To ruin an Omega - Chapter 418: Daylight

Chapter 418: Daylight

PAULINE

The silence was shattered the moment I spoke.

“Yes.”

The word left my mouth before I could reconsider it, small and sharp, cutting through the thick air between us.

Marcus went completely still.

I watched something shift in his expression, something dark and terrible settling into the lines of his face. He had expected me to deny it. To twist and manipulate my way out of this, the way I always had.

But there was no way out.

Not this time.

“I was responsible for Athena disappearing,” I continued, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. “You know exactly why I did it.”

His jaw clenched.

“Say it.”

“She was going to take everything from me.” My voice shook despite my efforts to steady it. “My position. My influence. Everything I had worked for. I could not allow that to happen.”

“So you sold her.”

The accusation hung between us, brutal and unforgiving.

I felt tears prick at the corners of my eyes, hot and unwelcome. I hated the weakness of them, hated that they came now when I needed to be strong.

“If anything,” I said, my voice breaking, “it is your fault.”

The tears spilled over, trailing down my cheeks in hot streams that I could not stop.

“You made me do this. You and your wandering eyes and your complete inability to keep your hands to yourself. You created this situation.”

Marcus stared at me with nothing but cold apathy.

No sympathy. No understanding. Nothing.

“What about the Luna of Skollrend?” he asked, his voice flat. “How does she fit into any of this?”

“I do not know.” I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, smearing dirt across my cheek. “I do not know.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It is common sense!” I snapped. “If that girl were Athena, she would be our age right now. Not some young thing walking around as Luna of Skollrend. The timeline does not make any sense.”

He reached for the contract on his desk, holding it up between us.

“This contract implies you did something with her,” he said slowly. “I know you sold her. But to what? For what?”

My throat closed.

“Pauline.”

The sound of my actual name in his mouth sent a chill down my spine.

“What did you do?”

I swallowed hard, tasting bile.

“I sold her to be a sex slave.”

The room exploded into motion.

Marcus moved so fast I barely had time to register it. One moment, he stood not too far from his desk, the next, he was on me, his hand raised, his face twisted with rage so pure it stole the breath from my lungs.

I flinched back, my hands coming up instinctively to shield my face.

He stopped at the last second. Literally.

His hand froze in the air, trembling with the effort of restraint, his breathing harsh and ragged.

“Would you hit me, Dimitri?” I asked, my voice dripping with venom despite the fear coursing through me. “Would you really? It is what you practically made her after all. A sex slave for your pleasure.”

“Her family defected from this pack because of what you did.”

“I would not have had to make a move if you were not the way you were!” I shouted, the words tearing out of me. “If you kept it in your pants. If you showed even the slightest bit of restraint.”

I took a shuddering breath.

“You think I enjoy it?” I continued, my voice raw. “Hurting and breaking these women to show an example to the others? Ensuring no one dreams too big? You think that brings me pleasure?”

“If this marriage does not serve you anymore,” Marcus said quietly, lowering his hand, “you are allowed to leave it.”

“I chose this union!” The tears came harder now, hot and angry. “I fought for it. I sacrificed everything for it. My family. My freedom. My dignity. No one will touch my hard work. Not in a million years.”

He stepped back, putting distance between us.

“I want to meet Athena,” he said. “Give me the name of who you sold her to.”

My mind raced, searching desperately for a way out.

“I am afraid that will not be possible.”

“Why not?”

“Athena is dead.”

It was the truth. But it was covered in a big fat lie, and that lie felt heavy on my tongue, but I forced it out anyway.

Marcus went very still. Then he laughed.

It was not a sound of amusement. It was dark and humorless, scraping against the walls of the study like something broken.

“Dead,” he repeated. “How convenient.”

“It is the truth.”

“The name, Pauline.”

I hesitated, my thoughts spinning. I could not give him the real name. Could not let him trace the threads back to what I had truly done, to the people I had truly involved.

“Give me the name of who you sold her to.”

“I am thinking—”

“Thinking of a lie?”

I straightened my shoulders, meeting his gaze head-on.

“No,” I said clearly. “I am thinking because I just cannot tell you that information.”

The slap came so fast I did not see it coming.

Pain exploded across my cheek, sharp and immediate, sending my head snapping to the side. Heat bloomed under my skin, spreading like wildfire across my face.

I laughed.

The sound bubbled up from somewhere deep inside me, wild and unhinged.

“This is exactly why I had to take the girl down,” I said, turning back to face him. “She was different from the rest. Your obsession knew no bounds. I am not sorry I did it. I am glad I moved quickly.”

I took a step toward him.

“She would have gotten everything.”

“She would have been a mistress,” Marcus said through gritted teeth. “Nothing more.”

“We both know that is a damn lie!”

I could see it in his eyes. The truth he refused to speak.

He would have given Athena everything. The position. The power. The love.

Everything I had clawed and fought for would have been handed to her on a silver platter simply because she smiled the right way, because she made him feel something I never could.

“Now you know,” I said, my voice hollow. “Our already rocky marriage hits more rocks. Are we done here?”

I turned toward the door.

His hand closed around my wrist like a vice, yanking me back.

“Not quite.”

I tried to pull away, but his grip only tightened.

“Let me go.”

“I did not miss your lies,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “If you cannot be honest, I will force my way down your memories.”

Ice flooded my veins.

“Let me go. Let me go!”

I thrashed against him, panic rising in my chest like a living thing, clawing at my throat.

Marcus turned to the sentinel still standing in the doorway.

“Throw her in a cell,” he ordered. “Get me a good delicate. I will know what I need to know today.”

“No!”

The sentinel moved forward, his hands closing around my arms with professional efficiency.

“No, you cannot do this!”

I kicked and struggled, my nails scraping uselessly against his uniform as he hauled me toward the door.

“Marcus, please! Dimitri, please!”

He did not look at me.

He simply turned back to his desk, his shoulders rigid, his hands bracing against the surface as though holding himself upright.

“Dimitri!”

The name tore from my throat, desperate and raw.

Still, he did not turn.

The sentinel dragged me into the corridor, my feet sliding against the polished stone as I fought against his grip. The other sentinel fell into step beside us, their faces blank and impassive.

“You are making a mistake!” I screamed, my voice echoing off the walls. “This will destroy everything!”

They did not respond.

The walk to the cells felt both endless and far too short. Each step brought me closer to something I could not escape, something I had feared from the moment I made my first terrible choice.

Memory extraction.

They would dig through my mind like vultures picking at a corpse, pulling out every secret I had buried, every truth I had twisted beyond recognition.

And they would find it.

The sentinel opened the heavy iron door at the end of the corridor, revealing the narrow stone steps leading down into darkness.

“Please,” I whispered, the fight draining out of me. “Please do not do this.”

He said nothing.

They carried me down the steps, my body limp now, all the resistance bled from my limbs. The air grew colder with each descending step, damp and thick with the smell of mold and old stone.

The cell door screeched open on rusted hinges.

They tossed me inside.

I hit the ground hard, my hands scraping against rough stone, pain shooting through my palms and knees.

The door slammed shut behind me.

The lock turned with a heavy, final click.

I stayed there on the floor, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps, my whole body trembling.

Then the tears came.

Not the soft tears. Not the kind meant to manipulate or soften.

These were ugly, wrenching sobs that tore through me like a physical force. I pressed my hands to my face, feeling the dirt and blood smear across my skin as I cried.

I knew what came next.

They would send the delicate. They would strap me down and force their way into my memories, peeling back layer after layer until they found what they were looking for.

And when they did, when Marcus learned the full truth of what I had done and why, there would be no coming back from it.

No amount of manipulation or charm would save me.

I had built my entire life on carefully constructed lies, on secrets buried so deep I sometimes forgot they existed.

But now they would all come spilling out into the light, raw and ugly and undeniable.

I curled into myself on the cold stone floor, my shoulders shaking with the force of my sobs.

Everything I had worked for, everything I had sacrificed and destroyed and twisted myself into knots to protect, was about to crumble to dust.

And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Aldric was a monster for this.