Lahat ng Kabanata ng The taste Of Revenge: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

The words hang between us like something alive, something with teeth, and I watch his face do this complicated thing where it shutters completely, like someone pulled down metal blinds over windows that were just letting in light, and suddenly I'm looking at a stranger instead of the man who made me come apart in the back of his car three hours ago."Do you think you might have fallen in love with me…? I… I'm sorry to ask, pardon me…how unreasonable of me." His voice is different now, flat and slightly controlled in that way that means he's feeling something enormous and refusing to let it show, and my mindl, who was doing cartwheels approximately three seconds ago, freezes mid-cartwheel and slowly backs away.“No…it's not unreasonable c'mon. It's just that I…" I start, but I don't know how to finish because the air in the room has suddenly changed and gone cold and tense and I'm suddenly very aware that I'm standing here wrapped in his duvet wearing nothing underneath while he's look

The phone is still buzzing in my hand when Addie rips it away from me, her manicured fingers flying across the screen while I stand there frozen in the middle of Bergdorf's designer section like someone just doused me in ice water, and somewhere in the back of my mind I register that she's calling someone, that her voice has gone sharp and professional in that way it does when she's handling a crisis, but I can't focus on her words because all I can see in my head is that photo of me walking into this store, that message about knowing where I am, where Damian is, where we both are every second of every day, and the implications are slamming into me one after another like waves trying to pull me under.Aurora's watching me right now…She has to be.The photo was taken less than twenty minutes ago, I was wearing this exact outfit…the cream sweater and dark jeans that Damian insisted I buy last week because he said they made my legs look incredible, which made me blush then and makes me w

"No." The word comes out sharp enough to cut. "Absolutely fucking not." Damian's hand freezes on the door he was about to lock, his eyes narrowing as he takes in my expression, and I can see him shifting into that controlled dangerous mode he goes into when he senses confrontation, but I don't care because I'm done, so completely done with being scared and shuffled around and treated like some fragile thing that needs protecting instead of a grown woman who spent a decade cutting into human hearts without flinching."Selene…" he starts, but I cut him off."Don't." I hold up my hand. "Don't you dare tell me this is for my own good or that you're just trying to keep me safe, because you know what? I'm tired of being safe, I'm tired of running, I'm tired of letting Aurora dictate my entire existence with her cryptic fucking messages and her threats and her surveillance. She's been threatening to destroy me for months!" My voice is rising now and I don't care, don't care if everyone in th

"Team three, cover the exits, team two, get a face if you can, and someone call Detective Morrison and tell him we need that arrest warrant executed now." Everything happens fast after that, almost too fast to process, and I'm standing at the window watching clusters of people mobilize across the city to catch whoever's been watching me sleep, and there's something surreal about seeing my stalker reduced to coordinates and tactical movements, like we're playing some high-stakes game of chess except that the pieces are human and the stakes are my life."They're in the lobby." The security team member is still providing updates. " Approximately 5”11, Asian male,dark clothing, carrying camera equipment in a backpack…hold on, I think he knows he's being followed…shit!""Do not lose him." Damian's voice is hard. "I don't care what it takes, do not let that man leave your sight.""He's running…east on 42nd, he's heading for the subway…I need more people…now!" And then I'm moving, I'm grabbi

XAVIER'S POVI see it on page six first, which is humiliating in its own right that I find out the way everyone else finds out, scrolling through my phone at six forty-three in the morning with yesterday's bourbon still sitting in a glass on the nightstand, bleary and half-asleep and completely unprepared for the headline that loads under my thumb like a detonation.BILLIONAIRE XAVIER ADRIAN EX-WIFE TAKES DOWN THE WOMAN WHO STOLE HER HUSBAND: DR. SELENE HART BEHIND ARREST OF AURORA HART JUST DAYS BEFORE WEDDINGI sit up to read it again, then I'm out of bed now, fully awake in the specific way that only adrenaline and shame can achieve at six in the morning, pacing the length of the bedroom while my phone loads article after article because apparently this happened last night and the entire city knows about it and I am the last to find out because Aurora didn't call me, her lawyer didn't call me, nobody called me, which tells me everything I need to know about how catastrophically las