Page 22 of Crushed Vow

He froze.

My voice shook but I kept going, reciting his vows at the altar from memory, word for word, like a curse I’d been branded with:

“For the mother who shattered me, I will not forget. I will not forgive. You will not find comfort in my arms. You will not find safety in my name. Only the echo of what I’ve lost—and the weight of everything you owe. You’ll be mine... until I’ve taken back everything your bloodline stole.”

I opened my eyes, breath ragged. “Those were your words. You don’t love me. You loved to see me suffer.”

I turned to run—but he caught me. Arms wrapped around me tightly, pulling me into him.

His hold wasn’t forceful. It was protective. Trembling, I let him. But every nerve in my body screamed confusion. My mind was on fire.

“I hurt you,” he whispered into my ear. “Worse than I’ll ever forgive myself for. But let me make it right, Charlotte. Please.”

I stayed there, trembling in his arms. The crowd at the court staring, their faces flickering—clear, then distorted, like the ward’s endless light.

He lifts me, carrying me, my body limp, my mind a storm. I didn’t fight him.

Why am I getting worse? Why are my memories jumbling? Why can’t I tell what’s real?

I mutter, “I’m not mad. Charlotte, you’re not mad,” my voice desperate, my hands clutching his shirt.

My thoughts started to sharpen as he walked.

My father did this.

Not Cassian.

Cassian triggers it, yes—but he wasn’t the one who had me kidnapped, drugged, locked in that place. That was my father. He’d dragged me from Ethan’s doorstep and paid to erase me.

“They drugged me...” I murmured, the realization dawning like a sunrise. “My father had them pump me with sedatives. Antipsychotics. Maybe worse. He wanted me broken and quiet.”

Cassian didn’t speak. He just held me tighter.

“Being surrounded by madness... it does something to you. One day in the ward, I started screaming—screaming for my mother. I thought I saw her. I clawed at a nurse’s face and they put me in solitary. Four white walls. No light. Just my own breathing and the sound of others screaming in the dark.”

The memory swallowed me whole. “That’s when I started forgetting who I was. What was real. Every time I woke up, Nurse Callahan would be there. With a needle. Like she’d been injecting me while I slept. And I—God, I thought I was hallucinating.”

Cassian set me down gently on the couch inside his penthouse, brushing a trembling strand of hair from my face.

“You’re not mad, Charlotte. What they did to you—what your father arranged—it was meant to break you. But it didn’t.”

I looked at him, eyes wide, afraid. “But I’m... I’m not the same.”

“No,” he said, softly. “You’re stronger now. And I will protect that strength, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

I stared at him. At the man who had once leashed me like an animal and called it justice... and at the man now holding me like something sacred.

I didn’t know which version to trust.

But right now... I was too tired to run again.

Chapter 5

CHARLOTTE

I didn’t remember falling asleep.

One minute, I was unraveling—panic seizing my lungs, memories slicing through me like blades. And the next, I was waking up in his bed.