A bitter, angry laugh ripped out of Voren, low and rough, but it carried so much fury that everyone in the room instantly tensed up.
Seraphine, still curled on his lap, felt every single muscle in his body go rock-hard beneath her. His arms stayed wrapped tight around her waist, but his chest heaved up and down as he battled like hell to keep his emotions from exploding.
She gently pressed her hand against his chest, trying silently to calm the storm raging inside him. It barely made a difference.
Voren locked his gaze straight on Olivia, his eyes colder than ice. "So let me get this straight," he said, his lips curling into a dark, humorless chuckle. "The very first time you met your twin sister, you found out she had just died... and the only thing that popped into your head was stealing her entire life and taking her place?"
The deck went dead silent.
Voren slowly shook his head, disgust dripping from every word. "You’re evil."
Olivia flinched hard, her eyes flooding with fresh tears. "You don’t understand what I went through—"
"I don’t care what you went through!" Voren’s voice boomed across the deck, cutting her off like a whip. The raw force behind his words made Olivia stumble backward instinctively.
"No matter how painful your life was, you had no damn right to destroy ours." His jaw clenched so tight it looked painful. "You walked into our home pretending to be someone else. I spent my whole childhood loving a fake. I respected you. I trusted you, and I loved you."
Every single word carried decades of betrayal and heartbreak.
"And after everything you stole from my family," he growled, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white, "you still had the nerve to insult my wife. You invaded her privacy in the cabin, judged her, and looked down on her. You even called her—" He cut himself off, grinding his teeth together as the memory made his blood boil hotter.
Then another bitter laugh escaped him. "Look at you." His eyes raked over Olivia from head to toe. "You spent years pretending to be someone you weren’t, yet you still had the audacity to look down on the one woman who never hid who she really was."
His expression turned even darker. "You had no right to take my mother’s place." His voice softened just a fraction, but the pain bleeding through it was crystal clear. "And honestly, if you had just told the truth from the very beginning..." He let out a heavy sigh. "I believe my father still would have cared about you somehow."
Olivia shook her head almost instantly. "No," she said without hesitation, fresh tears streaming down her face. "He never would have. I’m damaged. I was already another man’s wife. I had a child." She lowered her eyes in complete shame. "If Vladimir had known that, he would have never accepted me."
She drew in a shaky breath. "I never planned for any of this. But when I saw Oriana lying there lifeless, I realized just how identical we were." A painful smile twisted across her lips. "There wasn’t a single difference between us. And... she was already gone."
Before anyone else could say a word, Vladimir slowly rose to his feet. His massive, towering presence immediately commanded the entire deck.

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