Page 134 of Crushed Vow
“Ask me,” he said.
I blinked. “Ask you what?”
“The question you’ve been too afraid to say out loud.”
His gaze held mine, blind but burning. “Ask me if I love you.”
Chapter 19
CHARLOTTE
My breath hitched. I tried to look away, to escape what I already knew I’d hear, but his hand held me there—soft but unrelenting. Anchoring me to him.
“Do you...” My voice cracked, and I hated how much hope trembled behind the words.
“Do you truly love me? Or is this just some sick obsession? Some broken part of you acting out trauma? Is this about the vault? The inheritance? My name?”
Cassian leaned in, close enough that his breath stirred the strands of my hair.
His voice wrapped around me like a wound—and like a balm.
“I divorced you, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “Officially. Legally. Publicly. I made sure of it, so you’d never think I was like Luca. So you’d never mistake what I feel for strategy.”
He swallowed. His jaw clenched.
“I don’t give a damn about that vault. I would rather burn that money than let it make you doubt me for one more second.”
His hands trembled slightly as he placed them on either side of me, as if he couldn’t bear not to be touching me while he said this.
“I love you,” he said, and it wasn’t gentle this time. It was rough. Real. “I love you in a way that devours me. That rots mefrom the inside. That drives me to kill and bleed and kneel and fucking beg.”
His voice broke.
“I know I’m not the man you deserve. I’m not Ethan. I’m not noble. I’m not clean. I’ve got blood on every part of me, Charlotte—even my soul.”
“But the only reason it still beats is because of you.”
“I mutilate monsters because I can’t stand the thought of them touching you. I erase threats because I don’t know any other way to keep you safe. You think I’m obsessed?” He let out a bitter laugh. “I am. You are the air I breathe. The sound I chase in silence. I have audio recordings of your laugh. I fall asleep to them like lullabies. I’ve memorized the rhythm of your footsteps like a song.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I can’t even see clearly anymore, and yet I’d know your silhouette in a room full of ghosts.”
He pressed his forehead to mine.
“And if you walked away now, I’d follow. Not to stop you. Just to make sure you didn’t fall.”
Silence stretched thick between us.
He was breathing hard. Not with rage—but with grief. The kind that cracks ribs and bends bone.
Then, softly:
“I love you, Charlotte. In every way a man shouldn’t love someone. And I’d give everything just to be the kind of man you could love back.”
His voice faltered, trembling, as if every word cost him a piece of his soul.
“Every night, I fall asleep to your voice. Your laugh. I have recordings—voicemails, security tapes, fragments from the times you were with Ethan. I loop them like lullabies, because without them, the silence drives me insane. I can’t sleep unless I hear you. Even if it’s fake. Even if it’s stolen.”
He swallowed hard, eyes fixed on mine, guilt etched into every line of his face.
