A Ruinous Night novel Chapter 8

Lucian let out a sharp, hollow laugh that sent a chill straight down my spine.

"Fell in love with him?"

"Yes."

Of course I loved him. If I didn't, why would I have ever agreed to be with him?

"From now on," I promised softly, "before any family event, I will explicitly ask Julian if you're attending. If you are, I promise I will stay far away."

Five years ago, he had threatened me to never show my face in front of him again.

I thought time would have diluted his boiling hatred, but clearly, the very sight of me still made his skin crawl.

Lucian's dark eyes bore into mine.

"I just had someone run a check. Do you know what surgeries were scheduled at our hospital on the exact afternoon you visited?"

"What?"

"There was a hymenoplasty. What a crazy coincidence. You were the only female patient who walked out of that operating room all afternoon."

Pulling a specific patient's confidential file was highly illegal, but as a top surgeon, casually checking the daily surgical roster was horrifyingly easy for him.

A suffocating wave of humiliation crashed over me, leaving me feeling violently exposed and stripped bare.

Getting that procedure wasn't exactly something you bragged about. No woman on earth wanted to be viciously confronted about it.

Lucian let out a cold, sadistic sneer. "Stella Sharpe. You glued yourself back together just so you could spread your legs for Julian this weekend."

Fury and intense embarrassment erupted inside me.

"What else was I supposed to do?! If I didn't get the surgery, he'd ask who I lost it to! What was I supposed to say? I couldn't exactly drop your name and ruin your pristine reputation! I did this to protect both of us!"

The murderous frost in his eyes looked like he wanted to flay me alive and snap my bones.

A violent shudder ripped through my body. I spun around and sprinted for the exit.

Just as I reached for the handle, the waiter slammed the heavy wooden doors shut from the outside. The lock clicked. I yanked on the handle and pounded my fists against the wood, but no one answered.

I whipped around in pure panic.

...

Lucian had completely lost his mind.

Even when he had treated me like absolute garbage in the past, I had never realized just how deeply unhinged he truly was. He was a psychopath.

"Then why don't you just marry me?" I asked numbly.

His hands froze. After a painfully long silence, he spat out the words with venomous disgust. "I would marry a street hooker before I ever put a ring on you. Even if you climbed up to another roof and threw yourself off, I still wouldn't—"

I pushed myself off the sofa. The ruined dress slid down, barely covering my legs. I turned away from him and walked zombie-like toward the massive floor-to-ceiling window.

Lucian violently lunged forward, snatching my arm.

I followed his vice-like grip up to his face. The muscles in his jaw were completely rigid.

I wasn't even trying to fight him, yet he was gripping me with bone-crushing desperation, his fingers digging so deeply into my skin it felt like they were going to pierce my flesh.

It was like he was terrified that if he loosened his grip for a microsecond, I would vanish into thin air.

"It's freezing in here," I murmured. "I was just going to shut the window."

He still refused to let go.

It looked like he was genuinely terrified of something, mixed with a bizarre, twisted sense of relief—maybe relief that he had caught me this time. Or maybe I was just being pathetically delusional again.

"When I asked if you'd marry me," I continued softly, "I was just trying to piss you off. Relax. I don't want to marry you, and I would never force you. You only ruined my surgery; you didn't ruin my life. I'm never going to jump off a building for you again."