Rhythm Of Deceit

Special Chapter : The Beginning of It All

Rio's POV

I had always believed that love was something that was supposed to come naturally—something that just happened when two people were meant to be. But looking back, I realized it wasn’t that simple. Love wasn’t always a fairy tale. Sometimes it was messy. Sometimes it was complicated.

And with Aniya… it was always complicated.

I first met Aniya when we were kids, way before the drama, before the rivalry, before the lies. She had this innocence about her, the kind you couldn’t fake, and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. We were both young, but I could tell from the very first time we talked that she had something special, something that the world would never be able to take away. She was pure. She was kind. And even then, I knew she was destined for something great.

It wasn’t until we were older, though, that I really started to notice her in a different way. There was a shift, something that neither of us could explain. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it—everyone did. She’d grown into herself, blossomed into the woman she was always meant to be, and I—well, I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready for how I’d start to feel about her.

She caught my attention the way a melody catches your ear—softly at first, then gradually growing louder, until it was all I could hear, all I could think about. I wasn’t prepared for how much it would hurt, the ache in my chest when she would smile at me, and I realized I was falling for her. The more I tried to ignore it, the deeper I fell. It became impossible to separate myself from her.

But I wasn’t just falling in love with Aniya. I was falling in love with the idea of who she was, the vision I had of her. And that was where things got twisted. The longer I harbored these feelings, the more possessive I became. The more I convinced myself that I *deserved* her, that I needed her to feel whole.

She didn’t know it, of course. Not at first.

I used to watch her from a distance, when she didn’t think anyone was paying attention. When she laughed with her friends, when she talked about her dreams. Her eyes would light up, and for a brief moment, I could imagine a future with her.

But the more I watched, the more I realized that she wasn’t looking at me the way I wanted her to. No, she looked at him. Adler. Always Adler.

It didn’t take long for that jealousy to take root. Not just the harmless kind you feel when you see someone with the person you care about, but the kind that eats you up from the inside out. The kind that makes you think irrational thoughts, makes you act without thinking. It became a poison I couldn’t control.

Adler, with his perfect smile and his easygoing charm. He was everything I wasn’t, and it ate me alive to see Aniya drawn to him. He was her friend, her protector, but he wasn’t the one who saw her the way I did. He didn’t understand her the way I did. He didn’t see her like I had, since we were kids.

And that’s where everything started to go wrong.

I knew I couldn’t keep living like this. I couldn’t just watch Adler take what was mine. I had to have her, and I would do whatever it took to make her see me the way I saw her.

That was when I made the decision. I wasn’t going to wait any longer. I would fight for her. But the fight didn’t come in the way I thought it would. It didn’t come with patience or understanding. It came with manipulation, with controlling the narrative, with twisting everything around us into something I could control.

I never meant for it to get this out of hand. I never meant for her to feel trapped, for things to get so complicated. But once you’re in the middle of something like this, it’s hard to find your way out. Every word I spoke to her, every gesture, every move, became part of this tangled web I couldn’t untangle.

I thought I was showing her how much I loved her, but I was just smothering her. I wasn’t giving her the space to breathe, to think for herself. I was so desperate to make her love me back that I forgot what it meant to love her for who she truly was.

I tried to make her choose me—tried to make her see the world through my eyes—but in the end, it was never about choice. It was about control.

And in that control, I lost everything.

Aniya never belonged to me. She was never mine to claim, no matter how much I wanted it. The truth hit me when I saw her with Adler. When I saw the way she looked at him—the warmth in her eyes, the ease in her smile—it was clear to me that no amount of manipulation, no amount of control, could change what was real. What was meant to be.

She had chosen him.

And I had lost.

But in the deepest part of my heart, I knew the truth: she had always been free. She had never needed to choose between us. She had always chosen herself.

The person who couldn’t let go wasn’t Aniya—it was me.

I stood there, watching them from afar, as they walked away together, hand in hand. The ache in my chest was sharper than anything I’d ever felt before, but in that pain, I realized something I should’ve known all along. I never truly loved her the way she deserved. I loved her in a way that was selfish, possessive.

I couldn’t expect her to love me back under those conditions.

And as I watched her walk away, I knew this was the end. Not just for her and me, but for the version of me who thought love was something you could control. I had learned the hard way that love wasn’t a game. It wasn’t something you could manipulate or force.

Love was freedom.

And I had failed to give her that.

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End of Special Chapter

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