The Taste Of Revenge (War of Sins Book 1)

Noelle

I continue stare at the closed door of the attic. My body won't stop shaking, my breath coming in short spurts as I try to find a modicum of control over my trembling limbs.

Am I to never have a moment of peace?

My hand shoots out as I grab the edge of the piano bench to stabilize myself, my knees wobbly.

'Dear God, what just happened?' I whisper to myself, my eyes fixed on the door he'd just closed.

I blink back tears as I try to get myself under control, but my body doesn't seem to want to obey me. Not when so many feelings are mixed inside of me—so many contradicting feelings that leave me reeling.

From the moment he'd cornered me in the warehouse, I haven't known a moment of peace, his accusations ringing loud and clear in my head, his proximity both a blessing and a curse.

While my own memory was failing me, there were some snippets—images—that told me his words were not untrue.

For God's sake, but could it actually be true? Did I have something to do with Lucero's death? With everyone's deaths? The past is too blurry for me to attempt to answer that question. But what I do remember from before the fire makes me doubt my own self.

Raf isn't wrong.

He's far from wrong.

I may not remember him specifically, but I know how I'd had to act to please Sergio and his sick cronies. I'd buried my own self deep inside of me and I'd put on a show for everyone to see that I wasn't some weak, meek girl. That I was the mistress of the house, worthy of her husband's cruelty and infamy.

And those moments in time had torn at my humanity.

The hacienda had been hell on earth for many people, its vast terrain south of the U.S. border making it the perfect spot to develop new, experimental drugs to push on the market. But there's never just the manufacturing stage—there's also the testing one.

And from what I'd gathered from Raf...he must have been one of the test subjects.

A sob catches in my throat at the thought.

Memories of skinny bodies draped in rags, of people who weren't people anymore assault me. And worst of all? I'd treated them as the dregs of society too, because it would have never been fitting of the mistress to show any inkling of emotion or empathy—that would have been perceived as weakness.

Raf's claim that I had thrown a plate at his head? Likely true, since it had not been the first time I'd done that. And yet... Knowing everything I'd done back then, I still can't bring myself to believe I would have harmed Lucero.

She'd been my friend, my confidante. The only one who'd made that place more bearable.

Could I have been so ruthless as to show no mercy even to my only friend?

Because if that's the case... Then I deserve his hate. I deserve his contempt. And I deserve so, so much more.

I breathe in and out as images flash before my eyes, seeing myself at the hacienda making my skin crawl at the stranger I'd been.

It's not often that I think back, or more specifically, I don't want to think back.

That past is filled with so much pain, I fear I'd drown if I were to let myself go. It's also the reason why I don't want to remember the rest. Because if what I do know now is bad...

I shake myself, clutching the material of my torn dress to my chest. Coldness seeps into my skin as my thoughts stray to Rafaelo. The man with the golden beauty who'd made me forget myself for a moment—before everything had come crashing down.