Page 92 of Torn By Fate

He caught my wrist, his fingers closing around it with a grip that was iron-tight and unyielding. “Serafina—” he tried to say, but I didn’t want to hear his lies anymore, his arrogant facade, the careful construction of a man who had spent his entire life pretending to be something other than what he was. Purely evil. Inhumane. Heartless in a way that would make even the devil cry.

Adrian Salvatore was rotting flesh underneath tailored suits.

“My brother was only six,” I screamed, the words tearing through my damaged throat. “He was so young. A CHILD. He was only a child!”

I fought against his hold, my free hand swinging wildly, connecting with his jaw, his shoulder, the side of his head.

My nails raked across his cheek, drawing blood in thin, bright lines, and I wanted more.

I wanted to claw his eyes out, to tear him apart with my bare hands the way the fire had torn apart everything innocent I had ever loved.

“You burned them,” I sobbed, each word a blade turned inward and outward simultaneously. A vicious cut through my flesh, digging into wounds that never properly healed, wounds that had silently festered. “YOU. BURNED. THEM.”

His hand on my wrists tightened impossibly, the bones grinding together beneath his grip, and the pain was so sharp and immediate—but it meant nothing.

Physical pain meant nothing. It was a ghost compared to the inferno that had been burning inside me for six years.

“ENOUGH.”

The word exploded from him with a force that seemed to shake the walls of the suite.

He didn't simply shout. It was a roar, primal and raw, the sound of a man whose control had finally fractured completely.

The echo of it bounced off the plaster, filling the room, and for one fractured second, the world went silent.

Then his hands were on me. Adrian wasn't gentle or careful as he dragged me backward, my heels scraping against the carpet, and shoved me into the armchair with enough force that I thought it would topple over with me still on it.

I lunged forward, trying to stand, but he was already there, towering over me, his body blocking everything else, his shadow falling across me like a shroud.

I looked up at him. Tall, broad, his face streaked with blood from where I had scratched him, his eyes blazing with something I couldn’t name.

He was terrifying. He was magnificent. He was the monster who had destroyed my world, and I stared up at him without flinching.

I wasn’t frightened.

I had nothing to be scared of anymore. Death had already taken everything from me once—my father, my brother, the future I had been promised—and if Adrian decided to kill me now, it would be a mercy.

Maybe death would be sweeter than living with the memories that continued to haunt me, that woke me screaming in the dark, that made every breath taste like smoke and ash.

Maybe I would be able to reunite with my father and brother, to find them in whatever came after death, to tell them how sorry I was—sorry for surviving, sorry for failing, sorry for everything I couldn't do.

He dragged the second armchair across the carpet and positioned it directly across from me. The distance between us was barely two feet, close enough that I could see the pulse hammering in his throat, the way his jaw worked as he clenched and unclenched his teeth.

I tried to stand again. My body surged upward, fueled by a fury that had no outlet, and Adrian moved with the speed that reminded me he was trained for violence.

His hand pressed against my shoulder, shoving me back hard into the seat with such furious force, it knocked the air from my lungs.

I gasped, heart thundering against my rib cage.

“Sit the fuck down.”

The command was absolute. Final. As if he expected me to comply with his command like everyone else seemed to.

My lips curled. And then…

I spat in his face.

The saliva hit him square on the cheek, a thin, wet streak before it began to slide toward his jaw.