Hateful obsession

Chapter 16

Hey...because of uni exams, I will able to post the next chapter only after 2 weeks.

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Melissa
"The weight of true."

I was sitting on my soft bed, staring at the white wall of my room, but it seemed like I could see a clear black dot. The silence in the room was almost unbearable, pressing down on me like the weight of all the decisions I had made, all the things I could no longer undo. The air smelled faintly of stale coffee, the remains of the cup I had thrown away hours ago. My mind had lost track of time. The days seemed to blur together since the night Daniel died, and it had been three days already.

Because of me.

The thought echoed in my head, relentlessly, mockingly. Daniel was the first person to die because of me. I mean, it wasn't because I killed him, it was because I was the reason Roman blew his brains out in the middle of a hotel room. Maybe he wanted more than just two digits from him, but I never thought a man like my husband would do something so irrational.

He was a womanizer, an idiot even, who abandoned his wife and children, but there was always something broken inside me that couldn't answer the question of why I thought about it so much. He was the type of man I always thought was disgusting. But not now. Not after everything. Not when I wasn't the one who killed him.

But it didn't matter who Daniel was or wasn't. Roman saw him as a threat. Roman, with his dark, burning eyes, his volatile anger and the implacable possessiveness that had once thrilled her, struck with the fury of a man on the edge. Daniel didn't stand a chance. Roman killed him without hesitation, with me sitting in his lap.

Because of me.

I closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the pillow, trying to breathe. The feeling of something new was gnawing at my insides, twisting my stomach, leaving an emptiness. Every time I thought about Daniel's lifeless body on the chair, my heart ached with the knowledge that I could never go back. I could never fix it. Or pull the trigger faster than Roman did.

Three days ago, I was still Charlotte, I thought bitterly. Three days ago, I was pretending to be someone else—someone who didn't feel pain, someone who could escape all of this. Someone good. Someone who even thought of Roman as Kane.

But Charlotte was gone. That carefully constructed facade fell apart the moment I saw Daniel's invisible blood on Roman's hands. No more running. No more pretending. It was only then that my brain realized that my old life had returned.

I was Melissa again. And that was a problem. Because everything inside my heart and soul was craving it. But my brain? It was screaming at me to stop, to not feel the pain of 10 months ago again.

For so long, Charlotte had been a shield, a mask I could wear to push people away, to numb myself from the past. Charlotte was the quiet, good girl, the girl who was just being married to her second husband. But it was all a lie. The truth was, Charlotte was too strong—just another way for Melissa to hide from herself.

Now, stripped of that identity, I was vulnerable. Vulnerable to everything she had tried so hard to bury: the guilt, the fear, the anger, the past. And to Roman.

Especially Roman.

A sharp hum broke the oppressive silence in the room, pulling me out of my spiraling thoughts. I glanced at my phone on the table, the screen glowing with a new message.

John.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw his name. I hadn't heard from John in what felt like forever since I'd shut the door on him because he was a coward and the worst husband for someone who hated boundaries. But I couldn't forget that he was part of my life before everything went to hell, before Melissa reappeared, when I still believed in normalcy. A time when peace, or something like it, seemed possible.