Page 90 of Chased By My Grumpy Alpha
He never loved me. Not once. Not even a little.
“Astra,” Andrew gasps, his voice broken and desperate. “Thank God you’re alive. I was so worried—”
His words cut off when Lucian’s boot connects with his ribs. Andrew doubles over, wheezing.
“Don’t lie to her,” Lucian says coldly. “We all know what you did.”
Andrew tries to push himself up, his good arm reaching toward my leg. “Astra, please, you have to listen to me—”
Before his mangled fingers can touch me, Lucian slams his foot down on Andrew’s hand. The sound of bones crunching makes my stomach turn, but I don’t look away.
“Don’t touch her with your filthy hands,” Lucian snarls.
Andrew screams, cradling his crushed hand against his chest. Tears stream down his face as he looks up at me with desperate eyes.
“Please,” he begs. “Please, Astra. You have to save me. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
I study his face, this man who was once the center of all my hopes and dreams. “No, you don’t.”
“I do! I swear I do!” His voice cracks with desperation. “They forced me to do those things. Those men, they threatened to kill me if I didn’t cooperate. I never wanted to hurt you.”
More lies. Even now, even broken and bleeding at my feet, he’s still trying to manipulate me.
“They said they’d burn down my shop,” he continues, his words tumbling over each other in his panic. “They said they’d kill everyone I cared about if I didn’t help them. I had no choice, Astra. You have to understand, I had no choice!”
I watch him weave his web of excuses, and with each word, my heart grows colder. Harder.
“I was protecting you,” Andrew says, his voice taking on that familiar, gentle tone he used to use with me. “I thought if I could stall them, if I could make them think I was cooperating, maybe I could find a way to save you. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not!” He tries to reach for me again, but a warning growl from Lucian stops him. “Astra, you know me. You know I’m not capable of the things they’re saying I did. I love you. I’ve loved you since the day you saved my life.”
I crouch down so we’re at eye level, and I study his face carefully. “I never loved you,” I tell him.
His mouth falls open in shock. “What?”
“I never loved you, Andrew.” My voice is calm and unemotional. “I wanted the security you could provide. I thought you were someone who wouldn’t abandon me or betray me. But love?” I shake my head. “No.”
“You don’t mean that—”
“If you thought you made me fall in love with you, you were wrong.” I lean closer, making sure he can see the truth in my eyes. “You were never worthy of my love.”
Something ugly flickers across his face before he forces his expression back to desperate pleading. “Astra, please. You’re upset, you’re not thinking clearly—”
“What do you want to do with him?” Lucian’s voice cuts through Andrew’s blubbering.
I stand slowly, looking down at the broken man in the dirt. A part of me—the part that my mother raised to be kind and forgiving—wants to tell him to leave. To disappear and never come back.
My thoughts are interrupted when Andrew speaks again.
“Just let me go,” he says, his voice taking on a coaxing tone. “Let me leave, and I’ll vanish from your life forever. You’ll never see me again, I promise. I’ll go far away, start over somewhere new. No one has to know what happened here.”
I’m genuinely considering it. Maybe mercy is the right choice. Maybe—
That’s when I see it. Just for a split second, the corner of his mouth twitches upward. A tiny, satisfied smirk that he thinks I don’t notice. A sly look in his eyes that says he thinks he has won.
He thinks I’m still the same naive girl who saved his life so many years ago. He thinks I’ll let him walk away—so he can do the same thing to someone else.
