Chapter 172/Intoxicated by Humiliation

Chapter 172: 172/Intoxicated by Humiliation

Chapter 172

Stephanie’s point of view

Isabella launched herself toward the doorknob in a frantic, hysterical sprint, screaming at the top of her lungs. "I’m telling him right now! I’m going to rip his blind eyes wide open so he can see exactly what kind of backstabbing, traitorous brother he has!"

But faster than a reflex, Cedric’s heavy hand shot out like a striking viper. He clamped down on her arm with a brutal force that ripped a muffled shriek from her throat, violently jerking her body backward and slamming her hard onto the mattress. He hovered over her under his massive weight, his rugged face a stone-cold mask of death as the veins in his neck bulged. When he spoke, his voice was terrifyingly calm. "If a single fucking word escapes those lips about what happens behind these doors... I will choke the life out of you with my bare hands, Isabella. I won’t even blink. And you know damn well I will do it."

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Isabella’s POV

My mind was boiling, churning with those shattering, ruinous truths that had collided with my core like successive, razor-sharp blades driven straight into the blackest depths of my heart. I couldn’t believe it not in the slightest.

My mutilated pride completely refused to process that Cedric, the very man whose single warm glance I had craved and chased every single year of my life, would actually go so far as to threaten to execute me in cold blood just to keep his filthy, secret relationship with his older brother’s wife from coming to light! But the reality of it cut miles past the boundaries of logic and sanity; he had already gotten her pregnant with twins babies whose veins carried his exact blood while I, like a completely oblivious, brain-dead fool, was living in a total coma, utterly blind to the degeneracy and betrayal festering right beneath this palace roof.

I stared into his dead, frozen eyes eyes that held absolutely nothing for me but cold mortality and spoke through a scalding, suffocating lump in my throat that felt as though it would choke the life right out of me. "You are threatening to hunt me down and murder me for the sake of a whore, Cedric?! Have you completely forgotten who the fuck I am?! Have you forgotten that my father and his absolute cartel dominance could easily end your life and wipe your entire goddamn family off the face of this earth?!"

Not a single eyelash flickered on his massive face, nor did a single nerve twitch across his broad build. Instead, he delivered a dry, stone-cold response that completely pulverized whatever shattered pride my family had left. "I don’t have a single problem with dying. Give it a shot if you want."

Every definitive word that cut from between his lips ripped through my chest with a terrifying agony that no human being should ever have to visualize or endure. He was breaking my heart in the absolute ugliest, most merciless way possible, right while I stood there facing him as his humiliated, mocked fiancée. I forced down a dry swallow, trying to test the exact depth of his unhinged madness and obsession for her. "You... you are truly ready to walk straight into hell and die for her?"

He turned his entire towering, broad frame directly toward me, throwing out a final, cutting finality that permanently slaughtered any remaining hope I had of fixing him. "Yeah. I am ready to slaughter every single breathing creature that crawls on the face of this earth for her and her safety. And if she asks for my own soul and my life, I’ll hand it to her on a golden platter."

A bitter, wildly hysterical laugh ripped from my throat, my deep grief mixing with the heavy tears that tracks burning lines down my cheeks. "What a truly magnificent, legendary love story!... I had no idea you were capable of loving a woman with such a crushing, blind devotion, you goddamn mafia monster."

He cut me off in a dry, harsh, and authoritative baritone that instantly silenced me. "Isabella... you are going to shut your mouth and swallow your tongue. You don’t have a single other option or alternative."

I took a heavy, deliberate step forward, standing directly in his personal space to challenge those dead eyes. Staring straight into his pupils with frayed, ruined nerves, I spat, "I’ll be silent. But not because I am afraid of you or your pathetic threats in the slightest, and not because I fear death or a bullet from your gun. I will keep quiet for one reason and one reason only because I am terrified of you getting hurt or dying! My cursed, stupid, degraded heart absolutely refuses to hate you, Cedric. It stubbornly, viciously rejects the mere thought of you being a corpse."

He offered a sickeningly detached response, his stone-cold features not shifting a fraction of an inch. "Good."

I sharply tore my hate-filled gaze away from him, my eyes landing on that fucking bitch, Stephanie. She was shivering in the corner of the room, looking wide-eyed with terror like some pure, innocent martyr who had done no wrong. Unable to suppress the violent rage twisting my insides, I shrieked at her face with absolute, unadulterated disgust and revulsion. "How the hell do you sleep peacefully at night with an intact piece of mind?! How do you lay your head down when you are living between two biological brothers, drifting from one bed to the other without a shred of shame?! How does that sick brain of yours tolerate this level of pure whoring?!"

Cedric let out a deep, predatory growl, a lethal warning baritone that violently shook the very framework of the room and made me flinch. "Isabella! Watch your fucking mouth!"

"I’m leaving," I choked out, completely exhausted and broken by this vile, suffocating ambush that was slaughtering my soul.

I bolted toward the exit with unstable, faltering steps, violently slamming the heavy door open as I sprinted down the long, echoing hallway. The tears streamed uncontrollably down my face like a hot, rushing waterfall. I was still entirely paralyzed incapable of fully accepting that what my eyes had just witnessed and what my ears had just heard was a tangible reality, and not some horrific, fleeting nightmare I would wake up from.

I burst through the massive iron gates of the palace with shallow, frantic breaths, threw myself into my car, and aggressively slammed my foot down on the gas pedal. I drove with a manic, reckless velocity, speeding down the roads without a destination in mind, until I violently pulled over in a completely isolated, barren wasteland devoid of any human life or movement.

I stumbled out of the driver’s seat, my steps rocking unsteadily as though I were completely intoxicated on cups of pure humiliation and bitter grief.

My legs could no longer sustain the absolute weight of my broken, degraded body. My knees crashed hard into the cold, dusty earth, and I let out a deafening, agonizing shriek straight from the depths of my shattered chest a primal scream that carried the full volume of the sorrow, rage, and absolute betrayal that was choking the very oxygen out of my lungs.