“Oh my God, you’re conscious!” Dahlia exclaimed as she swept into the room, her wide eyes already shimmering with ready-made tears. She clasped my hand dramatically, like we were two sisters forever bound by calamity. “Raven, are you in pain? This is all because of me—I’m so, so sorry—”

I didn’t watch her face as a whole. I focused on her lips.

Because I saw it—that flicker, the twitch at the corner of her mouth, that cruel little curl of satisfaction before she rearranged her expression into grief.

“You’re blocking the window,” I murmured flatly, voice thin but sharp. “Hard to fake recovery when you’re standing there, cutting off the light with your cheap performance.”

Her lower lip trembled. Convincing. Almost award-worthy. Then Leander’s phone buzzed. He muttered something, stepping out with a look that promised he’d be back in a minute.

The door shut. Silence.

Dahlia’s mask dropped instantly.

Her spine straightened, her eyes went cold. A different creature stood before me.

“Well, well,” she drawled, brushing imaginary dust off the white sheets near my leg. “You’re still breathing. Pity.”

I said nothing. Just stared.

“I wanted your guts scattered across that floor,” she whispered, venom coating every syllable. “But no—some faceless fool had to haul you out like the pitiful stray you are.”

She leaned down, lips nearly grazing my ear. Her breath scalded. “Leander would’ve left you to the fire. If no one was watching, he wouldn’t have spared you a second glance.”

My body moved before thought caught up. My hand lashed out. The slap cracked through the sterile hospital air like a pistol shot.

She staggered back, clutching her cheek.

And then the door opened.

Leander reappeared, his gaze locking on Dahlia’s trembling face.

“What the hell happened?” he barked, striding over. “Raven, what did you do?”

“She struck me!” Dahlia whimpered, collapsing into his arms like a shattered doll. “I only came to see if she was okay, and she… she attacked me!”

“You’ve gone too far,” Leander snarled at me, fury burning in his voice. “From this moment forward, I am no longer your bodyguard.” His finger stabbed toward me like a blade. “We’re finished.”

Something deep inside me cracked wide open.

“For once,” I rasped, raw and broken, “did you ever truly love me?”

Dahlia sniffled, resting her head against his chest like she had won a prize. “Leander… maybe I should leave. Let you two settle this—”

“No,” he cut her off, tightening his hold on her. “Stay. You need to hear this.”

Then his eyes locked onto me. Unflinching. Cold. Certain.

“I never loved you, Raven. I used you. You were nothing more than a doorway to Dahlia.” He didn’t waver. Not once.

“You were just convenience. A warm body. A pastime. Dahlia is the only one I’ve ever wanted.”

Breathing felt like swallowing acid.

He stepped closer, voice dropping like the edge of a blade.

“If you ever touch her again, if you ever raise a hand to her, it won’t end with a slap. You’ll deal with me.”

And then they walked out—hand in hand, without even a glance over their shoulders.

I sat there, broken open in ways no doctor could ever stitch back together.

---

When I was released from the hospital, I didn’t crawl home to lick my wounds. I went straight to my father’s estate.

The study still reeked of smoke, liquor, and old betrayals. My leg burned beneath the bandage, but I walked as if it didn’t. Pain was better than pity.

At his desk, I pulled open the bottom drawer—the one only gloved hands dared touch. Wrapped in black velvet lay the punishment paddle. Obsidian-stained yew, carved with cruel, jagged ridges. Not ceremonial. Not for show. A family tradition, soaked in discipline.

I rested it across my lap. Waiting.

“Bring him in,” I ordered the butler.

Leander entered like a shadow, shoulders squared, jaw rigid. A soldier awaiting trial. His eyes landed on the paddle, then flicked to me. He didn’t flinch. Just silence.

“You swore an oath,” I said, voice iron. “That ring you still wear around your neck—you made vows with it. You promised to protect me. You don’t get to walk away. Not without blood.”

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off.

“You shattered it. That means I take tenfold in return.”

I rose, limping but unbothered, circling him like a predator circling prey. “Ten lashes. Or one strike from this.”

The paddle hit the desk with a heavy thud. Final.

Leander’s jaw clenched. “If that’s what it takes to make things right… then do it.”

Those words hurt worse than my wounds.

Because I didn’t want right. I wanted pain.

He shrugged off his coat. Then his shirt. Turned his back without hesitation.

That’s when the doors slammed open.

“Raven, stop!” Dahlia shrieked, her dramatic white dress fluttering behind her like she’d stepped off a stage. “Don’t hurt him! If anyone should suffer, let it be me!”

I didn’t blink. “Get out of my way.”

“No!” she wailed, tears streaking her face with perfect precision. “I won’t let you do this! He’s not the villain—you just don’t understand—”

“Dahlia.” Leander tried to pull her back, his grip firm but gentle.

She clung tighter. “No, I won’t! I won’t let her—”

Something inside me snapped. I raised the paddle. She threw herself in front of him.

The strike cracked through the room.

Her scream was raw. Real. Blood bloomed across her flawless dress, staining it scarlet. She collapsed.

Leander caught her before she hit the floor, trembling as he held her. His fist curled tight, his jaw locked.

She wept against him. He looked at me.

I’d never seen eyes like that.

“I warned you,” I said softly, gripping the paddle firm. “Defiance has consequences.”

His voice shook, quiet but steady. “You’re sick.”

“She stepped between us.”

“She always will,” he said, gathering her carefully, his touch tender even through her pain. “And now you’ve made the mistake of your life.”

He turned for the door, every muscle tight with restraint. Just before leaving, he paused, casting me one last look.

That look wasn’t hatred.

It was a vow.

“I told you there’d be punishment,” Leander said, his voice low and final. “Yours is coming.”

Then they vanished. The doors boomed shut, leaving me alone with the echo.

Three days after the hospital incident, I went to try on a wedding dress.

By myself.

No entourage of bodyguards. No paparazzi waiting outside. No self-satisfied future father-in-law clapping me on the back. Just me, stepping into a worn-out boutique tucked in the shadows of a defaced old church wall. The proprietor was an aging Russian seamstress, half-blind, half-silent—her lips always occupied with pins or thread.

It was perfect.

I chose a gown without even checking the price. Pulled it over my shoulders, stared at the fractured mirror, and for a fleeting instant imagined an alternate life—one where none of this had unraveled, one where the man waiting at the altar wasn’t cruel. Or worse… wasn’t turning me cruel.

I slipped out the back into the alleyway for a smoke. My heels tapped against concrete, veil still tangled in my hair. The cigarette barely touched my lips before a rag pressed down hard over my mouth.

Sickly sweet chemical. Too sweet.

Chloroform.

I fought. Hard. But the haze seeped into me fast, crawling through my veins like poison. My muscles went slack, vision tunneling. I collapsed before the cigarette even hit the ground.

---

I came to coughing on my own blood.

Blindfolded. Wrists roped behind a chair. Back screaming from some earlier strain. My mouth was a graveyard of copper, cotton, and dust.

The place smelled of wet stone and gasoline. Somewhere underground, I guessed. A faint fan whirred overhead, water dripping at irregular intervals. My skull pounded with each beat of my heart.

Then it began.

A paddle lashed across my back—sharp, merciless. Not the one I had once wielded.

My body convulsed, lungs refusing air. The pain was so clean, so absolute, my mind fractured. I couldn’t scream. Breath itself was impossible.

Every strike carved fire through me, nerves lighting up in agony. My teeth ground together, but still I made no sound. The silence became its own rebellion.

I lost count quickly. Past twenty, past thirty. My body quit flinching, though the torment didn’t lessen. My brain tried to switch off, but the suffering kept dragging me back.

Fifty, maybe more. By then I was unrecognizable—skin torn, blood soaking the ropes, metallic taste drowning my tongue. The agony blurred into something grotesquely familiar, as if my body had accepted this as ritual.

Then came a voice.

Muffled, distorted by static.

“It’s done, sir.”

A pause.

“Send her back.”

My breath froze in my chest.

Leander.

The world stopped.

He had ordered this.

The bastard arranged every blow, every scream. Not for discipline. Not for justice. Not even for Dahlia’s theatrics. This was punishment—mine. His punishment.

Shock crushed me. My body betrayed me, refusing even the instinct to rage. I wanted to scream, to fight, to spit blood in defiance. But nothing came. Just the iron tang filling my mouth as the darkness pulled me under again.

---

When I surfaced, I was in another hospital bed. White sheets. IV piercing my arm. Pain clinging like a second skin. Nurses whispered outside, their voices carrying like gossip through the corridor.

“That man in the VIP suite—dreamy. Stayed up all night by his girl’s bedside, holding her hand.”

“She’s barely bruised. But the one in 106? Looks like she’s been flayed alive. Not a single visitor.”

Guess which room number was mine.

I tore the IV out, the sting meaningless against everything else. The world swayed, but I dragged myself into the hall, leaning on the wall like a crutch. Each step split me open again, but I refused to stop.

And there he was.

Leander.

Outside Dahlia’s room, gently pressing a glass of water to her lips as if she were fragile porcelain. She fluttered her lashes, murmured something syrupy. And he smiled.

He smiled.

Wiped a stray drop from her mouth with his thumb. Tender. Intimate.

My throat constricted—not from jealousy. Not anymore. From the absurdity. The cruelty. I nearly died because of him, and here he was babysitting a fraud who trembled at her own shadow.

My back was an open wound, my body a map of suffering. But my heart? That was the part he’d truly destroyed. Shredded it with words, actions, betrayals.

I didn’t cry. Not then. Not ever again. I’d sooner choke on my own hurt than give him the triumph of seeing me break.

---

No flowers. No escorts. No family apologies. Just a nurse silently handing me discharge papers and a plastic bag containing my ruined dress and heels.

My father? “Abroad on business.” As always.

I hailed a cab to my villa. Every pothole made my ribs scream, but I sat still, stiff, forcing myself not to flinch. Pain had already become my companion—one I could carry like luggage.

Inside, I didn’t unpack. Didn’t shower. I sat on the velvet chaise, staring at my phone until my fingers dialed his number.

He answered on the second ring.

I didn’t give him room for a single word.

“I know it was you.”

Silence.

“I know you had me drugged, chained, whipped to the bone. Every scream—I know they were on your command.”

“How—”

“Doesn’t matter, Leander. Or should I say… Winston Salerno?” His sharp inhale bled through the receiver. I let a cold smile shape my mouth. “Whatever torment you gave me, I’ll carve back into you. Tenfold. That’s a promise.”

Then I ended the call.

No screaming. No dramatics. Just a vow.

I slept for six uninterrupted hours—the kind of dead sleep only pure, unfiltered agony can drag you into.

When I finally surfaced, the villa was cloaked in darkness. The only light came from the pale blue glow of the enormous flat screen, its reflection sliding across polished marble. I flicked it on, desperate for noise, for distraction, for something to drown out the silence pressing against me.

And then I saw it.

Breaking news. Fireworks bursting over the sea. Spotlights dancing across the glossy surface of a luxury yacht.

Leander.

Down on one knee.

A diamond so oversized it could double as a planet gleamed in his hand.

Dahlia shrieked, tears streaming, flinging herself into his embrace as though the world had gifted her paradise.

The news anchor’s syrupy voice coated the scene, narrating it like the climax of some fairy-tale.

“Until now, the world knew him only as a discreet bodyguard. But tonight, Winston Salerno—heir to the Salerno empire—has revealed himself to the world.”

Cut to him, sharp in a tailored suit, hair tousled by the breeze, eyes pretending sincerity.

“I did all of it,” he said smoothly, “because I needed to stay close to the woman I adore… Dahlia.”

Cue another round of fireworks. Cue the kiss. Too long. Too sloppy. Too obscene for a public broadcast.

I laughed. A jagged, broken laugh that scraped its way out of my throat. It didn’t even sound like it belonged to me anymore.

Then my phone rang.

Her name blinked across the screen.

Dahlia.

I answered. I wanted to hear it from her, raw and unfiltered.

“Did you catch Winston’s proposal?” Her voice was breathless, high-pitched, giddy—like a ballerina who’d had too much champagne. “It was straight out of a storybook. Shame you weren’t there to see it.”

I stayed silent.

She giggled, wickedly. “Lucky me, huh? That quiet little bodyguard you used to roll around with turned out to be a billionaire. The Salerno heir. And guess what—he picked me.”

Another pause, purposeful.

“Oh, and by the way—you’re invited to the wedding.” Her tone turned sultry. “But not as a guest… as the loser.”

The line went dead.

I dropped the phone onto the couch and just sat there. Smiling. Because neither of them had the faintest clue about the storm already building for them.

I didn’t hesitate.

I dialed my father directly from the villa landline. His assistant answered in that perfectly polished voice until I cut her short with, “Put him on. Now.”

There was a beat of silence. Then his voice, careful, wary.

“Raven. Are you—safe?”

“No,” I said, my tone calm, clipped. “But I’m on my way.”

He exhaled slowly. Didn’t ask. He knew better.

“I’ve decided something.”

“What sort of decision?”

“Caius Martino.”

I let the name hang heavy in the air, sharp as a guillotine dropping.

“I’ll marry him. Today.”

I heard him suck in a breath, followed by the creak of leather as he shot to his feet.

“You… Raven, you’re serious?”

“I’m already in the dress.”

Silence stretched, stunned and trembling. Then came the eruption—genuine, greedy joy. He barked at someone nearby.

“London. Book her the earliest jet. Martino will be ecstatic. I’ll be right behind. Double her security—”

I ended the call before he could finish his sentence.

His delight curdled in my stomach, but I would still board that plane. I would go to London. I’d play the dutiful heiress, the loyal daughter, the woman clinging to power for survival. And in exchange, I’d secure the shield I needed—the war chest to fuel the inferno I planned to unleash.

But not yet.

Not before I made one final stop.

I went to her grave. The only place left where my lungs could fill without burning.

The cemetery was hushed. Cold. The air carried a silence that treated the dead with more respect than it ever gave the living.

I knelt, my coat sweeping over damp stone, fingers trembling as they brushed across her engraved name.

“Mother,” I whispered, voice breaking softer than it had in days, “forgive me.”

I pressed my forehead to the tombstone, closing my eyes. The ache in my body dulled in her presence, but the ache in my chest only blazed hotter.

“They think they’ve won. That I’m finished. But you raised me stronger than this, didn’t you?”

A tear escaped before I could stop it. I wiped it fast, refusing to let even her see me collapse.

“I won’t cry for him again. Not for her. Not for anyone. I’ll marry Martino. I’ll cloak myself in their power like steel. And then…” I rose, wind tugging my hair into my face like a ghost’s hand. “I’ll set fire to everything they love.”

---

I arrived at the private terminal dressed like vengeance incarnate.

Black silk draped my frame, clinging to every dangerous line, slit high enough to start wars. Oversized sunglasses masked my eyes, the kind women wear either to hide heartbreak or to plan annihilation. For me, both applied. My lips were lacquered in blood-red—a promise and a weapon.

I didn’t flinch as I strode across the tarmac. The jet shimmered in silver, sleek and waiting. Ground staff scattered to the sides like I was parting seas in stilettos. Let them gawk.

I boarded like I was entering a throne room, not a cabin. Each step was deliberate, my heels clicking a steady rhythm of ruin. I didn’t smile. Queens don’t smile when they’re marching into war—they only adjust their crowns.

Once seated, I pressed the call button. A flight attendant in razor-sharp uniform appeared instantly.

“Stock the jet,” I ordered coolly. “Champagne, couture, Cartier. I want to land like temptation itself.”

She blinked once, nodded, and vanished. Wise girl.

I pulled out my phone, opened my private social feed, and snapped a single photo—legs crossed, thigh revealed, champagne glass balanced with casual perfection. My shades hid my eyes. I looked untouchable. Deadly. Desirable.

The caption read:

Mid-flight, mid-chaos. Hours away from marrying my fiancé. #thrilled

I pressed post, smirk curving my painted lips.

Goodbye, Leander.