Arabella D'Angelo is just a shell of a girl, a mere presence floating through the halls of her Los Angeles home. Her once bright grey eyes and sunshine-like spirit was crushed by the weight of her abusive parents.
Living in a constant state of fear...
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The sky looked like an ocean of obsidian ink, waves of darkness swallowing the morning light.
Bruised shades of charcoal and iron sprawled endlessly above the vast estate, thick clouds coiling into one another as though conspiring to tear the heavens apart. Thunder rolled across the horizon in low, violent roars, each crack reverberating through the structure of the mansion.
The wind howled like a restless beast, whipping through the tall palm trees that bordered the perimeter of the garden. Sharp and relentless rain followed soon after, as it lashed against the glass like a thousand accusations.
Fitting, I thought.
Perfectly fucking fitting.
I sat motionless in the armchair behind my desk, my towering silhouette carved into the dimness of my study. The room was steeped in shadows, the only illumination coming from the intermittent flashes of lightning that tore through the sky, briefly revealing the world in unforgiving silver of light before plunging it back into darkness.
My gaze remained fixated outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of my study, watching as rivulets of rain slid down the glass like tears the sky could no longer contain.
The crystal tumbler in my hand felt unnaturally cold and heavy.
I lifted it to my lips without thinking, tilting my head back as the last remnants of the golden whiskey burned it's way down my throat. The bitterness lingered, sharp and unwelcoming, clawing at my senses. My jaw tightened instinctively, muscles locking as I forced the unpleasant liquid down.
I had never quite fancied drinking.
Never saw the appeal in surrendering control to something so trivial.
Alcohol dulled the mind, blurred judgment and loosened restraint; everything I had spent my entire life ensuring that none of those things ever applied to me. In my world, control was not a luxury. It was survival.
I knew I could not survive by losing control. Not when I had been stripped of it for most of my childhood. Not when every decision, every action and every breath I took had once been dictated by a man who believed pain was the only way to forge strength.
I had been molded into this.
Into him.
A man who commanded an entire empire built on bloodshed and war.
A man whose name carried weight across continents, whispered in both fear and reverence.
A man who could dismantle lives with a single command and sleep just fine afterward.
That was who I was.
A monster.
My fingers tightened around the empty glass. The silence in the study was suffocating despite the storm raging outside. It pressed against my ears, against my skull, amplifying the relentless pounding of the migraine clawing through my head.
