All Chapters of The Man I Was Meant to Hate: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

88 Chapters

Chapter 1: The Vow in the Rain

Ava’s Point Of ViewThe rain starts as a whisper. There are soft, cold drops rolling down the side of my face and they are mixed with my tears that I told myself I would not cry anymore.The grave yard is silent--far too silent. The wind is the only one that flows and it curves the trees on the road. I stand in the damp grass with my feet in the mud and then I halt in front of the marble headstone.ETHAN MONTGOMERY.Beloved son. Loyal friend. Gone too soon.My throat tightens. “Too soon,” I said. You need not have gone at all, not even now.I fell on my knees and my jeans got wet at once. The rain is angrier, as well as it beats. The one Ethan brought me as a gift on my eighteenth birthday, that silver necklace that I happen to be holding in my hand. The charisma is gone, but the recollection remains.Always, he said that day, you have me, no matter what.He lied. Or maybe fate did.It was three years ago, and the pain does not give up. It has merely shifted its form--cutting every ti

Chapter 2 Becoming Eva

Ava's Point Of ViewThe noise of the city awakens me earlier than the sun, honking cars, stepping over me, a baby crying along the hall. Life keeps on, though yours has ended.I am seated at the little wooden desk before my window and about me lie a pile of debris in the form of papers, empty coffee cups, and the faint scent of rain which is gusting through the half-open window. The business card is in the center of the mess as a challenge.“Welcome back, Ava.”I didn’t sleep last night. My eyes shut and I could see him, Liam Hart, standing in the rain and looking at me every time. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Perhaps it was a mere imagination of mine. But that message? It’s real.I look into the mirror. My hair is knotted, my eyes are bloodshot, my skin is pale. I look like a ghost.“Eva Moore,” I say softly. My reflection doesn’t blink.The name tastes awkward in my mouth, seems to be piddly and less fractured. I repeat this once more with greater force, Eva Moore.It makes me smile a li

Chapter 3 The Enemy’s Smile

Ava's Point Of ViewHe hesitates, with a slight narrowing of the eyes. “Be careful, Ms. Moore. Everyone is not good in this building.The warning hangs in the air.I nod, forcing a small smile. “I’ll remember that.”I am weak on my knees as I step out of his office, but my heart is racing. Still, impossible to read, every word, every look.But I’m not here to read him. I’m here to ruin him.As I head to the lobby again, I notice that my image in the elevator doors is different. Sharper. Colder.Eva Moore has arrived.Nevertheless, when I go out on the street, I just cannot get rid of the impression that I feel that somebody is observing me. The hairs on my neck rise.On the other side of the road, a black car is parked, as usual.The headlights flare, and I blink. It wheels off into the traffic a moment later.I shake my head, holding on to the strap of my bag and saying to myself it is nothing. Just nerves.However, as I arrive at home, another envelope is in my doormat. No name. No

Chapter 4 The First Crack

Ava's Point Of ViewThe rain strikes the glass walls, as fidgety fingers. The room is dim, with the sound of lights below.I spin around, and my heart is racing. “What did you just say?”Liam’s gaze doesn’t waver. His face cannot be read, it is almost placid. He places a folder on his desk and sits up slightly, the stormlight glimpsing his face.“I said Ava,” he murmurs. Since... you resemble somebody I knew.His voice is so uniform as to be almost casual. Almost.He stares a little more and then leaves and picks up the folder once again, flipping its pages without the slightest regard of the dialogue.The air between us tightens. I can’t breathe.My mouth opens, then closes. And the question I wish to know was who that was. I want to ask what he means. However, the words stick in my mouth.He doesn’t look at me again. “You should go home. It’s late.”And so he dies--out of the office, along the hall, the sound of his footsteps disappearing in the storm.I stand alone in the semi-dark

Chapter 5 The Key and the Lie

Ava's Point Of ViewThe elevator creaks down the stairs, and with each floor you pass it seems like a beat of the heart. The farther away it goes the colder the air is.I shouldn’t be here. Every part of me knows that. But my little silver key in my pocket stings like a vow of happiness--or a curse.Storage 11B.The ground floor reeks of dust and metal. The storage units with the locked doors are stretched into the shadows in rows, and their numbers are becoming blurred on rusted plates. The lights whine feebly, flickering after every few seconds.I found the one I’m looking for — 11B.I shake my hand at the moment too much to fit the key in. I can see my breath fogging in the cold air.“Just do it,” I whisper to myself.The key clicks.It is paper and time that pervades the air inside. There are piles of boxes and each is labeled with a black marker: Legal Records, Finance, Personnel Files. But there is a box standing out, a lot of dust on its lid. The scribbles on it in tattered ink

CHAPTER 6 —DRAGGED INTO HIS TRUTH

AVA’s Point Of ViewNoah’s hand clamps around my wrist before I can even scream. He yanks me down the dim hallway, deeper into the underground level beneath Vanguard. My shoes slide on the concrete as I fight for balance.“Stop—Noah, stop!” I breathe out, with my voice cutting in the cold air. He doesn’t. His grip tightens. Behind us, Liam’s voice echoes down the corridor, raw, sharp, too close. “Ava!”My pulse leaps. Not because he found me, but because he sounds afraid.Noah swears under his breath and drags me faster. The hallway twists into a darker corner where the lights flicker weakly. The air grows colder, thicker. I smell dust, old metal, damp concrete. Everything inside me screams to run.“Noah, where are you taking me to?” I said in a low voice. “Somewhere he won’t find you for a minute,” he says. “You need to hear the truth.”The truth. I almost laugh, or choke. All I’ve found so far is lies stacked on more lies.He pulls me into a small utility room. It smells of rust

CHAPTER 7 — The Man in the Dark

Ava's Point Of ViewLiam did not simply drag me out of the arms of Noah. He ripped me from that grip. One second, my arm was being torn by the fingers of Noah, his nails were biting and scratching into my flesh, his breath hot and panicky in my ear. The third, a large hand clumsily smashed between us and pulled me back in a sudden leap that hardly gave time to my feet to touch the floor. Away, he growled at her. That growl didn't sound human. It was coarse, aching, borderline fractured. I did not even get a chance to breathe, when Liam picked me up on his chest, with my legs sliding on the icy concrete. He withdrew, holding me behind him as the security rushed in the corridor. Noah Hart--retire! one of the guards called. Noah smiled, cold, no, insane. His eyes fixed on me, as he was memorising my face. You made her come here, said Liam to his lover. So blow me out, and say it is my fault. then all became hazy, hands seizing Noah, twisting his body, a metallic shank of

CHAPTER 8 - Noah Version of the Truth.

Ava’s Point Of ViewThe world was as though it had been whipped back into place: cold air, thick hands, and that inhuman slam of a car door. Just time to scream and then the seatbelt fastened round me, and the tires began to squeal on the asphalt. Everything went blurred. The lights of the city were flashing in great white lines, long, sharp lines, and Noah was pasting the gas so vigorously that the engine screeched. My breath shook in my chest. The wind whistled around my face and the car was humming along cutting through the middle of the night like it was fleeing something. My voice barely got out. “Where—where are you taking me to?” Somewhere Liam can’t find you. His speech was gentle, near-somber and everything was ruined by the manner in which he held onto the wheel. His knuckles were white. He’d clenched his jaw. His eyes were going back and forth on the road and the rearview mirror as though he were anticipating Liam to emerge out of the darkness behind us. I could not c

CHAPTER 9 — Memory That Shouldn’t Exist

Ava’s Point Of ViewThe door moved open before I could think, and the cold hit me like a slap. Sharp wind cut across my cheeks, making my skin sting as I stepped out onto the gravel. The cliff-side stretched in front of me, silent, dark, endless. Far below, the city lights glittered like scattered stars, too far away to feel real. The night smelled of pine, old rain, and something heavier. Something familiar. Something my body recognized even though my mind didn’t.Noah came around the car, footsteps slow, almost gentle, as if he were walking me into a memory instead of toward the edge of a cliff. “Look,” Noah said. “Really look.”His voice wrapped around me, quiet but firm. My breath came unsteady as I lifted my eyes to the winding road that curved dangerously close to the metal rail. The asphalt was rough, uneven. And then, my stomach twisted, I saw them. Faint black scorch marks on the pavement. A line of broken guardrail that had never been repaired properly. A dent in the earth w

CHAPTER 10 — The Night We Chose Sides

Ava’s Point Of ViewRain starts as a soft patter, like the sky is warning us before it finally breaks. My chest is still tight from the last few seconds—Noah’s lies, his shifting stories, the memory fragment that cracked open in my skull. But all of it stops when I hear footsteps. When I hear his voice.“Step away from her, Noah.”Lightning cuts across the sky and in the flash I can see Liam entirely. His shirt’s wet and clingy over him, his hair is plastered over his forehead. His jaw is very tight with anger, but his eyes, God, his eyes, are so sharp I feel like they have struck me and I am the only object they can see, the one he has had to climb through hell to see.My knees turn to water.Noah laughs—short, sharp, breathless. “Look who finally caught up.” Liam lifts the gun the slightest bit higher. “Move away from her.”I don’t know where to stand. I don’t know how to breathe. I am between two storms each drawing me, tearing me. It is what the wind is doing, and what the rain is

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