Chapter 170/I Just Don’t Love You

Chapter 170: 170/I Just Don’t Love You

Chapter 168

Stephanie’s POV

Isabella forced herself upright against the plush bedding, her limbs heavy and trembling with a raw, volatile shock that instantly weaponized into a raging volcano of grief, mutilated pride, and shattered dignity. Furious tears pooled in her eyes with lightning speed, her pale, distorted face twisting into a mask of pure agony as the sheer weight of the betrayal caused her entire frame to shudder.

"You are blaming *me* after everything I just witnessed with my own godgoddamn eyes?!" she shrieked, her voice cracked, hollow, and punctuated by frantic, desperate gasps as heavy streams of tears completely washed the expensive makeup off her face. "You have the nerve to threaten to murder me in cold blood and put me down like a stray dog, Cedric?! I am your fucking fiancée! I am the woman who is supposed to carry your name and share your life by decree of our families’ blood-contracts!"

She pointed a violently shaking finger straight at me, her chest heaving with a violent, suffocating revulsion. "And you cheat on me with *who*, for Christ’s sake?! Your older brother’s wife?! Am I really that worthless, that cheap in those hateful eyes of yours? Does my dignity and the honor of my entire family mean absolutely fucking nothing to you?! I always knew you were cold, brutal, and completely heartless because of your work in the mafia, but I never in my wildest nightmares imagined you were this goddamn pathetic, low, and utterly depraved!"

She buried her flushed, tear-stained face into both of her palms, breaking down into a muffled, hysterical sob. The agonizing, raw weight of her weeping echoed through the suffocating silence of the bedroom, turning the very air in my lungs into a heavy, unbreathable toxin.

I shrank back another step, my spine pressed hard against the door, paralyzed by a blinding wave of terror. Listening to her cry, I realized this was no longer just a dangerous mafia secret that could be swept under the rug; this was the catalyst for the absolute, unadulterated annihilation of every single person living inside this cursed palace.

Cedric stared down at her, his rugged features frozen into a mask of stone-cold, icy detachment. But the heavy, scalding rhythm of his breathing gave him away his mind was racing frantically, searching for a way to violently choke out her cries before the sound bled through the thick wood of the door and alerted the guards in the hallway.

She aggressively wiped the moisture from her face with the back of her hand, her broken weeping hardening into razor-sharp daggers of bitter resentment in a fraction of a second. "Did you honestly think I was completely blind and oblivious to your bullshit, Cedric?" she spat, her voice shaking with a raw, deep-seated pain that carved itself into her features. "Did you really think I didn’t know you were throwing your body and soul into the arms of low-class, whoring tramps in those filthy VIP strip clubs?!"

She looked up at him, a shattering, absolute humiliation bleeding from her eyes—a degradation that could have crushed mountains. "Am I truly that stupid, that pathetic, that I wouldn’t realize you don’t love me at all? That you can’t even stand the sound of my name being spoken in the cartel meetings, and that you only accepted this goddamn marriage because your grandfather Victor backed you into a corner with a whip?!"

Cedric’s jaw relaxed with a slow, chilling indifference. He casually slid one hand into his trouser pocket, his cold, calculated posture completely discarding any lingering trace of surprise. When he spoke, his baritone was entirely devoid of emotion, pity, or mercy. "Since you already know all of these facts and clearly comprehend them with that conscious brain of yours... why the hell have you been playing the part of the happy, loving, oblivious fool this entire time, Isabella? What is your fucking angle?"

A fresh wave of hysterical gasps tore through her chest, her shoulders shaking violently as she screamed right into his face at the top of her lungs. "Because I love you! I love you with a blind, unhinged madness, Cedric! Do you not have eyes or a goddamn heart to see the burning coal that is ripping through my soul and my insides because of your constant, icy rejection?!"

He sharply averted his gaze, turning his massive frame toward the glass window with a brutal, cutting indifference. He threw his next words over his shoulder like a razor-sharp blade designed to slaughter whatever was left of her pride. "But I don’t love you at all, Isabella. And I never will for as long as I draw breath. Keep that tucked very tightly into your head."

Her features violently contorted, her torso flinching back against the sheets as if his words had physically slammed into her face like a brutal right hook. "I know..." she choked out, her voice dropping into a breathless, broken whisper dripping with absolute bitterness. "And because I know that exact truth, it slaughters me every single second of my life! I try to forget you by any means possible... I try with every ounce of my remaining strength and pride to tear you out of my heart and rip your cursed memory out of my mind, but I simply can’t! I am completely powerless and pathetic when it comes to you."

Cedric fell silent for a beat. The rigid, lethal edge of his demeanor softened into a rare, unsettling quiet as he witnessed her total psychological collapse right in front of him. "I’m sorry," he muttered, his tone hollow and dry.

She let out a bitter, wildly hysterical laugh, the manic sound cutting through the air as tears tracked fresh lines down her reddened face. "Sorry?! Seriously?! Is that cold, meaningless, goddamn word all you have to say to me after the total destruction and the filthy scandal I just caught you practicing?!"

He gave a slight, indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders, a display of cold mafia apathy. "What the hell do you want me to say at this point, Isabella? The truth is already out on the floor."

She launched herself off the mattress, stepping toward him with unstable, shaking legs until she was standing directly in his personal space, staring into the depths of his eyes with a fatal, dead-eyed despair. "Why can’t you love me, for God’s sake?! Why is it that no matter what I do, no matter how much of my own dignity I sacrifice for you, you will never be able to love me, Cedric?! What the fuck is wrong with me?!"

"I just don’t love you," he answered with a sharp, uncompromising finality. "That’s all there is to it. Stop overanalyzing it. You can’t buy feelings or force a heart with blood-contracts and family arrangements."