CH335

CH334
Ryuu

I stared at her. “You can’t force someone’s affections, and I’m sure I did love you once.”
Her eyes brightened.
“You could have been as close to me as Ara is, another sister I never had, but you weren’t satisfied with that.”
She scowled. “I deserve more from you than that--”
“No, you just think you do.” I turned from her. “And you’ve been trying to get it all this time. I know this entire mess was your idea. Your father would have just asked for a contract. The fact that you would leverage my family’s debt, our history, my pain for your selfish desires is exactly why I could never love you. Exactly why I hate you now.” She gasped, looking devastated. “Your father thinks this is the best deal he could get, but he’s in for a rude awakening, and that’s your fault since you’ve convinced him I was already yours.”
Her lip trembled. “But I could be yours! I could be your wife! We could have a relationship like your parents did! We could—if you just let it happen— If you just stopped resisting--”
I pulled away from her before she could touch me.
“No, you can’t, Morgan,” I said, voice low and lethal. “Not now. Not ever.”
I hit the elevator button and watched the light ascend. She stood trembling beside me, fury crackling under her skin. As I opened the door to usher her inside, she stomped her foot, eyes filling with a poisonous blue light, and shouted.
“You’d never treat her like this!”
I paused. Slowly turned to look at her as the door opened. My voice was like ice. Suspicion brewed low and heavy in my gut, pushing at the back of my mind.
“Who are you talking about?”

Morgan

I froze the moment the words left my mouth.
You’d never treat her like this.
Damn it. As true as it was, I shouldn't have said that. Ryuu’s eyes narrowed, sharp as a blade, and I could see the questions forming in his head like a storm gathering.
“Who are you talking about?”
I forced a breath through my nose and gave him the softest smile I could muster. I had to find a way to cover it up quickly before the razor-thin veneer I had on all of this started to break apart. He'd already been pushing too hard against it. It should have been easy. Everything should have fallen into place, and yet here we were. I was still fighting with her, and she was nothing in this world I had made. I'd made sure of it. Yet his soul was still holding on to her as some faint memory, I wanted to kill her all over again. I thought taking her face would have done the job. But it had been all too obvious that he could tell some part of him knew was suspicious and here I had gone and ruined it. Damn it. Damn me in my temper. Damn that winch for taking the most vicious and cunning part of me.
“I meant… whoever you’re with. Whatever woman you’re entertaining now,” I said lightly. “I just meant you’re always more gentle with them. But you’ll see. I’ll change your mind. You'll learn to be gentle with me. You'll have to. You don't really think that you're not treating me as your wife in public is going to go over, do you?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at me like he was trying to read something written behind my eyes.
“I’ll be your wife,” I continued, stepping into the elevator. “I’ll show up. I’ll be at your house. At your side. In your life. Every day. Whether you like it or not, and you can't stop me. It's my legal right.” I turn to him. The doors began to close. “I’ll make you love me, Ryuu,” I said. “No matter what I have to do. Or who I have to do it to.”
“Don't make a decision you're going to regret,” Ryuu said. “My patience only goes so far.”
“Oh, my love. You have no idea how far my patience extends...”
The elevator shut between us, and the chill in my bones melted into fury. By the time I slid into the back seat of the black car waiting outside, my hands were shaking.
“Drive,” I snapped at the driver, then pulled out my phone.
He thought he could embarrass me. Replace me. Betray me. Again and again, lifetime after lifetime. Not this time. No. No, no, no.
He might not love me yet, but he would. He had to. And if some pathetic little waitress was going to stand in my way, I'd get rid of her. I'd get rid of her and every other woman who caught his eye until he had no one left to look at but me. I opened my secure channel with his men. There were always a few—greedy, scared, or just bored—who would do what I asked.
“Start watching her,” I typed. “The girl at the penthouse. I want eyes on her. I want to know when she leaves, where she goes, and who she talks to. And make a list of every woman he’s ever slept with. Every single one.”
One by one... I’d get rid of them. If a woman dared to get close to him, they’d end up dead. Let’s see how long he could deny me when no one else wanted him. Not for his looks. His presence. His money or prestige. When they all ran in fear of him, when the city turned on him...
My phone buzzed again. It was an encrypted ping from the network we’d been monitoring. It was the underground movement. The fools are still trying to open the gates. It was one of the many miscalculations that had transferred to this new life. These people who somehow had enough remembrance of the past life, of the gates, of the ritual of the trial by fire, to pose a threat to my control on this world.
She was dead or at least gone and trapped between this reality and the next. There would be no reviving her. But if...
If they could manage...
I shook my head. No, that was impossible. There was no way to revive her. They would need a spark of her very essence to do so. And the only way to get that would be to go between realities. I did not even have a spark of her other than what her last incarnation looked like and what may be lurking in Tsuneo’s subconscious. They would have to cross the gates and no one could do that without her. Not a single drop of her remained in this world.
I bit my lip. Nervousness and uncertainty fill me. Why was he so stubborn if not even a drop of her remained? Perhaps it had been more of a gamble to take her image than I thought.
I swiped to read the update. One of their scouts had been seen near the northern perimeter.
“Follow them,” I replied immediately. “Catch them if you can. Kill them if you do.”
The gates had to stay buried. Whatever Ryuu was starting to feel—whatever pieces were waking up in him couldn’t let the gates open because if no one else could cross through realities, revive her, restore her, or bring whatever bit of her back still existed somewhere, it was him.
And I could not let that happen. Not now. Not when I was so close.
I stared out the window, nails digging into my palm. I’d kill every woman in this world before I gave him up.
“Take me to the apothecary,” I said, thinking back to my past life. Ari may have never been smart enough to drug him, or she was too arrogant to think she ended to, but I had no such qualms.
The ends always justified the means.