Page 63 of Sinful Obsession
I stumbled back, my hand instinctively cradling my belly, the small bump a fragile anchor. “You...” My voice cracked, tears burning my eyes. “You kidnapped me? After I left Cassian two years ago, when I went to Atlanta to start over?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice devoid of remorse, a blade slicing through my trust.
My knees buckled, and I gripped the edge of a seat to stay upright. “And Elodie?” I whispered, my mind reeling, memories of Cassian’s sister. “You killed her?”
Ethan’s expression didn’t flicker. “I didn’t kill Elodie. She came to me with Cassian’s black card, trying to buy her way into answers. A snake bit her in the woods while she waited for me. I tried to save her, but she was gone before I could.”
“What a convenient lie,” I spat, my voice shaking with rage and betrayal. Tears streamed down my face, hot against my chilled skin. “You’re a murderer. You kidnapped me, killed his sister. Who are you, Ethan? What do you want?”
My legs trembled, the weight of his betrayal crushing me.
I’d trusted him, the boy I’d shielded from bullies in school, the one who’d promised to save me from Cassian’s cage.
Now, every instinct screamed that I’d made the greatest mistake of my life.
The eerie familiarity of the sea, the flashes of being thrown into water in my dreams—it was him. Ethan. The ghost haunting my fractured memories.
“Why?” I choked out, my voice raw, tears blurring my vision. “Why me?”
“Sit,” he said, his tone calm, almost gentle, but it carried a threat. “I’ll tell you.”
Exhaustion and fear dragged me down, and I sank into the seat, my body aching, my swollen legs throbbing.
The tracker bracelet glinted, my last tie to Cassian, and I thanked God I hadn’t told Ethan about it.
My dreams replayed—a masked man tossing me into a sea to drown. That was Ethan for sure.
Was he working for my father? For Luca? Or worse, for Artem, the Russian heir whose name sent shivers through the mafia world?
My cold returned, a bone-deep chill despite the chopper’s warmth, and I shivered, clutching my belly protectively.
Ethan stepped out, leaving me alone with my racing thoughts. I cursed myself for trusting him, for believing he was my salvation.
Every text, every promise—he’d played me, and I’d fallen for it, desperate to escape Cassian’s gilded prison. Now I was here, trapped on a boat in the middle of nowhere, with a man I no longer knew.
He returned, and I flinched, my heart leaping as I saw the syringe in his hand, its needle glinting like a promise of pain. “I made you lose a fraction of your memory,” he said, his voice clinical. “So you’d forget marrying Cassian. I planted you at your grandfather’s cabin, made sure you found his will—the one that gave you a way to claim your inheritance without the Morettis.”
My breath caught, the pieces of my shattered past clicking into place. “You knew about the underground competitionall along,” I whispered, my voice trembling with panic. “You pretended to help me, but you orchestrated everything.”
“I didn’t pretend,” he said, leaning against the chopper’s console. “I was a graduate of the underground. Sent there at nineteen by my father. I won, Charlotte. Watched thirty-eight others die—brutally—in those trials.”
I swallowed hard, my chest tightening. “I would’ve died in the first stage if Cassian hadn’t saved me. And how the hell did you expect a female like me to even consider entering an all-male mafia underground competition?”
He shrugged, expression unreadable. “I gave you the chance to restart your life, to recode our destiny. You can’t blame me for the choices you make. I didn’t make them for you.”
My heart pounded, fear and fury warring inside me.
“You’re a mafia heir?” I asked, my voice shaking.
Ethan nodded, his eyes cold but not cruel. “Yes. But I’ve been taught to stay in the shadows. To watch. To wait.”
I clenched my fists. “And all this time... you’ve been manipulating me?”
Ethan didn’t answer directly.
He lifted the syringe, its contents catching the dim light like liquid fire. “I had Russian doctors erase parts of your memory,” he said, his voice calm, almost casual. “But this...” He let his gaze linger on me. “...this can bring it all back. Every memory, every truth. You’ll understand everything. It will finally make sense.”
I stared at the syringe, my pulse roaring in my ears.
