CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST LIE
Enzo did not move.
For the first time in years, the room held a silence he could not control.
Harper stayed on the floor, curled around the torn front of her wedding dress, her bare shoulders shaking beneath the ruined lace.
“Don’t use the belt,” she whispered again.
The words entered Enzo like a knife.
Not because they were loud.
Because they were practiced.
Because she had said them like someone who had learned the sentence by surviving it.
Slowly, Enzo crouched several feet away from her.
“I’m not going to touch you.”
Harper did not believe him.
He saw that immediately.
Her eyes darted to his hands, then to the door, then to the broken pearl buttons scattered across the floor like tiny bones.
Enzo looked at her back again.
He wished he hadn’t.
Some scars were old.
Some were newer.
Some were hidden beneath fading makeup, carefully painted over so no one at the wedding would see.
His throat tightened.
“Did your father do this?”
Harper closed her eyes.
That was answer enough.
Enzo stood.
The movement made her flinch.
His jaw locked.
He walked to the wardrobe, pulled a black silk robe from inside, and tossed it gently onto the bed near her.
“Put that on.”
Harper stared at the robe as if it were a trap.
“I said I won’t touch you.”
Her fingers trembled as she reached for it.
Enzo turned his back.
He faced the moonlit window and forced himself to breathe.
Downstairs, the mansion was full of men who would kill on his word.
But none of them had warned him that the woman he married for revenge had already been buried alive by the same man he hated.
Behind him, fabric shifted.
A quiet voice broke the silence.
“He told me if I embarrassed him tonight, you would punish me worse than he ever did.”
Enzo’s hands curled into fists.
“He lied.”
Harper gave a broken laugh.
“My father always lies.”
Enzo turned slowly.
She was standing now, wrapped in the robe, pale and small in the enormous room.
But her eyes were different.
Still afraid.
But awake.
“What else did he lie about?” Enzo asked.
Harper hesitated.
Then she whispered the sentence that changed everything.
“My father didn’t order your brother killed because of debt.”
Enzo went still.
May you like
Harper swallowed.
“He ordered it because Nathan found me.”
