Chapter 291
Chapter 291:
The Enforcers hauled Marcus and Victoria to their feet. Victoria was wailing, begging for mercy, while Marcus remained silent, his eyes dead. As they were dragged out, the room felt instantly lighter, as if a toxic gas had been vented.
But one poison remained.
Braydon stood his ground, staring at Dallas with hatred before shifting his gaze to me. “Adella, please. You’re in shock. You need me. He doesn’t know you like I do. He’s a monster p>
I looked at the man I had once thought was my best friend. My savior. The only bright spot in a decade of darkness. Now I saw only the bars of a cage.
“Dallas is a King,” I said, my voice hollow and devoid of warmth. “You are just a jailer, Braydon. And your sentence is over p>
Braydon flinched as if I had slapped him.
“Your protection was a cage built on my parents’ graves,” I whispered, the finality of the words tasting like ash on my tongue. “Get out p>
Braydon opened his mouth to argue, but a low, earth-shaking growl ripped from Dallas’s chest. A warning. The next sound would be the snapping of bones.
𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘥 𝘗𝘋𝘍𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘯
Defeated, Braydon cast one last, desperate look at me before turning and walking out the door.
The silence that followed was deafening.
The adrenaline that had sustained me through the confrontation drained away in a rush, leaving me trembling violently. My teeth chattered. The reality of it all — the fire, the crash, the lies, the decade of sleeping under the roof of my executioners — crashed down on me like a collapsing wall. I couldn’t breathe. My chest heaved, but no air reached my lungs.
Dallas was there instantly. He didn’t say a word. He simply sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me into his chest. He was solid. Real. Warm. I buried my face in his shirt, inhaling the scent of rain and pine, trying to scrub the stench of betrayal from my senses.
I didn’t cry. I was past crying. I was shattering, piece by jagged piece, and he was the only thing holding me together.
Adella
The silence left in Braydon’s wake was not empty — it was heavy, pressing against my eardrums like deep water. The sterile white walls of the medical center seemed to pulse, closing in on me with every erratic beat of my heart.
Lies.
Every memory I had of the last ten years — every smile Braydon had given me, every time he had wiped away my tears, every meal we had shared — was rotting before my eyes. He hadn’t been saving me. He had been hoarding me.
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt like they were filled with concrete.
“Adella, breathe,” Dallas murmured against my ear, his voice a low rumble, though it sounded miles away.
“I can’t,” I choked out, my hands balling into fists against his chest. “It’s not real. None of it is real p>
Panic, sharp and jagged, clawed at my throat. I needed to feel something other than this suffocating betrayal. I needed to know that this — the man holding me, the heat radiating from him — wasn’t another illusion conjured by a manipulative Hyde.