Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
He began to cough, his breathing becoming ragged and labored. His hand clawed at his throat as his chest heaved with desperate attempts to draw breath.
How adorable.
I had always known.
Adrian wasn’t the only one who had been watching. While he had been observing me and planning…I had been studying him too. Closely. Patiently. Carefully observing every detail about the man who had ruined my life.
I had noticed how he never touched the strawberry tarts at family dinners. How he subtly pushed away any dessert containing the fruit. How he would decline fruit salads with a dismissive wave. How his eyes would dart nervously toward any dish with the telltale red berries. How the strawberries would rot in our fridge because no one ate them.
Adrian Salvatore, the ruthless killer who feared nothing, was deathly allergic to strawberries—and he had kept this weakness hidden from everyone.
No one knew.
No one except me.
I was his wife, after all. It was my duty to know everything about my husband.
I had eaten those strawberries on purpose. Five of them, their sweet juice coating my tongue, their essence seeping into my poisonous kiss.
Adrian collapsed onto the kitchen floor, his body convulsing as anaphylaxis took hold. His face had begun to swell, his lips turning an alarming shade of blue. His chest heaved with desperate, wheezing breaths.
“What have you done?” he rasped, his voice barely audible as his throat constricted.
“Does it hurt, husband?” I asked softly, kneeling beside him. I brushed my finger along his cheek, then traced his swollen lips with deliberate slowness. “Does it feel like your throat is closing? Like you’re drowning in air that refuses to enter your lungs?”
His eyes, those piercing blue eyes that had haunted my nightmares, stared up at me with a mixture of disbelief and horror.
A foreign feeling surged through me.
So, this was how it felt like to be… powerful. To be in control of someone’s life. To choose between death and showing them mercy.
My grin widened. “Does it burn? How does it feel to be so…powerless?” I taunted, my voice sweet as the poison that now coursed through his veins.
I rose to my feet, looking down at him as he struggled for breath on our kitchen floor. For a moment, I considered letting him die. The thought was tempting—so very tempting—but death would be too quick, too merciful for a man who has tormented me so thoroughly.
“Don’t worry,” I told him, my voice cold, shattering the illusion that he had been in control. “I won’t let you die. Not today. We have so much more to suffer through together, husband.”
I walked around the counter and reached for the EpiPen I had kept in one of the drawers for this moment and came back to his side. His eyes widened at the sight of it and he reached out, desperate… to live, to breathe, to survive.
I threw it on the floor, next to his body. “Help yourself.”
Adrian grasped it with trembling hands and I didn’t stay to watch. I walked away, my heels clicking against the marble floors as I left him gasping on the floor of our kitchen.
He had underestimated me. Adrian had seen only what he wanted to see—a beautiful, fragile woman he could control and manipulate. But he had forgotten the darkness that lurked beneath my perfect exterior, the same darkness that ran through his own veins.
And I had just claimed my first victory.
I took out my cellphone from the pocket of my dress. It appeared I had to call Edmund back to the main house.
My husband was going to need immediate medical attention.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Adrian
I woke to darkness, my throat raw and swollen. When I inhaled, there was a slight burning in my lungs.
The ceiling above me came into focus, familiar and yet strange in my disoriented state. My bedroom. I was in my own bed, not on the kitchen floor where I’d collapsed.
The events came rushing back—the kiss, the strawberries, my wife’s cold smile as I struggled for breath.
She had known.
The little viper had known about my allergy all along.
I pushed myself up, my body protesting with every movement. The EpiPen’s effects were wearing off, leaving me weak but alive. I remembered Edmund finding me on the kitchen floor before I had passed out. He must have been the one to bring me to my room.
“Fuck,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. Sweat clung to my skin.
She had tried to kill me.
My own fucking wife had actually tried to kill me.
A strange sensation bloomed in my chest—not anger, not even rage, but something more complex, an emotion I couldn’t quite understand.
I was infuriated.
But I also had a newfound, grudging respect for my wife.
Serafina had outsmarted me, exploited my weakness with cold calculation. I had underestimated her—her quiet observation, her patience, her intelligence. She’d discovered my one weakness and wielded it like a weapon.