Page 43 of Crushed Vow

He didn’t pick up immediately, but he called back within a minute. “Charlotte?”

“Vincent, are you okay?”

“I am,” he said quickly. “I heard you’re back with that monster?”

I bit my lip. “He’s still my husband.”

“That doesn’t mean you should go back.”

“I didn’t call for your opinion,” I said tightly. “I just wanted to check on you.”

He hesitated. “Father owed the Volkov Bratva. They took me as collateral, but it’s paid now. I’m out. We need to meet.”

“I’m busy.”

“I—Charlotte, please. Let’s talk.”

“I just need space. You may not be able to reach me after this.” I hung up before I could change my mind.

The silence that followed was strange—not comforting, but necessary.

I lay back on the hotel bed, body sinking into the stiff mattress with a kind of exhausted relief.

No cameras watching me from the corners.

No footsteps pacing outside my door.

No husband with guilt in his eyes and a tray of carefully arranged apologies.

Just me.

My breath.

My decision.

And the faintest tremble in my hands that refused to go away—like my body still remembered what my mind kept trying to forget.

My mind drifted—unwilling, to Cassian.

That first kiss at the club. Unexpected. His hand gripping my jaw. That haunting taste of danger I didn’t yet know would cost me everything.

Then came the second time. Dinner at the Moretti house. And then—the altar.

The memory slams into me like cold water.

The way he forced me into vows I never fully understood. The grip of his hand around mine.

And now here I am—his wife in name only, hiding in a hotel, signing divorce papers with trembling fingers like that could erase what he did to me.

But nothing would ever erase what came after. The real cruelty. The way he looked at my chest. The way he mocked my scars. The way he used my body.

He treated me like something shameful. Like something to avoid looking at.

Like I wasn’t human.

A sharp buzz jolted me from the spiral.

I blinked, confused, as the hotel phone rang once. Then twice.