Chapter 4 Luce Mia

Rafael’s POV

Adriana knelt in the middle of the room shivering. her once vibrant eyes were now hollow and distant. Her cheeks were streaked with dried tears but there was no emotion left in them. Nothing. She just stared unblinking as the strippers’ hands roamed over me with their touch meant to entice, to seduce and yet none of it mattered. Not to me. Not to her.

She was empty. A shell of the girl I once knew. The Adriana I remembered was always full of life and was always wearing that radiant smile., always laughing and always promising me things that never meant a damn thing. But now? Now, she was lifeless and cold, a ghost of the woman she used to be. And it wasn’t hard to guess why.

Being married to Marco Marcini did that to a person. I almost pitied her. And the key word here is fucking almost. Then I remembered everything like a scene that wouldn’t leave my head. It keeps replaying time and again.

I remembered how she had walked away from me without a second glance. How she had shattered me into pieces and left me to rot in the ruins of my own miseyr. I remembered waking up one morning to a text and the last words she would ever send me. She was telling me that she was marrying Marco and that she had chosen him and that I had never been part of her plan.

That she had never loved me at all. It all felt like a joke at that time. Maybe she was pranking me to see how I would react. The scholarship student she likes getting beneath the skin of. We were both scholarship students after all. We were in a world we didn’t really fit into.

The pain that followed was indescribable though. A blade twisting inside me, cutting deeper and deeper with every second that passed. I had wanted her to the point of insanity, had held onto her like she was the last sliver of light in my dark and miserable world. She was my last hope and the only person who had ever made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

And then she left so abruptly. For wealth. For luxury. For a life filled with designer dresses and diamond rings and expensive vacations. She had it all until now. Everything she had ever wanted. And I had been nothing more than a stepping stone. A joke.

It wasn’t just that she left, it was how she did it. The cowardice of it. No final conversation, no closure and not even a goddamn phone call. Just a text as if that was all I had ever been worth to her. And then when I tried to make sense of it all, the truth came crawling out of the shadows all ugly and cruel.

She had been cheating on me with Marco. From the beginning.

All those late nights, all those little white lies and all those times she swore she was busy, she was with Marco. And I had been too blind and too desperate to believe that she was different. That she wasn’t like the rest of them.

But she was. And that was why I didn’t feel a single ounce of guilt watching her now. She deserved this. She deserved to kneel there, broken, humiliated and stripped of the very thing she once valued most., control.

Because for six years I had suffered. I had clawed my way up from nothing, pushing through every obstacle while fighting tooth and nail to build a life she would regret walking away from. And she did regret it because I could see it in the way her fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, in the way her lips trembled ever so slightl and in the way she refused to look at me directly.

She was drowning in it. Good. Because I had drowned in it too.

I had spent nights staring at my leaking ceiling wondering how I had been so fucking stupid. I had spent years forcing myself to forget the way she used to touch me, the way she used to whisper my name like it was something sacred and the way she had once sworn that she would stand by my side no matter what.

They were all Lies. All of it.

And now, here she was kneeling before me in the same position I had once been in all powerless and afraid knowing that the person in front of her held her fate in their hands. I exhaled slowly, watching the way her chest rose and fell in shallow uneven breaths.

Did she realize yet? Did she realize that I wasn’t the same man she had left behind? That the poor and broken boy she had abandoned had long since died, replaced by something colder, crueler and far more dangerous?

Did she realize that I had spent every waking second of the last six years planning for this moment? That I had built my entire empire just to bring her to her knees? I leaned back in my seat, the leather cool against my skin with my fingers tapping against the armrest in slow motions.

I had waited so long for this. And now that it was finally here, I was going to make sure she felt every ounce of the pain she had caused me. No mercy. No forgiveness. Just revenge.

Adriana remained motionless on the floor with her body trembling and gaze vacant. But I wanted more. I wanted to see something break through that empty stare. Anything to prove that the woman I once knew was still in there buried beneath years of her carefully crafted and cold-blooded survival.

I leaned forward slightly, my elbows resting on my knees, my voice calm. “Tell me, Adriana. What was it like?”

Her eyes flickered but she didn’t answer me. I didn’t expect her to. I tilted my head, watching her closely, savoring the way her fingers clenched against the fabric of her skimpy dress.

“Did it feel good walking away from me? Did you ever miss me while you were fucking him?” My voice dropped.

A sharp inhale came from her and if I wasn’t watching carefully, I wouldn’t have seen it.That first crack in her armor. Adriana’s lips parted slightly her breath hitching but she didn’t speak.

“Answer me.”

For a second I thought she was going to fight me and that she was going to throw something sharp and venomous back in my face just to prove that I still couldn’t break her. But instead, her lashes fluttered and she let out a shaky exhale.

“Yes.”

The word was barely audible but I heard it. Loud and clear. Yes. Yes she missed me. Yes she thought about me while she was with him. Yes she knew she had made a mistake.

“Too late for regrets now, sweetheart.” A cruel smirk curled on my lips as I leaned back again.

I gestured lazily toward the strippers beside me. One of them the tall, blonde with a body carved to perfection leaned in, pressing her lips against my throat her hands sliding down my chest. The other traced a finger along my jaw her breath warm against my skin.

I could feel Adriana’s stare burning into me. Could feel the way her breathing grew heavier and more erratc as if she was trying to keep herself together trying not to break. But she was breaking. And I wanted her to know it. I tilted my head slightly, locking eyes with her again and my voice almost teasing.

“Do you want to watch Adriana?” My fingers slipped beneath the blonde’s chin pulling her in for a lingering kiss my gaze never leaving Adriana’s.

She flinched. I let the blonde moan into my mouth, let my hands roam her body just enough to drive the knife deeper before finally pulling away. Then, without breaking eye contact with Adriana I exhaled a long and satisfied breath and murmured.

“Maybe you should take notes.”

Silence. And then crash.

Adriana moved so fast I barely had time to register it. The glass vase from the coffee table (expensive, antiqeu worth more than most people’s lives) was now shattered on the floor with shards glinting under the dim light. And there she fucking is. My Adriana.

Not the broken and obedient woman kneeling on the ground. But the woman who still had fire in her veins. I stood up slowly the strippers scrambling away as the tension in the room thickened. Adriana was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling with her fists clenched so tight her knuckles had turned white.

She was glaring at me now.

“You are still a fucking poor bastard. You think you can break me?” She spat out her voice shaking with rage.

“Oh, Adriana…” I murmured mockingly while stepping closr and watching as she instinctively backed away only to hit the edge of the couch. “You have no idea what I can do to you.”

And then I was on her. I grabbed her chin forcing her to look up at me my grip just shy of painful. Her pulse was erratic beneath my fingers and her lips trembling slightly. I could kiss her. Right now. I could take her and ruin her and make her mine again in the most brutal unforgiving way possible.

But not yet. Because revenge tasted better when savored. So instead I smirked and loosened my grip just enough for my thumb to trace over her lower lip, and whispered. “You’ll regret meeting me again Luce Mia”

Then I released her and walked away. She’s mine again. But this time around, she was mine to ruin.