Chapter 28 The drive to the house in Hyde Park felt longer than the three weeks I'd been gone. The place was a fortress of old money and older sins, a monument to a life I was supposed to want. I pushed the heavy oak door open, and the scent of lemon polish and imported flowers hit me like a familiar, suffocating blanket. Alessia was waiting in the grand living room, perched on the edge of a silk-upholstered settee like a porcelain doll. She'd clearly been waiting for hours. Her makeup was perfect, her dress impeccable, but her eyes were raw. "You're back," she said, her voice tight. It wasn't a greeting. It was an accusation. I didn't bother with taking off my coat. I just stood there, in the center of the ornate rug, hands in my pockets. "I am." "Three weeks, Raziel. No call. Nothing. Do you have any idea how that looks? What people are saying?" I shrugged, a minute, infuriating movement. "Let them talk." Her composure began to crack. A fine tremor started in her hands. "I am your fiancée. I deserve more than your indifference. I deserve respect!" "You deserve a man who wants to be with you," I said, my voice flat, final. "I'm not that man. The engagement is off." The words hung in the air and felt stark and brutal the way I had spat them out, but I didn't have the patience to clean them up and make them pretty. For a moment, she just stared, as if waiting for me to take them back. When I didn't, her face crumpled. "It's her, isn't it?" she whispered, the words tearing from her throat. "That trash. Maya." My eyes, which had been scanning the room with bored detachment, snapped to hers. The indifference vanished, replaced by a glacial coldness. "Disrespect her again," I said, my voice dangerously hard. "I dare you." She flinched but held her ground, tears now streaming down her cheeks, carving paths through her perfect foundation. "You think I don't know? You think I don't have people who tell me things? You're humiliating me for some... some junkie who's probably spread her legs for half of South St. Pete! For drugs. I won't let her off for this." I was in front of her in two strides, not touching her, but looming. "From this day forward, you will leave her alone," I hissed, the calm utterly gone. "You will not look at her, you will not speak her name, you will not even think about her. Do you understand me? Or do I need to remind you who her sister is married to? Or should I remind you of who I am? Not your father's lapdog. Not your fucking puppet prince. Who I really am. Who I've always been." The color drained from her face. For a heartbeat, there was only fear in her eyes. Then, as if she realized fear was a currency I wouldn't accept, her spine stiffened. Her fear curdled, right in front of me, into a desperate, last-ditch anger. I smiled. Cold. Cruel. "You're a coward," she spat, her voice shaking with vitriol. "A coward who can't keep a promise to his dead mother! A coward who runs from the power your own father is handing you! He offered you everything! A crown! "Threats from you mean nothing, Raziel, because you're too scared to take the throne you were born to sit on. And Priest? He's no more powerful than my father. He's a loud, messy thug who's only powerful because men like my father haven't bothered to put him in his place!" I didn't react. The insultsslid off me. Her tears, her rage-it was all just noise. Theater. I felt nothing but a profound, weary need to be gone from this room. "You done?" Her chest heaved. "Yeah," she seethed. "I'm done watching you throw your legacy away on trash." I took a breath.Then I smiled again. She saw my indifference, and it broke her completely. She stumbled back, sobbing now, ugly and raw. "My father will hear about this! He will not let this stand! You'll regret this, Raziel! You'll regret throwing me away!" A low, humorless laugh escaped me. It was a cold, empty sound that made her blood run cold. "Tell him," I said, turning my back on her and walking toward the door. "Tell your father whatever you want. Just know that if anything happens to her, even a whisper, I'll make sure your family tree ends with you. And move out of my fucking house before I return to it, Please." I didn't look back. I opened the door and stepped out into the evening air, leaving her standing amidst the ruins of our arrangement, her sobs echoing. The door clicked shut behind me, a period at the end of a sentence I should never have written. Five-year-old Annie, who can understand animals, saved Landon Hawthorne, a wealthy businessman, from suicide. Now she's his whole world and he's her legal cheat-code against every villain fate throws ...