Page 148 of I'm sorry, Princess

“You don’t believe me,” I whisper, the words trembling out of me as I stare into his deadened eyes.

“How could I?” he replies flatly. “You listened to me… were with me every night.” His voice hardens. “You warmed my bed. I let you into my family. I told you things about me I’ve never told anyone,” He steps closer, and my body tenses like prey backed into a corner. “…all while being engaged to another fucking man?”

“I’m not engaged to him,” I say, my voice so faint it barely exists.

“Stop fucking lying to me!” he roars, shoving the contract into my face, the paper shaking in his grip. “What the fuck is this, Serena? Hm?”

Andres shifts beside us, his voice low but firm. “Calm down, man.”

Lorenzo doesn’t hear him. Or maybe he does, but chooses not to.

“Did you fuck him as often as you fucked me?” His words are venom, spat between clenched teeth. “Did you moan his name like you did mine?”

My tears come harder, hotter. I can’t even find the words.

“Fucking answer me!” His shout rattles in my chest.

“Stop… please.” My voice is a breath, my body trembling. The tears blur my vision until I can barely see his face anymore. My heart feels like it’s splitting open, the sound of it deafening in my own ears.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” Clara’s voice cuts through the tension like a crack of lightning. Her hands are clenched, her jaw tight. “You have no right to treat her like this. Come on, Serena.”

But I can’t move.

My legs feel like they’re set in concrete. My eyes drop to the floor, because looking at him, at that face, feels like pressing on an open wound. My tears come harder, faster,until I can barely breathe. The edges of the room blur, the world turning into smears of light and shadow.

Then his hand is on my chin, tilting my face upward. Forcing me to meet the ice storm in his eyes.

“I love you,” I breathe, praying, begging, that he’ll believe me. “He never touched me.” My trembling hands cup his face, holding on as if I could keep him here by sheer force of will. “I only love you. I promise.”

For the briefest second, his eyes close. Hope flares in me like a fragile match.

And then he opens them, and snuffs it out.

“Is that what you told him too?” His voice is so calm it terrifies me. “Did you think of him while I was between your legs?”

The words feel like knives dragged through my chest. “Please… stop.” My voice cracks as I cling to him. “Please don’t push me away.”

“Get out.”

Two words. But they slice me open.

Before I can react, his hand clamps around my arm, hard. Not painful enough to bruise, but enough to make my heart jolt. His grip is unyielding, nothing like the way he’s always handled me before.

“Andres. Drive her home,” he says, still not looking at me. Like I’m nothing.

I go still.

I’ve always been his princess. The one thing he swore to protect from his darkness. The one he kept separate from the blood and the shadows of his world. He’s always handled me like I might shatter. Always shielded me.

Until now.

The tears spill faster, hot and unstoppable. My vision swims until I can’t even make out his face anymore. But Ican still feel him, his absence, his rejection, pressing into my bones.

“I hate you!” The words tear out of me like glass. My chest burns, my lips tremble, my voice collapses under the weight of them.

And it’s a lie. God help me, it’s a lie. I love him so much it’s killing me.

He’s not just in my heart. He’s in my veins. My skin. My breath. Every beat of me has been his for so long I don’t know where I end and he begins.