Chapter 182/I Am Going to Explode!

Chapter 182: 182/I Am Going to Explode!

Chapter 182:

Stephanie’s POV

His tone carried that exact cold edge I had been dreading the calculated, hyper-precise interrogation that Alexander had mastered into a literal art form. I let out a sharp, helpless breath, desperately trying to freeze my features into a mask of pure calm.

"Alex... I already told your ass," I muttered, forcing a shrug. "Sitting around this goddamn mansion all day with nothing to do is driving me insane with boredom."

He crossed his massive arms over his broad chest, pinning me under a pair of narrowed, piercing blue eyes. "And why the hell didn’t this sudden boredom cross your mind yesterday, exactly when you were dead-set on forcing through your resignation?"

I aggressively whipped my face away from his gaze, a slight flare of irritation bleeding into my tone. "Because I can’t look at every single angle of my life at the exact same time, Alex!"

He took slow, heavy strides toward the bed, his calm, unbothered pulse completely grating on my frayed nerves. "Is there something you’re keeping from me, Stephanie? Is something going down behind my back that I don’t know about?"

My stamina completely cratered, the crushing weight of my endless web of lies turning far too heavy for my fragile body to carry anymore. I sank heavily onto the edge of the mattress, burying my pale face in my trembling palms as a wave of deep exhaustion washed over me. "I am so sick and tired of this... You cannot keep treating me like a goddamn suspect, Alex. I am not a student in your classroom anymore."

He stopped right in front of my body, his voice dropping into a low register. "But I recall a time in the past when you thoroughly enjoyed that exact treatment."

I snapped my head up, my eyes pooling with hot, bitter tears as I stared back at him. "Yes... I loved it in the past! But I am your wife now, and I am literally suffocating from this intelligence-agency style of yours."

His knees bent smoothly as he slid onto the mattress beside me, the immense heat of his massive frame instantly radiating against my skin. He delivered his next words in a deep, rich baritone, deliberately trying to anchor my spiraling anxiety. "I strictly want to ensure that everything is perfectly fine in your life, Steph."

I nodded my head in a scattered, chaotic daze. "Everything is fine."

He went entirely silent for a single, agonizing second before unleashing a sentence that hit my ears like pure, lethal poison. "Then... why does Cedric aggressively insist at every single opportunity that we are strictly married on paper?"

In that exact microsecond, every remaining drop of patience and endurance inside my spent body vanished into thin air. I violently bolted upright, screaming right into his face in a state of absolute, hysterical panic as hot tears exploded down my cheeks.

"Leave me the hell alone! Just back the fuck off! I am going to blow up! I am literally going to explode from this goddamn pressure! I can’t take a single thing anymore... I can’t fucking handle it!"

The strict, unshakeable mask on his face instantly fractured into deep worry. He pushed himself up from the bed with lightning speed, extending his massive hands toward my shivering body. "Steph... what the hell is wrong with you?"

I scrambled backward, shaking my head like a lunatic. "Get away from me! Just leave me the fuck alone right now!"

"Fine... just calm the hell down, please," he pleaded, desperately trying to lower the temperature in the room.

"Get out of the room!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs, a broken sob choking the air right out of my throat.

But he didn’t listen to a single command. Instead, he executed a rapid, dominant stride forward, violently locking his powerful arms completely around my waist and pulling my shivering body flush against his broad chest with immense force. I frantically tried to writhe out of his iron grip, weakly pounding my fists against his solid chest. "I told you to let me go, Alexander!"

He tightened his locks around me even harder, burying his face deep into the messy strands of my red hair as he delivered a firm, quiet finality. "I’ll shut up. I won’t utter a single goddamn word about it again, I promise. But don’t you ever dare ask me to walk out and leave you alone when you’re in a catastrophic state like this."

Guiding my rigid body with a slow, unyielding gentleness, he moved us until we were sitting back down together on the edge of the mattress. My heavy head finally collapsed against his chest while his long, rhythmic fingers gently stroked my red hair in a soothing, hypnotic pattern.

Slowly, my erratic, trembling gasps began to level out against his skin. I squeezed my eyes shut in pure, absolute surrender, desperately trying to run away from the terrifying reality that was tightening around my neck like a literal noose.

And like a clockwork curse... whenever I closed my eyes to black out the present, my memory violently dragged me straight back into the pitch-black abyss of the past specifically, to the exact day following the afternoon I had begged Professor Alexander to take my virginity inside his private office.

I was standing behind the high concrete wall of the high school courtyard alongside Kira, my fingers frantically twisting together in pure, unadulterated dread as I whispered the details to her. Kira’s eyes dilated in horrific shock, her breath catching in her throat as she hissed, "Steph... are you being serious right now, or is this just another one of your sick, twisted pranks?!"

I aggressively rubbed my trembling arms, my anxiety skyrocketing. "I am completely serious, Kira... The Professor ordered me to strip off my clothes, and he played with my pussy using his fingers in a way that literally caused me to pass out."

Kira couldn’t even process a single syllable; her entire face looked as if she were listening to a wild science-fiction movie. She gaped at me in pure horror. "Steph... that man is a sick, predatory creep! He is violently exploiting his authority over your ass at this school!"