Faking My Death With His Baby: The Billionaire Burned My Wedding

Sienna's POV

My wrist was already throbbing from the iron clamp of his fingers before we reached the landing. He dragged me up the stairs without looking back, the silence a pressure heavier than any shout. The master bedroom door swung open, and then my spine hit the wood with a dull crack that jarred my teeth.

Declan’s frame filled every inch of the doorway. Behind him the hallway lights bled a cold amber stripe across the carpet. He didn’t bother with the light switch. The darkness made him larger, a silhouette with shoulders that blotted out the rest of the world.

His hands slammed against the door on either side of my head. The vibration travelled through the wood into my skull. And then he dipped his head, nose skimming the curve of my neck, inhaling.

The scent of his own cologne still clung to his collar—sandalwood and something bitter. My stomach turned.

His breath slowed, deliberate, tasting the air above my pulse point.

Then he stopped.

The stillness was worse than the rage. His hands slid down the door an inch, and when he lifted his face, his grey eyes had gone flat and volcanic.

“Where is it?” The words were quiet. Terrifyingly so. “The rose perfume. The one I put on your dressing table.

The one I told you to wear.”

My throat sealed. The scent in question—a heavy, cloying rose, the kind elderly socialites dabbed on their wrists before charity galas—had sat on the ivory tray for three weeks untouched. I’d unscrewed the cap once and gagged. It smelled like a funeral parlour.

“I don’t like it,” I managed. “It’s too strong.”

His hand left the door and found my chin, thumb pressing into the soft depression beneath my lip, forcing my face upward. “You don’t like it.” He tested the words like a prosecutor. “Or you can’t stomach wearing something I chose? Something that marks you as mine?” His thumb dragged across my lower lip, rough and possessive. “Every day I come home to that pinched, miserable face. You can’t even manage a smile, Sienna.

Can’t manage a meal. Now you can’t manage a single spray of perfume. Tell me—” He leaned in, his forehead nearly touching mine. “—what exactly do you spend your energy on?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The familiar numbness was already creeping up from the base of my spine, a cold tide that swallowed sensation and left only a dull, distant awareness. His words reached me through layers of wool.

My eyes must have gone empty. Because something flickered behind his irises. A wound. A crack. Then it vanished into fury.

His hand slid from my chin into my hair, fisting at the nape. A sharp yank tilted my head back, baring my throat. His mouth descended. Not a kiss yet—just the threat of one, hovering a breath from my lips, his exhale hot and jagged. The scent of bourbon and fury hit my senses.

I closed my eyes.

Not in surrender. In retreat. I let my arms fall to my sides, the muscles in my shoulders unclenching until my body hung limp against the door like a marionette with severed strings. I didn’t push. I didn’t turn my head. I didn’t even cry. I simply stopped being there.

My breathing shallowed until my chest barely moved. Behind my closed lids, I pictured the burnisher they’d taken. The cool weight of it in my palm. The way the handle had worn smooth in five specific places where my fingers rested. I clung to that image and made myself nothing.

A full five seconds passed.

The heat of him retreated.

I felt it before I heard it—the rush of air as he pulled back, the sudden absence of his body heat, the tight inhale that whistled through his teeth. When I opened my eyes, he was staring at me like I’d struck him.

Then his fist hit the door beside my ear.

The crack of knuckle on solid oak split the silence like a gunshot. The wood shuddered in its frame. A splinter of pain must have shot up his arm because I saw the split skin on his index finger bloom crimson almost instantly, but he didn’t flinch. His bloody hand stayed planted on the door, rivulets of red threading down the varnished grain.

“You think my touch makes you sick.” His voice shook now, the iron control stripping away in layers. “You’d rather stand here like a corpse than let me near you. What is this, Sienna? Martyrdom?” He dragged his bleeding hand down the door and the smear was obscene. “Is that the game? You’ll give me nothing while

Caleb got everything?”

Caleb’s name landed like a blade between my ribs.

“Did you smile for him?” Declan’s chest heaved. The wounded-animal sound in his throat made my stomach clench. “Did you light up like a goddamn sunrise when he touched you? When you were sprawled on a surgical table, legs spread, losing his child—was that the highlight of your year? Did you smile through the pain for him?”

The word “child” detonated.

Something behind my sternum snapped—a bone, a wire, the last fragile structure holding up the crumbling facade. The numbness shattered. Heat flooded back in, scalding and violent. My eyes flew open and tears scorched tracks down my cheeks, but it wasn’t grief. It was fury. Pure, incinerating, world-ending fury.

I straightened against the door. My voice came out as a scream I didn’t recognize.

“Yes! Is that what you want to hear? Yes! You make me sick! I would have had his child. I would have carried it and loved it and built an entire future around it. You—” A sob wrenched through the words, but I didn’t stop. “—you will never get that from me. Lock me in this house, bury my tools, starve me of light—you will never have my heart. Not one chamber of it. It’s his. It’s always been his!”

The air shattered.

His arm swung. I saw it as a blur—a wide, uncontrolled arc, not a deliberate strike but a reflex, a man lashing out to stop words that were flaying him alive. His hand, the back of it, caught my cheekbone with a crack that was wet and sharp and final.

The slap was deafening.

My head snapped sideways. Pain detonated across the left side of my face, a hot, spreading bloom that stole my breath. My ear rang. The floor came up fast. I hit the carpet on my hip and palm, the impact jarring through my wrist, and then I was on the ground, hair spilling over my face like a curtain.

The room went absolutely silent.

I stayed there, breathing in shallow, ragged pulls. My cheek throbbed. The skin felt tight and searing, already swelling. I could taste blood, a thin copper thread where my teeth had cut the inside of my mouth. Above the ringing, I heard Declan’s breath—a rough, broken sound, like a man waking from a nightmare.

His hand hung in the air, trembling. The split knuckles dripped onto the carpet.

He looked at his hand. Then at me.

His face went grey. The rage drained out of him and left something hollow and horrified. His lips parted. A sound formed in his throat that might have been my name, distorted into something unrecognisable.

I didn’t give him the chance.

My legs pushed me up before my mind caught up. One palm pressed to the burning imprint on my cheek, the other braced against the doorframe. I swayed, but I stood. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. If I saw regret on his face, I’d break. If I saw nothing, I’d shatter completely.

His hand reached for my elbow. “Sienna—”

I jerked back. The motion was violent, reflexive. My hip knocked against the doorframe. I found the hallway beyond it and I ran.

My bare feet slapped against the hardwood of the upper corridor. The stairs came too fast, my sockless soles sliding on the polished wood, and I careened down them, one hand trailing the banister for balance. The grand foyer opened beneath me, a cavern of marble and shadow.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back.

His footsteps didn’t follow. The silence that poured down the stairs behind me was absolute. He was still standing in that doorway, I knew, staring at his own hand, at the space where my body had been. I didn’t care.

The front door glowed at the far end of the foyer. Cold night air was already seeping through the gap beneath it.