Chapter 31
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That was all I needed.
We pushed through the first floor. Blood on the walls. Screams behind the doors. I got stabbed in the thigh by some idiot with a blade, and I pulled it out with a grunt, shoved it into his chest, and kept going. I didn’t have time to limp. Not when she was bleeding in some room at the top of the damn building waiting for someone to come for her like no one ever did before.
I kept hearing her voice in my ear.
Drowsy. Weak. But alive.
“I can’t feel my hands… but I kept saying your name… I knew you’d hear me.”
I swallowed the pain and said, “I’m almost there, baby. Just hold on. I’m killing everything that stands between us.”
I tore down the next door.
And I wasn’t stopping until I was the one holding her again.
CELESTE’S POV
I feel drowsy and everything on me still spinning and my wrists are raw from the straps and I can barely lift my neck but I can hear the metal doors groan open from the war room next to mine and I swear on the ghost of every woman Hakeem ever silenced–I know that sound. I know that voice.
Cassian.
He’s really here.
He’s really fucking here.
My eyes sting and my lips tremble and my chest tightens the second I hear his footsteps dragging across the floor and I hear Hakeem too…his voice cracked and manic and cruel all at once like he’s been waiting for this.
“You built an empire off her blood. Now you’re going to drown in it.”
That’s Cassian.
Dead cold.
And Hakeem? He laughs like he’s lost every sliver of sanity left. “You stole what’s mine. I’ll fucking die before I let her go.”
I breathe shallow and lean my head back against the wall because I need to see this. I need to hear the sound of the devil choking on his own fire. And then Cassian answers with a voice that doesn’t shake, doesn’t break, doesn’t hesitate.
“Perfect. I came here to bury you.”
My Husband Begged for My Love after Destroving Me
23.03., Mon Jul 21.NO.
And then the war starts.
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Gunshots rip the walls like thunder. I flinch every time one explodes but I keep watching through the cracked glass. I see Cassian, moving even with a bleeding leg and a hole in his ribs. He shoots like he was born for it. Every bullet finds a throat, a temple, a spine. His hands are covered in blood and he doesn’t even blink. He’s here for one thing and one
thing…. only me.
And Hakeem?
That rabid bastard is laughing while firing back, screaming at the top of his lungs like I was
his last breath of air.
“You don’t get her, Cassian! She was mine first! She loved me first! I built her, I made her, I
bled for her!”
Cassian doesn’t flinch. He bleeds down his side but he still fires back and takes out every man Hakeem throws in front of him. Then his gun runs dry and he throws it aside and walks into the storm with his fists.
They clash like thunder. Cassian throws Hakeem against the console, breaks his nose with a single blow and keeps punching until the blood on his knuckles is no longer his. Hakeem bites, kicks, grabs the edge of the table and slams it against Cassian’s ribs and still Cassian rises like a monster born of vengeance.
“You think she’s yours?” Cassian growls, breathing hard, blood dripping down his jaw. “Then why did she run?”
Hakeem roars and charges again, picks up the gold pistol and lifts it to Cassian’s head.
I scream.
I scream his name so loud my throat tears.
Cassian grabs Hakeem’s wrist before he can pull the trigger, twists it so hard I hear the bones snap, and in one brutal motion, he snatches the gun and presses it straight to
Hakeem’s forehead.
“I warned you.”
And then he pulls the trigger.
Once.
Twice.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Silence.
Chanter 31
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23:04 Mon, Jul 21
Silence.
I is
Hakeem’s body hits the floor and doesn’t move.
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I close my eyes. I let the silence settle inside my bones like justice has a sound. My heart beats once, twice, and then I feel it again…the part of me that stopped living the night Harmony was erased… it’s waking up.
Cassian drops the gun, stumbles toward the room I’m trapped in, and even with all the blood on his face and the pain in his ribs and the rage still thick on his breath, he reaches for me like I’m something holy.
He falls to his knees beside the chair, grabs my face with shaking hands, and whispers my
name.
“Celeste… baby, I got you. I got you. I swear you’re safe now.’
And all I say–voice shaking, tears slipping–is,
“You came.”
And he leans forward and presses his forehead to mine and breathes like he never thought he’d get to do it again.
“I’ll always come,” he whispers. “Even if I have to kill the whole world just to bring you home.”
“Why would you fight that hard for me?”
Cassian didn’t even flinch. He pressed his lips to my temple and whispered like the answer had always been in his blood.
“Because I fucking love you. And I’m never letting you go.”
I don’t remember if I passed out from the blood loss or from the weight of hearing those words from someone who meant them. But I woke up days later, the light softer, the air different, and the war finally gone from the windows.
THE VILLA SMELLED like cedarwood and cold mountain air and quiet.
Five doctors moved around me like shadows, checking my bandages and cleaning my wounds while whispering like I’d break if they were too loud. But I wasn’t fragile. I wasn’t soft. I just… wasn’t ready to speak yet.
The trauma didn’t leave my body just because the bruises faded.
At night, I’d jolt up screaming. I’d feel the chair again, the tightness of the straps digging into my arms, the cold floor beneath my bare feet. I’d hear Hakeem’s voice. The sound of the dart gun. The moment my body collapsed like a puppet cut loose.
And Cassian was always there.
He never left the room. He didn’t ask me to talk. He didn’t beg me to heal faster. He just sat
Chapter 31
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beside me, hand wrapped gently around mine, whispering things I barely understood but they were warm, and they were real.
“I was sixtenth when I first held a gun. Seventeen when I buried my brother. Eighteen when I stopped believing I’d ever love anything except revenge. But then I met you,” he’d say,
fingers brushing through my hair slowly. “You didn’t look at me like I was a killer. You looked at me like I was something worth surviving for.”
