To Love You Was to Hate You

Lilith's POV

On my birthday, Sebastian Crowe sliced off my father’s hand right in front of me.

When my father’s men chopped one of Sebastian’s legs in retaliation, he just lifted his head and smiled with blood shining in the moonlight.

“Go on. Kill me," he challenged. "If you leave me alive, and you lay a hand on her again, I’ll cut off your legs next! Try me!”

From that day forward, my stepfather never touched me again.

Sebastian always claimed women shouldn’t have blood on them, so he took the knife from my hands. With a cold, precise motion, he cut down the men who mouthed a claim to our family fortune.

People said Mr. Crowe was soaked in blood because he wanted to keep his wife clean.

But I knew better.

I had seen the truth hidden in his thousand-page journals, crammed line after line with another woman’s name.

A woman he described as pure and flawless, like some saint.

When I tossed my wedding ring at his feet, it was as if he woke from a dream.

He picked up those journals and set them on fire, smiling through a sadness he couldn’t hide.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There's no chance between me and her anymore.”

But I insistently slid the divorce papers across the table and countered, “There is.”

Still smiling, he tore the papers in half. “You and I alone will be together in life and together in death.”

——

And so, he burned the divorce papers, too.

On our wedding day, we vowed to be together forever. Even laid in our coffins, he said, they would be pried open just enough so we could look at each other.

After the divorce agreement burned completely, he walked away, stepping on the ashes of the paper on the floor.

The next time I saw him was on the news, later that night.

It was raining hard, and the sky was as black as ink. On the steps stood a fair girl in a white dress, eyes rimmed with tears.

The moment she saw the camera, Sebastian pulled her into his arms, lowering his umbrella, so only his chin was visible.

As such, the camera just caught her trembling legs hooked around his arm, her small frame hidden against him.

He never allowed his face to be photographed, let alone hers, because he knew I would dig.

Even with just that fleeting moment, I froze the image, captured it, and handed it to my men.

But nothing came of it, not a single match across global databases.

The closest lead we found was a student photo from Alpine Heights University. But her face there was hidden behind a thick black bar.

Obviously, Sebastian was protecting her.

When I tried to watch the broadcast again, it had been scrubbed from the internet. Every trace of it was erased from the internet.

All I had left was that one screenshot of that girl with watery eyes, staring in fear at the lens, shrinking like a fawn into Sebastian’s chest, his veins standing out as he gripped her.

There had only been two times in his life when he held a woman like that.

The first was when my mother and uncles were slaughtered and their bodies dumped into the river. I had dragged them out one by one, my hands raw, my body trembling in bloodied water. And on the riverbank, that boy held me the same way over and over, trying to warm me with his body, crying and begging me not to close my eyes.

The second was in front of the cameras, shielding that girl from me.

When he came home, I slid her photo across the marble table until it stopped in front of him. Then I sat across from him, staring out the window, blowing a ring of smoke.

“There will be no future for me and her,” he said, tucking the picture away.

I only asked one question. “Those thousand pages of journals, when were they written? Who is she?”

“You wouldn't want to know.” His voice was flat, unreadable.

The moonlight spilled across the marble surface, but it couldn’t touch our faces.

All we could hear was the soft scrape of the divorce papers sliding toward him and the click of a bullet chambering.

I flicked my lighter, and the flame caught the tip of my cigarette, briefly lighting my face.