Page 100 of Torn By Fate

“You don’t believe me now. My words mean nothing to you because you’ve lived six years with this truth of yours.” Her body shook with her rage. “That’s okay. You will believe me eventually."

She opened her mouth—to argue, to scream, to call me a liar again—and I moved.

My arm snaked forward before she could register what was happening, before the fight-or-flight response had time to fire in her nervous system. My hand found her neck, and I wrapped my fingers around the delicate column of her throat.

She tensed. Every muscle in her body went rigid beneath the blanket, her eyes widening with a flashing fear and blind rage.

Her lips parted, forming the beginning of a sound, my name, maybe, to curse me, but the pressure was already there, my thumb and forefinger finding the exact point on either side of her carotid, pressing inward with measured, controlled force.

I hated this.

The guilt was immediate and visceral, a sickening twist in my gut that made my lungs clench almost painfully.

She had been through enough. Just some days ago she had a killer’s hand around her throat, suffocating her, dragging the very breath she needed to stay alive out of her body, and now I was the one with my fingers around her throat.

After I had promised to keep her safe. To never hurt her.

The irony of it, the absolute cruelty of it, wasn’t lost on me.

But it was necessary.

She tried to make a sound, a protest, a gasp, or something in between, but the blood flow was already being restricted, the oxygen to her brain diminishing with each passing second.

Her eyes locked onto mine, and I watched the confusion in them sharpen into a dawning, a terrible understanding. She knew what I was doing. She knew, and she couldn’t stop it.

“Shh,” I murmured, trying to placate her, the word barely audible. My other hand came up, cradling the back of her head, supporting the weight of it before her head could roll back. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

Her eyelids fluttered and then her eyes slid closed. The tension drained from her body. Her breathing slowed and deepened, the rhythm of unconsciousness settling over her with a gentleness that felt terribly obscene given what I’d just done.

I held her there for a moment, my fingers still pressed against the pulse point in her neck, feeling the steady, diminished thud of her heartbeat beneath my thumb.

Alive. Unharmed.

I released her throat and let my hand fall away.

It was time to take my wife home.

And it was time for me to find the truth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SERAFINA (ELYSSA)

I woke to the scent of cedar and leather.

My eyelids fluttered open, heavy and a little uncooperative.

The ceiling above me came into focus first… tall, coffered, painted in a shade of cream that I’d memorized during the weeks I’d spent staring at it.

The familiarity of it made my stomach drop before my mind had fully processed what my eyes were seeing.

The perfect crown molding gazed back at me, beautiful and silent.

No. Oh God, no.

My gaze traveled downward as the room fully came into focus now, my vision no longer as blurry with unconsciousness. The walls were deep burgundy, almost black in the dim light filtering through heavy, velvet curtains that weren’t drawn. There was an armchair by the window, similar to the one I had sat in during those first days of my marriage as I plotted against my husband.

This was Adrian’s bedroom. In his estate.