Luca who bought your grandfather’s house.”
I blinked through tears.
He glanced back over his shoulder. “It was me.”
My heart plummeted.
Luca’s document had been a lie. Another manipulation. Another trap.
I just sat there in the silence after he walked away, my body too weak to tremble, my thoughts too loud to scream.
But somewhere in the numbness, a new thought crept in.
He hadn’t touched me. Even when I disobeyed. Even now, more than a week into this forced marriage—he hadn’t tried to sleep with me. Not once.
I tried to convince myself that was a relief. But it wasn’t.
No sex, no intimacy. My mind spirals to posts I’ve seen online—men who avoid sex with their wives are often getting it elsewhere. Is he cheating? A man like Cassian, with his lethal charm, could have women lining up. Am I just a prisoner, not a wife?
Was someone else already warming his bed? The thought wrapped around my ribs like a vice.
Something dark brewed in my chest. A new ache.
Jealousy. Possession. Longing.
I rose and walked stiffly toward the bedroom, my limbs still sore from Luca’s assault. He was seated at the far end, at a desk tucked beside the wide bed. Papers, a laptop, and a half-empty glass of something dark.
He didn’t glance at me.
I didn’t speak.
