All Chapters of Ruin Me: Falling for My Best Friend’s Fiancée: Chapter 191 - Chapter 199

Alessandra’s POV For a second the world did something obscene — it tilted, then turned a slow, nauseating cartwheel. Words hung in the room like hooked fish, flapping and bright and impossible to swallow. “Yes, Ale. I’m your…father.” The sound of it in my ears was grotesque and intimate all at once, like someone had reached into my chest and rearranged the furniture. I could feel the blood in my temples, and heard my heartbeat in the soft hum of the study’s lamps. Everything else dissolved to a thin, faraway noise: Killian’s breath, the soft scratch of Diego’s chair, the distant traffic somewhere beyond the estate. I wanted to run. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream until my throat burned raw. Instead, my knees went weak and I had to press my palm flat against the doorframe to keep from toppling over. Diego’s eyes… his eyes were full of the kind of resignation I’d only seen once, in a photograph of a man who had lost his way. He looked older than the years said h

Alessandra’s POV I had to admit, it was good for Alex’s work, but there was no way she was going there alone. She was nowhere near the right frame of mind. It took a promise to get her to stay back, and even though she had calmed down a little bit, I still saw the hunger for death evident in her eyes. I leaned forward, my hands clasped. My voice was steady and impatient. “So, Castillo is an asshole, and he’s still keeping mom hostage. We know she’s alive. What we don’t know is where. We need to find that out.”Alex smirked, tapping her nails against the wood. “So what? You’re suggesting we knock on his door, tie him up, and demand directions like he’s a damn GPS? I just want to kill him,”Killian didn’t flinch beside me, neither did he look up from his phone. “Yes. Exactly that.”I blinked, half expecting Alex to laugh it off. Instead, she tilted her head, considering. “For once, you don’t sound entirely stupid.”Their bickering was a language all its own. But my chest tightened.

Alex’s POVThe factory doors groaned open like the jaws of some ancient beast, swallowing us whole. The air hit me first—thick with the stench of oil, rust, and forgotten sweat, the kind that seeps into your bones and never leaves. This place was mine, a labyrinth of steel and shadows where our family’s dirtiest secrets were forged. Black-market deals whispered through its halls, but tonight, it was my arena. My hell to unleash.Damon dragged Castillo inside, his boots scraping against the concrete like nails on a chalkboard. The bastard’s arrogance had cracked during the ride over, his eyes darting in the dim light, but he still held that smug tilt to his chin. Like he thought he could outlast whatever I had planned. Fool. He had no idea how deep my rage ran, how it had festered under his thumb all these years—the beatings, the twisted “lessons,” the way he’d carved his control into my soul. Tonight, I’d carve it back out of him.The rush I felt when Ale told me he wasn’t my

Alessandra’s POVThe house was quiet in a way I wasn’t used to.A month had passed since San Pedro, since the dungeon and the rescue, since blood and fire and screams were all I could taste when I closed my eyes. But here, in the private house where Alex had first woken from her coma, the silence felt softer. Not peace, exactly. More like a fragile truce with the world.Mom—Isabella—sat on the porch that morning wrapped in a shawl, her profile limned by pale sunlight. She had gained back some color, though her eyes still carried the kind of shadows that never left. She smiled more now, though. Smiled at Alex, at me, at the smallest things like the sound of birds in the trees. Sometimes the smile cracked into tears, but I took them both. I would take anything that meant she was alive. Alex was in the kitchen that morning, preparing breakfast while Killian and I still laid lazy in the bedroom. It had been like this for a while now, a little tradition mostly because Alex wouldn’t le

THREE YEARS MARRIEDAlessandra’s POV“I didn’t want this many kids.”I say it out loud even though no one’s listening. I love them. God, I do, but four toddlers? Quadruplets for my first pregnancy? That’s a lot to handle. And let’s not even start on when they say the same thing at the same time. It’s not just unsettling; it’s downright creepy.Ava.Hannah.Brandon.Landon.My four little storms.Killian walks into the kitchen just as I’m dishing out mac and cheese into four small bowls. We live in New York now. He’s running the Crist Empire from here, with Damon and Luke holding down the fort back in Italy. Even he rarely goes back there anymore.My eyes stray to his shirt. Lipstick stains are all over.“What happened to you?” I ask, trying not to laugh.“I got ambushed at the door,” he says, voice dark but amused, striding over to me and kissing me senseless before I can reply.“Ewwweee!”We break apart. The sound comes from Landon, our oldest by two minutes.“Daddy and Mummy are do