Page 50 of Made for Vengeance (Dark Dynasties #3)

GRACE

I didn't speak to Rafe for three days after we returned from the main estate.

Not because he didn't try. He did—knocking softly on my door, leaving messages with staff, sending small gifts that remained unopened on my dresser.

Books. Flowers. A cashmere blanket when the nights turned colder.

Each offering a silent plea for connection, for conversation, for a chance to explain, to comfort, to bridge the chasm that had opened between us.

I couldn't bear it. Couldn't bear to look at him, to speak to him, to acknowledge his presence in any way. Not with the truth still raw and bleeding inside me, not with the words I'd overheard playing on endless loop in my mind.

"Grace stopped being his concern when she chose law school over family loyalty."

"Ms. O'Sullivan's situation is no longer a factor in negotiations between the families."

"Mr. O'Sullivan has moved on from that particular... complication."

Complication. That's all I was. All I'd ever been. To my father, to my brothers, to the family that had shaped my identity even as I'd tried to distance myself from their world, their methods, their legacy of violence and control.

And Rafe had known. Had suspected from the beginning and known with certainty for a month.

Had kept that knowledge from me, had let me continue believing there was still some connection to my former life, some possibility of return, some world beyond these walls where someone cared what happened to me.

I couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't focus on books or music or any of the diversions that had made my captivity bearable. I existed in a fog of betrayal and disillusionment, moving through the days like a ghost haunting the halls of what had become both my prison and my sanctuary.

On the fourth day, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and barely recognized the woman staring back at me.

Pale. Hollow-eyed. Thinner than I'd been in years, my clothes hanging loose on a frame that had always been slender but was now approaching gaunt.

My hair hung limp around my face, unwashed for days.

My eyes looked huge, dark with shadows that spoke of sleepless nights and endless tears.

I looked like what I was: a woman shattered by betrayal, by the collapse of every certainty she'd built her life around.

The sight should have alarmed me. Should have spurred me to action, to self-care, to some effort at recovery.

Instead, I turned away, indifferent to my own decline.

What did it matter how I looked, how I felt?

I belonged to no one. Mattered to no one.

Just another piece to be claimed, traded, or broken when it served their purpose.

A knock at the door pulled me from my spiral of self-pity. Soft but insistent. Familiar.

"Grace." Rafe's voice, low and controlled as always, but with an edge of concern I couldn't ignore despite my best efforts. "Please. We need to talk."

I remained silent, hoping he would go away as he had the previous days, respecting my need for space, for solitude, for time to process the devastating revelations.

But today was different. Today, the door opened despite my lack of response, and Rafe stepped into the room, his expression a mixture of determination and concern that might have touched me once but now only fueled the anger simmering beneath my grief.

"You shouldn't be here," I said, my voice rough from disuse. "I didn't invite you in."

"No, you didn't," he agreed, closing the door behind him. "But you've been in here for four days. Not eating. Barely sleeping, from what the staff tells me. This isn't processing, Grace. This is self-destruction."

I laughed, the sound harsh and bitter in the quiet room. "Self-destruction? That's rich, coming from the man who destroyed my life. Who took me from my home, kept me prisoner, and then had the audacity to act surprised when I fell apart after learning my family had written me off as a loss."

Pain flickered across his features—not physical, but emotional. A reaction to the accusation in my words, to the bitterness that had replaced the tentative connection we'd built over the past months.

"I didn't destroy your life," he said quietly. "Your father did that when he decided you were expendable. When he chose business interests over his daughter's safety and freedom."

"And you're so different?" I challenged, anger finally breaking through the numbness that had enveloped me for days.

"You, who kept the truth from me for a month?

Who let me continue hoping, wondering, imagining that somewhere out there, someone was looking for me?

You, who claim to love me but treat me like a possession, a prize to be won, a trophy to display to your enemies? "

He flinched, the words finding their mark with unerring precision. "That's not fair," he said, his voice rougher than before. "I kept the truth from you because I couldn't bear to be the one to hurt you that way. Because I thought?—"

"You thought what was best for me," I interrupted, moving toward him with sudden energy, fueled by the rage that had been building inside me for days.

"You decided what I could handle, what I should know, what reality I should live in.

Just like my father. Just like every man who's ever claimed to care about me while treating me like a child, like a doll, like something to be protected and controlled rather than a person with the right to make her own choices, even if those choices lead to pain. "

I was standing before him now, close enough to see the flecks of amber in his dark eyes, to smell the familiar scent of his cologne, to feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough to strike him, if I'd wanted to. Close enough to kiss him, if that impulse had been there.

It wasn't. For the first time since our relationship had evolved beyond captor and captive, I felt nothing when I looked at him. No desire. No connection. No complicated tangle of emotions that had kept me bound to him despite everything.

Just emptiness. Just the hollow recognition that I had trusted him, in my way, and he had betrayed that trust as surely as my father had.

"I'm sorry," he said, the words simple but laden with a sincerity I couldn't deny despite my anger. "I was wrong to keep the truth from you. Wrong to think I was protecting you by doing so. Wrong in ways I'm only beginning to understand."

The admission should have satisfied me, should have validated my anger, my sense of betrayal. Instead, it left me feeling even emptier, even more adrift in a world where nothing was as I'd believed it to be.

"It doesn't matter," I said, turning away from him, moving back to the window where I'd spent so many hours staring out at grounds that had become as familiar as they were confining.

"Nothing matters anymore. Not your apologies.

Not my father's betrayal. Not whatever this is between us.

It's all just... smoke. Illusion. A story I told myself to make sense of a situation that has never made sense, has never been anything but a nightmare I can't wake up from. "

I heard him move closer, felt his presence behind me, though he didn't touch me. Knew better than to touch me in this moment, with the chasm between us wider than it had ever been.

"It's not illusion," he said quietly. "What's between us. What I feel for you. That's real, Grace. The only real thing in this whole mess."

I turned to face him, something breaking inside me at the vulnerability in his expression, at the raw need I could see beneath his carefully controlled exterior.

"Is it? Or is it just another form of possession?

Another man deciding I belong to him, that he knows what's best for me, that his desires trump my autonomy, my right to choose my own path? "

He flinched again, the accusation hitting home with devastating accuracy.

"That's not what this is," he insisted, though I could hear the doubt creeping into his voice, the recognition that from my perspective, the distinction might be meaningless.

"Not anymore. Maybe at the beginning, yes. But now?—"

"Now what?" I challenged. "Now you love me? Now you want what's best for me? Now you'd let me go, if that's what I truly wanted? That's what you said at the estate. Was it true, Rafe? Would you really let me walk away, knowing what I know now, feeling what I feel now?"

The question hung between us, loaded with implications, with history, with the weight of everything that had happened since that night he'd taken me from my apartment, since the moment he'd decided I belonged to him.

"Yes," he said finally, the word barely above a whisper but carrying an absolute certainty that caught me off guard.

"If that's what you truly want. If that's what would bring you peace, happiness, a life you could embrace rather than merely endure.

I would let you go, Grace. It would destroy me. But I would do it."

I searched his face, looking for signs of deception, of manipulation, of the calculated control that had defined our relationship from the beginning. Found none. Just raw honesty, vulnerability, a pain so evident it made my chest ache despite everything.

"I want to leave," I said, the words escaping before I'd fully formed the thought, the decision. "Not forever. Not... permanently. But I need space. Distance. Time to think without you here, without the weight of your presence, your expectations, your... love, if that's truly what it is."

Something flickered in his eyes—disappointment, fear, resignation. But he nodded, accepting my decision with a grace I hadn't expected. "Where will you go?"

It was a fair question. One I hadn't fully considered in my impulsive declaration. Where could I go? My father had abandoned me. My family had disowned me. My former life had continued without me, the space I'd occupied filled in and smoothed over as if I'd never existed.