Page 54 of Twisted Empire: King's Gambit

“Hey,” I reply softly, as if speaking any louder would shatter the fragile moment we’ve found ourselves in. I lean down and kiss her forehead, but something feels wrong.

She takes a deep breath, her body tensing against mine, her gaze drifting away for a moment before returning to mine.

“Mikhail, there’s something I need to tell you,” she says, her voice a delicate whisper tinged with a gravity that tells me this isn’t a casual revelation.

My heart clenches. The protective urge surges through me, tightening its grip. I lock eyes with her, giving her a nod that hopefully conveys my readiness to hear whatever she needs to say. “Go ahead,moya koroleva.”

She looks away momentarily, gathering her thoughts, her courage. “When I was younger, I had a music teacher make promises. Promises of a brighter future, of making it big in the world of music. I was naïve, captivated by those empty words.”

As she continues, I feel a cold anger seep into my veins, mingling with a dread of what I know is coming.

“He took advantage of that naivety. He took something that was never his to take,” her voice trembles as she says it, and a lump forms in my throat when I feel her body trembling against me.

Her confession rings in the air, a raw wound exposed to the light, and my blood ignites. Every word that falls from her lips ratchets my fury up another notch. But it’s a silent kind of anger, the sort that smolders rather than blazes openly. My vision blurs red.

A growl rumbles deep within me, primal and vengeful. “That son of a bitch—”

She flinches at my outburst and I feel like shit as she cuts me off, her hand resting gently against my mouth to stop me from erupting into a tirade.

“Please, let me finish,” she begs. I nod, biting back the torrent of curses threatening to pour out of me, but every word she utters feels like a shard of glass, scraping across raw nerves.

“Afterwards, my father blamed me. He said I had asked for it and said it was my fault because I should have known better. The worst part? That bastard was a capo’s son, one of my dad’s closest friends.”

Jesus fucking Christ. The ground beneath me seems to sway as I process what she’s saying. The rage is white-hot now, a conflagration threatening to consume everything in its path, including the fragile peace we’ve managed to find.

I pull her closer, my arms tightening around her as if I could shield her from her past, from the world, from every fucked-up thing that’s ever touched her.

“I’m so sorry, Gabriette,” my voice is a ragged whisper, heavy with emotions I can’t begin to name.

I’ve seen the signs—the tension in her shoulders when someone touches her, the way her hand trembles ever so slightly when she has to shake hands with someone. I knew something had happened, but hearing it, hearing the vile details, that someone had ripped something essential from her, makes me see red.

She doesn’t even have to say what he did in explicit detail. Just hearing her confirm my worst suspicions, makes me feel as if I’ve been sucker-punched.

“Gabriette,” my voice is a low growl, a controlled storm. “No one asks to have thier innocence ripped away like that. And your father, that spineless coward, should’ve done right by you. No matter who that bastard was, capo’s son or fucking royalty, he had no right to lay a hand on you without your permission.”

The fact that she had to carry this weight alone, and worse, had been blamed for it, boils my insides. I could kill her father and that piece-of-shit music teacher with my bare hands, no hesitation. But even that wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t scrub away the years of pain she’s had to endure.

“You didn’t deserve any of it, Gabriette,” I say, the anger seething beneath each word, tempered only by the need to be what she needs right now—supportive, not explosive. “If I could, I’d—”

“I know,” she interrupts, laying her hand on my chest, right over my pounding heart. “I know.”

That she understands the violent depth of my feelings, the primal urge for retribution, and accepts them—that’s what reins me in. It’s a bitter pill, swallowing the anger, keeping it caged. I can’t take vengeance, not without putting her and everything I’ve worked for at risk.

Her father’s betrayal, though, makes my blood boil in a different way. “Your father’s a fucking disgrace,” I spit out, unable to hold back the venom. “Blaming you? Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of a man lets that happen to his own daughter and then has the gall to put the blame on her? If it were up to me—”

“Please,” she says softly, touching my face. “Just... Thank you for understanding.”

Understanding? I understand all right. I understand that if it were up to me, I’d have that scumbag’s head on a spike. But he’s a capo’s son, entangled with Cosa Nostra. Retribution means war, and war costs more than just the lives of the guilty.

My fists clench, the rage I feel not just for her teacher but for her own goddamn father, boiling beneath the surface. I want to crush, to destroy, to do all the things that come naturally to a man like me.

But I see the vulnerability in her eyes, hear the tremor in her voice, and it holds me back, roots me to the moment.

And I can’t unleash my wrath, not without igniting a war with the Cosa Nostra. My instincts scream at me to do it anyway, but the calculating, strategic part of my brain reigns me in.

“I’m sorry for reacting this way, but just knowing what you went through all alone…” My arms tighten around her instinctively, a futile attempt to shield her from a past I had no part in but wish I could rewrite for her sake.

She looks up, her eyes soft but infinitely sad.

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