Chapter 107

**Hadassah POV**

The skin around the fractures is swollen and bruised, a billowing blend of deep purples and reds. Every subtle movement sends sharp jolts of pain radiating up my arm. Once satisfied with the initial inspection, he reaches for a splint. The wooden piece is smooth and sturdy, designed to keep the wrist immobile. He places it along the underside of my wrist, ensuring it is aligned perfectly with the bones. His touch is light but sure, avoiding unnecessary pressure on the broken bones.
“You are a frequent visitor, more so than Mr Moon’s guardsmen.”
“Do you know how Ellis is doing?”
His eyes lift, something forbidding dims his eyes. “He will be off active duty for a long while. He’s retired to the makeshift barracks, if I may, for now.”
“Makeshift barracks?”
“The entirety of Torin’s security detail reside in the detachment adjacent to the main chateau,” he says, making occasional eye contact. “But no worries, Mrs Moon. the acid was tepid so, it will take time, but he will heal.”
“But the scars on his skin won’t.”
“No,” he agrees grimly. “That degree of acid burns has forever warped his flesh.”
Next, he selects long strips of bandages, beginning to wind them around my wrist with measured care. Each loop snug, holding the splint in place without adding undue stress to the fractures. As the final layer of bandages is secured, the physician gently checks the tightness, ensuring that the wrist is supported without being constricted. He looks up, his eyes meeting mine, offering a reassuring smile.
“You’re good to go.”
I mumble a thank you as I leave the room. Instead of going to the master suite, I choose one seven plus bedrooms available in the main house. Instincts tug me towards Calum, but that is a connection I sunder—not wanting either a tirade of concern or judgment. I can’t take any more of that, especially from him right now. So I wander down the ground level to the farthest bedroom with the same baroque beige bedroom. I amble to the queen sized canopy bed to carefully lift myself and recline on top, my mind splintered by horrifying images of Ellis, phantom echoes of pained, half-growling grunts, not even giving Torin the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
I want to sleep, to slip away into the sweet bliss of unconsciousness but untold terror clamps down on my awareness, holding it hostage, keeping all my senses bristle and my body hyper tensed with every nerve crackling with apprehension. I try to think about my mother to quell the dread blooming my gut but those thoughts veer off into the choices I made that separated us in the first place. I think about Calum and all I can see is that look in his eyes seared into my memory. Even if I get that happy ever after ending that I hope for, despite knowing its improbability. I can’t deny that there is a shift between Calum and I, a scar in our soul tie that has besmirched his perception of me like an unremovable stain on your favorite shirt.
An image of Ellis’s bubbling skin yanks my mind and sends both soul and spirit teetering over the edge. I swing myself over so I can sit on the verge of the bed. Debating on finding the nearest liquor assortment and drowning myself until I pass out. And that leads me to remember what happened to the last time I got drunk—someone else got hurt. Again. And again. Again. Again. Everyone and anyone, even those I hold most dear, became ensnared in the black hole that is my existence, endangering anyone who dares to venture too close.
“Am I interrupting?”
I spring up and spin around to see the siren-eyed woman I saw before. Someone I would brand as Torin’s classic type with her slicked back blonde bun with a face and body like a young Jessica Alba. She makes a slow approach, crossing her ankles with each step with a fierce but sexy walk of a Victoria's Secret model.
“If you need directions to Torin’s bedroom, it’s two levels up.”
She smiles brightly, almost blinding. “I’m not that type of girl, Hadassah.”
My eyes flick up, and the sound of my name almost makes my eyes mist. A small, nearly inconsequential reminder that I am still my own, my own identity, my own person—not a bargaining chip or an ornamental object of vengeance meant to empower the one and embitter the other.
“You called me by name,” I say thoughtlessly.
She looks almost surprised, with a curious tilt of her head. “Oh, do you prefer Mrs Moon?”
“Just when I was starting to like you.”
She frees an angelic giggle that’s met with my own amused smile.
“You are something… extraordinary,” she says with a strange sense of awe, like she doesn’t quite understand it herself. “The way you have the Moons enwrapped is beyond me. Especially Torin, I’ve never seen him do that to a man over a woman.”
I snort bitterly. “A charmer like him has likely been with many women.”
“None like you,” she states as a fact, as if she’s known me for years. “With the women he has been with before, he switched them out like his designer suits. With you, he’s enraptured, obsessively fixated. Tenets of his manhood shared with Orian, perhaps. They are more alike than he could ever care to confess.”
“And what do you know about it?”
She scrunches her nose up as if entertained by the bite in my tone. “Feisty, are we? I work for Torin. I have been overseeing his logistical operations since he planned to diverge from his brother.”
“And yet this is my first time seeing you?”
“Overseer,” she repeats with a duplicated attitude. “My role is like a shadow. I can work remotely, but Torin’s volatile description-making of late has forced me out of the shadows. I suppose I have you to thank for that? And I suppose it’s not your fault that you’re just so irresistible.”
My brows clench at that risque remark. “Is there a reason you’re introducing yourself to me?”
“Torin noticed you were absent from his quarters and sent me to find you. And talk to you, I suppose.”
“So he sent a woman to fight his battles?”
“How else will the war be won?”
I concede a humored smile.
“If you don’t come to him. He will come to you.”
My smile vanishes, and I shake my head sternly.
“I’d rather eat glass than see his face right now.”
“Talk about bad timing,” Torin announces before he reveals himself, clearly hiding in the short passage before he decides to emerge.
The woman glances back at him, then sends me a regretful look.
“Your name?” I ask her.
“Anna,” she says with a slight Eurocentric accent. “Annabelle, if you're feeling fancy.”
“No, but I’m feeling you.”
Shock slaps both of their faces simultaneously.
“Feel free to stay with me and we can have a… girl’s night.”
“Even though I would give up my left kidney to watch that,” Torin says, stifling a smirk. “I need to talk to you alone.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Tough,” he says, uncompromising. “Anna, leave us.”
She snaps her head and sends me a lingering look over her shoulder before she sashays away. Torin attempts an approach and I lift a halting hand with my wrist that is not broken. His eyes dart to my bandaged wrist, and he winces as he looks away momentarily.
“There is no apology I can fashion that will justify hurting you.”
“Then don’t make me hear them,” I say, impervious to the wordsmith’s witchery of words.
“I don’t regret what I did.”
I fling my gaze out of the window.
He steps closer to yank it back, and my eyes slice back into him.
“I’ve noticed it for a while now,” Torin admits. “Stolen glances, staring for moments too long in a way that transgress the boundary of what is appropriate, and of what is platonic.”
“He doesn’t know me,” I advocate with a raised voice. “I don’t even know his last name and you think what?”
“He’s been in the background, watching you for as long as I have. He knows more than you give him credit for.” He wipes his mouth with his hand with an agitated swipe. “It’s not just the way that he was looking at you. But the way you were looking back at him.”
“So from a transgression you imagined that you concocted from your brain,” I say, jabbing my index finger on my temple. “That justified burning him with acid!” My rage runs quick, reeling over the edge of madness. “If your goal in life is to one-up everything your brother does.” I pat my forearm since I can't use my hands—giving a mock and muffled applause. “Congratu—fuck you—lations!”
He shakes his head, his own rage igniting in his chest, sharpening every feature in his face as his glare alone nearly blisters my skin. He takes a menacing step forward and the unseen force of fear pushes me back and a scant measure of softness flickers across his face like I hurt him.
“Are you scared me of now?”
“I’d rather not have the other wrist broken.”
He grimaces like he’s unable to confront the reality of his own actions. “I would never hurt you.”
My jaw unscrews to plummet to my knees. “Says the man that broke my wrist!”
“That was different!” he barks back in a senseless surge of his wrath.
“That was a lesson, right? For not just him but for me too?” I yell back with aligned anger.
“You cried,” he blurts randomly. “The way he screamed for him, it was like I was torturing you—that’s why I even stopped. Why would you react like that if you don’t care about him?”
I mask that buried truth with wild outrage. “Are you kidding me? I would react like that even if you did that to a random guy you pulled off the street because he is a person! He is a human being, if you can’t fathom that—or any sense of empathy. You say you’re nothing like Orian, but you’re grown from the same foundation.”
“Stop bringing him back into the fucking conversation!” he booms like a crack of thunder against the dome of the sky.
“How else can I describe that demonic behavior!”
He tears away and starts pacing back and forth, wearing a hole into the floor beneath him.
“You can leave this room or I can fling myself off the nearest balcony because I’m sick of this!” I scream like a banshee going right to hell. “The sight of you actually disgusts me.”
He comes to a jarring stop and glares back at me with shocked outrage.
“What? Are you going to hit me?” I ask tauntingly as I flutter my four fingers at him in provocation. “Hit me. You’d be doing me a favor. Just make sure it’s a knockout.”
Reaching his limit, he whips around and storms out the bedroom, slamming the door closed with a band that sends a slight tremor through the bedroom.