By the time they deliver me to His threshold, dusk is already bleeding into true night, allowing the massive, forbidding manor to partially submerge itself in the gloom.
It looks less like a home and more like a fortress meant to contain a beast.
I can feel the violent shudder that starts deep in my chest, a primal dread that causes my very heart to seize, threatening to stop entirely.
The men escorting me, massive silhouettes against the fading light, don’t allow for a single superfluous movement.
I am perfectly, agonizingly aware: I am finished.
When your life is entangled with a monster, and your relationship is defined by a terrifying, visceral intensity—one that, on his side, feels like sharp fangs perpetually hovering over your jugular—you must accept the consequences.
Be ready.
To attempt an escape from him is a debt that must be paid.
And the price will be far higher than anything you could possibly offer.
I look back on this morning now, my body wracked with a fresh wave of trembling, recalling how I frantically threw my things together, how my hands shook as I booked the tickets.
For what?
So they could intercept me at the bus station before I’d even left the city borders and drag me back here?
“He can unearth you even from the deepest pit.
He owns this city, and beyond its borders, there are no limits that will stop him.” Splendid.
I did this.
I slipped the noose around my own neck.
Surely, there are less painful, more merciful ways to depart this world.
One of the hulking guards throws the front door open, and for one agonizing heartbeat, I freeze on the threshold.
The fear is a physical weight, crushing me.
I cast one final, desperate look back over my shoulder, and the realization suffocates me: there is nowhere to run.
“I’d advise you not to tarry,” one of the brutes grumbles behind me.
His voice is a low rumble, but I understand perfectly what he leaves unsaid.
He is in a fury.
And any delay, any hint of resistance on my part, will unleash a pain far worse than physical suffering.
And He is a master of inflicting pain.
I cross the threshold.
My first numb thought is that they are taking me to His office, but the terror spikes anew as I am practically dragged toward the grand staircase, forced up to the second floor.
When we stop at the door at the very end of the hall, my insides turn to ice.
This is His bedroom.
His den.
One of the guards swings the door open, I am shoved inside, and the heavy door slams shut with a finality that echoes in my bones.
I struggle to maintain my balance and instinctively hold my breath the moment I lay eyes on Him.
It is the sensation of being trapped in a cage with a dark, terrifying apex predator.
One who could tear me limb from limb with a single, brutal movement.
And I have zero doubt that is exactly what He intends to do tonight.
In recent weeks, the volatile dynamic between us, the sheer, dangerous electricity, has finally pushed us across the threshold, past which only hell awaits.
It was a fatal error to let myself be beguiled by His flawless, exquisite, yet utterly desolate beauty—the kind that makes nearly every woman in Naples lose her mind.
It is merely a mask.
He is a beast cloaked in a stunningly perfect human guise.
I am visibly vibrating with terror.
My palms are slick, and my heart pounds with a resonance so loud I am convinced I will go deaf from the sound, but I force the words past my swollen throat anyway: “Please… just let me go.
I am begging you, leave me alone and… find someone else.
Find another girl.
There’s nothing left between us to save.” The distance separating us isn’t grand, but as He begins to close it, my consciousness is flooded with pure, unadulterated panic.
The space around me becomes too small; I can barely draw air into my lungs.
When we first met, I was ignorant.
I didn’t know who he was or whose sole heir this monster was.
I didn’t even know his name—the name, I later learned, that causes all of Naples to shudder in abject fear.
And I… I was just an ordinary student.
I still am.
If I had only known what he was then, I would have run without a single glance backward.
“Is that right?
Perhaps you have fallen in love with someone else?” He sneers, grabbing my hair.
His grip is vicelike, brutal.
His knuckles turn bone-white as he slowly, excruciatingly winds the strands around his fist, jerking my head back.
His large, strong fingers dig into my skin, gripping my chin and forcing me to look directly into his terrifying, currently non-human eyes.
Another shudder wracks my body.
I have seen many moods from him, but never before have his eyes held such dark, bestial intent.
His voice is a dangerous, predatory whisper near my ear.
“Because I seem to recall that only yesterday, you were kissing me.” His words struck a raw nerve.
Knowing how desperately I needed to escape, I had done everything in my power to lull his vigilance, to make him lower his guard.
I had forced myself to do it through a surge of visceral, internal terror.
I couldn’t even begin to articulate how terrifying it was to kiss him—to willingly initiate contact, to press my trembling body against his towering frame.
“You… you can find someone else so easily,” I stammer, my breath catching, unable to control the frantic spiral of my thoughts.
“Someone who… who will kiss you willingly, who will do everything else with pleasure.” He tugs on my hair with such sudden, brutal force that a soft cry of pain slips from my lips.
I flinch in sheer panic as a lethal, predatory sneer curls across his features.
The blood drains from my face, my skin going deathly cold as he leans down, his feverish breath brushing against my ear.
“You will be the one doing all of it,” he growls softly, his sheer size overwhelming me as he slams me back against the solid wood of the door, pinning me with the massive, unyielding weight of his body.
“Tonight.” “No… You wouldn’t—” “I warned you never to even entertain the thought of running from me, piccola,” he whispers, the sharp ridge of a fang scraping lightly against my flesh as he speaks.
“But it seems you prefer things rough.
Cruel.” The calloused pad of his thumb slides over my trembling, parted lips, tracing them with a slow, agonizing possession.
“Fine,” his low voice vibrates against my throat, rich with a terrifying satisfaction.
“I prefer it that way, too.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS opiumwitch Welcome to the “Cruel” series.
If you are here, then you are probably already familiar with the “Mark of Sin”.
I must warn you, then––this novel will be slow and full of white-hot pain.
Because…
when we go for cruel boyfriends, we do expect heartbreak, right?