Chapter 186: Chapter 186

ADORE

The compound gate opened when I drove up and I went through and parked. I just sat in the car for a moment with my hands glued to the wheel, shaking. The weight of what I had just discovered behind me, the ledger, the stamp, and my mother's old voice, it all hit me at once, pressing heavy right into my chest.

I got out and walked in.

The house was dead quiet, a shadow of what it used to be from my childhood afternoons, I could see Angelo everywhere in the house, Adonis practicing and I being mischievous and running after Angelo as usual.

I stepped into the entrance and swallowed as the familiar smell of the place washed over me. It hurt. The confusing feeling of being back somewhere that used to be home, but wasn't home anymore.

I needed my father right now.

He was the one person who was always ten steps ahead of the world. He was the man who had looked at me in this very room years ago and said we must have gotten it wrong. Now I finally understood that he hadn't gotten anything wrong at all.

He knew. He had always known.

I walked toward his study. The door was cracked open just a bit. I could hear low, heavy voices inside, my father and Emilio, talking in that quiet, deadly serious way they always did when something truly mattered. I raised my hand to knock, but I froze when I heard

Emilio mentioned my name.

My brow furrowed with confusion and interest, were they discussing about me? What are they talking about.

I stood there like a statue outside the door for a moment, then lowered my hand and leaned in to hear what they were saying.

"Do you think you made the right bargain?" Emilio asked. His voice had that careful, hesitant edge of a man asking a question he'd been terrified to voice for years. "Telling Gelo to marry Adore. It has been years and he has kept her hidden while he goes about with that girl of his. Do you think this is right, Don?"

My heart stopped and I couldn't breathe.

Father made a bargain with Angelo?

The word felt like a physical blow to my ribs and I slammed my hand flat against the wall beside the door because my knees suddenly turned to water. I forced myself to hold on, to stay upright, and to listen.

"He must have his reasons for keeping her secret," my father was saying. His voice was cold, calm, and completely certain. It was the tone he used when he owned the world. "And I do not care about his reasons, provided my daughter is happy. I told him to keep her happy in exchange for my empire. If he does not keep that end of the bargain, then..."

I couldn't hear the rest.

The words stopped making sense because my chest was bursting with a pain so huge and ugly it didn't even have a name. I stood outside my father's door and felt my entire life tear apart. Every piece of the truth assembled itself in my head with pure, unfiltered cruelty. Everything I thought was real was a lie, and it was all slamming into me at once.

It was all a bargain, I was just a cheap deal that Angelo had taken on.

My father had offered Angelo his empire just to take me off his hands.

And Angelo had taken the deal.

The marriage, the ring on my finger. The quiet vows in that small room under the evening light. The proposal on my graduation day. All of it. It was never love. It was just a business deal. A cold transaction agreed upon by two men in a room I was never invited into.

I had been living inside a golden cage for four years, totally blind to the fact that it had been built for me long before I ever stepped inside.

My mind raced. I thought about our moments. I thought about the eggs I cooked, the ribbon, the chair where I had sat up waiting for him night after night. I thought about the pregnancy test results I had left on his desk just this morning. One by one, those memories sliced right through my heart. Hot tears spilled over and ran down my cheeks, but I couldn't even move to wipe them away.

"I trusted you with my life."

I had actually said that to him.

I had stood in that dark tunnel, wrapped my arms around him, and said those words from the very bottom of my soul and I had meant every single syllable. And he had just held me and said nothing back because he was already playing me. He had already signed the contract. He took my father's empire, and he took me along with it like I was just a piece of property included in the price.

"Adore." My mother's voice came from behind me and I turned around slowly.

Mother was standing further down the hall, looking at me. The moment her eyes landed on my face, her whole expression broke. Inside the study, the voices instantly died. I stood there in the corridor of my childhood home, tears streaming down my face, my hand still clinging to the wall for support. I looked at my mother and felt my entire world collapse into dust.

I couldn't speak, I couldn't breathe and I certainly couldn't stay here another second.

I turned and walked, then I was running. My mother screamed my name behind me. I heard the study door fly open. I heard my father's booming voice. But I couldn't hear any of it properly. The only sound in my head was that horrible word, "bargain" over and over, mixing with the violent pounding of my own heart. Four years. Four whole years of loving a man who only had a mission and I was just his tool.

I sprinted through the compound gate before the guard even had time to lower it and I burst out onto the street, running blind, crying so hard I couldn't see, just pushing forward into the city. People were walking by. Cars were driving. It was just a normal afternoon for everyone else, completely oblivious to the fact that I was dying inside.

I never saw the car coming.

I heard it first, the terrible, loud screech of tires tearing into the asphalt right next to me. I stumbled back, gasping.

A dark car slammed to a halt directly in front of me. The doors flew open and men scrambled out, their faces hidden behind black ski masks.

A sharp, pure terror spiked through my chest. I twisted around to run, but hands gripped my arms like iron vises from both sides. I thrashed and yanked against them with everything I had, screaming at the top of my lungs. A heavy hand slammed over my mouth. The cloth shoved against my nose smelled sweet and chemical and deadly wrong.

I fought it. I kicked and pulled, but my legs rapidly gave out. The street tilted sideways. Everything went fuzzy and weak, and the cold hands were the only things keeping me from hitting the ground as the darkness pulled me under.

The very last thing I felt was the heavy thud of the car door shutting me in then pure nothingness.