CHAPTER 149: BROKEN (II)

ALEXIA – POV

The hallway was quiet.

Too quiet.

The kind of quiet that makes you hear your own breathing, your own thoughts, your own breaking.

I didn’t take much. Just a small bag. Some cash from the drawer. The tattered dress I’d worn the first day I arrived. No shoes.

Maybe I wanted the gravel to hurt. Maybe I needed it to.

My hands trembled as I pulled the front door open. The sun had started rising, casting pale gold fingers over the cliffs beyond the villa. It should’ve looked beautiful. But all I could think about was how far I’d have to walk before it stopped hurting.

Aiden wasn’t in his room.

Or the kitchen.

He was probably passed out somewhere, sleeping off the bottle.

Good.

I didn’t want him to see me like this.

I stepped outside, the bag slung over one shoulder, and made it five feet down the path before my knees buckled.

I sank.

Not gracefully. Not dramatically.

Just folded.

Like someone pulled the plug on whatever was keeping me upright.

My arms wrapped around myself. Not for warmth.

For containment.

Because something inside me had cracked wide open, and I didn’t know how to put it back.

I didn’t cry loudly.

There were no sobs.

Only a quiet, rhythmic shaking. Like my body remembered things I had tried to forget.

The burn on my belly ached.

The taste of metal water clung to my tongue.

I stared at the stone pathway through blurry eyes and whispered to no one, "I’m tired."

Tired of pretending.

Tired of surviving.

Tired of karma dragging me back through every sin I ever committed, like maybe if it punished me hard enough, I’d finally be clean.

Footsteps crunched behind me.

I didn’t look up.

I didn’t have to.

His shadow fell over mine, tall and shaken and unsure.

"Alexia?" Aiden’s voice was hoarse. Barely awake. Already afraid.

I didn’t answer.

I just sat there.

Like a broken doll someone left behind.

He knelt in front of me, his hands hovering like he didn’t know where to touch without making things worse.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

A strange laugh slipped from me. It was hollow. Dry. "Not in the way that matters."

His jaw clenched. "What does that mean?"

I finally looked up at him.

My voice cracked.

"My mother used to burn me with cigars when I said I was hungry."

Silence.

Not disbelief.

Just stillness.

Like his body had forgotten how to move.

"She made me drink vodka when I asked for water. Told me it would fill me up faster. I passed out on the floor most nights, dreaming of bread. And when I said I wanted to go to school so I could be like the other girls, she laughed in my face and said no one would ever want to look at someone like me."

Aiden’s eyes were wide, but not from shock.

From recognition.

Like he’d always known there was more beneath my cruelty, my composure.

"I didn’t become a monster overnight," I whispered. "It took years. Years of begging, bleeding, starving. And then one day, I stopped feeling anything at all. Power was the only thing that made the pain quiet."

My hands fisted in the thin fabric of my skirt.

"But it never lasted. It never fucking lasted."

Aiden reached for me.

I flinched.

Not because I thought he’d hurt me.

But because I didn’t know if I deserved comfort.

Still, he didn’t pull away.

He just sat there with me, on the ground, like maybe if he stayed long enough, the pieces would stop falling apart.

"I wanted to leave before you could hate me more," I said quietly. "Before I hated myself more."

His voice was barely audible.

"You think I don’t already hate myself?"

That made me look at him.

Really look.

And I saw it—the grief, the regret, the storm he wore like skin.

And I realized...

We were both tired.

Both broken.

Both still bleeding from wounds no one else could see.

So I leaned into him, forehead pressed to his chest, and whispered the one thing I hadn’t said since I was a child.

"I don’t want to be alone anymore."

And for the first time...

He didn’t pull away.

"I’m sorry," I whispered, and then louder—shaking, unraveling—"I’m sorry."

I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. Him. The universe. The ghosts of everything I’d done.

"I’m sorry for all I did to you... in my past life," I choked out, breath catching in my throat. "I’m sorry you... I’m giving up before you’re satisfied with your payback, but I can’t—" My voice cracked, then shattered. "I can’t do it. You win. You’ve finally broken me."

I was sobbing now. Not pretty, movie-scene tears. These were ugly. Violent. My chest heaved like it was trying to force everything out of me—every scream I’d swallowed, every plea I never said loud enough, every cruel word I used like armor because I didn’t know any other way to survive.

"I tried to be strong," I whispered, nails digging into my own arms. "I tried to take it. I thought I could take anything. But I’m so tired, Aiden. I’m tired."

He said nothing.

Not at first.

Just knelt there in front of me while I broke like glass at his feet.

"I know I hurt you," I said, squeezing my eyes shut. "I know. And maybe I deserved some of it. But this—" I gestured to myself, to the silence, the blood on the inside of my mind, "—this isn’t revenge anymore. This is something else. Something darker. And I—I don’t know how to come back from it."

My voice dropped, trembling like a flame about to go out.

"I used to dream of dying," I admitted. "As a kid. Not because I wanted to disappear, but because I thought maybe I’d wake up somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere clean. Somewhere I wasn’t... cursed."

I looked at him then, through my tears, my shame, my bone-deep exhaustion.

"You think this is karma? Maybe it is. Maybe everything that’s happened between us was meant to happen. But Aiden..." My lips trembled. "I don’t have anything left. You’ve taken the last of me."

He reached for me again. Slowly. Gently.

And this time, I didn’t flinch.

I let his hand touch mine. Cold to warm.

"I never wanted to win like this," he whispered hoarsely.

But I couldn’t stop crying.

Because I knew.

He already had.