Heart of Stone - Stone and Fire #1 [17+] (REWRITING)

Chapter 4

"You know this for sure?" I blinked, trying to process it all.

"I don't think he'd lie, Adriana. Hugo's too deaf to know when I'm sneaking around."

My heart thumped a fast beat, but I forced my rigid shoulders down. Preying on the thought of bumping into Petrov, the look on my friend's face meant I'd gone pale with dread, once again.

Silence stretches into the room, Layla's hand the only source of comfort while horrific memories ransack through my head. His hands on my body. The sick feeling of blood-cold terror. Blood.

"Adriana?" She brushes a thumb across my cheek, cradling my jaw. "You're doing it again."

I try to laugh, but it ends up sounding like a half-cracked attempt at a cry. "Yeah, well he might do it again, too."

Panic flared, my hands shivered, but a certain rebellious part of me pushed it all down.

What the fuck was I doing? It had been a year.. a whole year.. and I was still hung up on this. No matter what- the tarnishes of my past wouldn't smear off, no matter what I did.

No matter how terrible the memories were, or how hard they hit me every night, it was simply a part of me now, whether I liked it or not. And I had to deal with it.

Get it fucking together. You're not an ice-princess who was gifted to cry snowflakes.

Hell, I haven't even cried since then. Petrov Vassiliev took his sweet time soaking them all up, using manipulation to turn my past-self into an object he used whenever he pleased. However he pleased.

I make the tingle between my eyes disappear, like always, and sit up straight. Just then, something tingles a bulb the back of my head.

An idea.

It's as if the vines were only broken and needed to be tied up together. It all joined, into one coherent plan, within the time-frame of one second. Something risky, but doable. Something that would end with me getting what I wanted, as well as Papa, Nikolas, and the whole goddamn world if they wished it. My point was.. I'd found a crack within this whole ordeal. One I had every quality, piece of evidence, and trait to glue back together. Hopefully, it would all end with no mess left behind.

My eyes shoot up to Layla, filled with a new-found spark.

"I hereby declare you, Layla Rodriguez, my Maid of Honor."

━━━━━━━━━ ༺♡༻ ━━━━━━━━━

Papa stared at me from across the desk, gaze frisked with doubt. He took a pen and continued filling out papers, but flickered suspicious eyes up to me every few seconds.

"What, you expected me to say no?" I made sure my voice carried the same Adriana forged-edge I used whenever something wasn't up to par according to me.

I sat, flat-faced, doing my best to seem at odds with the agreement. Like I had no choice but to agree. Which was the case, except for there being one slight advantage no one knew about other than me.

"Your my daughter. I can tell when you're doing something for your own benefit."

"Apparently, you don't know me enough to tell that I don't wanna sell myself to a Russian assassin capable of slitting my throat the moment I step into his house."

"He can't. If he did.." His pen levitated in mid-air of the paper, looking more like a dagger than a writing utensil. "It would mean full out war. I don't make promises I know the other side can't keep." Warning carries a harsh edge in his words.