Chapter 4

Adelaide POV:

Alonzo sat by the bed, dabbing Cinnamon' s forehead with a silk handkerchief, his expression a mask of pure adoration and concern. Cinnamon, who looked perfectly fine aside from a tiny, theatrical scratch on his cheek, was milking the situation for all it was worth.

"Lonzo, my head still hurts," he whimpered, his voice trembling pitifully. "And I'm so hungry. The smoke... it made my throat all dry. I want... I want some of Adelaide's honey-glazed pastries. Only she knows how to make them just right."

Alonzo's gaze finally fell on me, crumpled on the floor. There was no concern in his eyes. No shock. No pity. Just cold, hard impatience, as if I were a misbehaving pet that had tracked mud into the house.

He looked from my broken, twisted leg to my pale face, and his voice was a whip crack in the silent room.

"You heard him. Get up and go make them."

I stared at him, the words not registering at first. My head was spinning from the concussion, my body was a symphony of agony. He couldn't be serious.

"What?" I whispered, my voice hoarse.

"Are you deaf?" Alonzo snapped, his patience gone. "Cinnamon wants your pastries. Go to the kitchen and make them. Now."

The sheer, unadulterated cruelty of the command finally broke through my pain-induced haze. It was a dam breaking. Five years of swallowed tears, of silent screams, of biting my tongue until it bled, all came rushing out in a torrent of anguish.

"Are you insane?" I shrieked, the sound tearing from my raw throat. "I'm bleeding! My leg is broken! Your men dragged me out of an operating room! And you want me to... to bake pastries for him?"

The rage and despair made me reckless. I didn't care about the consequences anymore.

"How can you do this to me, Alonzo? How can you be so cruel? I was your wife! For five years, I was your wife! I loved you, I respected you, I gave you everything I had, and you treated me like I was nothing! And for what? For him? A spoiled, manipulative child who you let walk all over you?"

My words hung in the air, echoing with years of pain.

Alonzo didn't flinch. His face remained an unreadable mask of stone.

Cinnamon, however, looked annoyed. "Lonzo, she's so loud. She's making my headache worse."

Instantly, Alonzo's attention shifted back to his lover. "I know, my love, I'm sorry," he soothed, his voice dripping with tenderness. He shot me a look of pure venom. "You're upsetting him."

He stood up and walked over to me, looming like a thundercloud. He looked down at me, his eyes devoid of any human warmth.

"So, is that a no?" he asked, his voice dangerously soft. "You refuse to do as you're told?"

I looked up into the face of the man I had once loved, and I saw a stranger. A monster. The last vestiges of my shattered heart turned to dust. There was nothing left inside me but a vast, cold emptiness.

"Yes," I whispered, the fight draining out of me, replaced by a profound, soul-deep weariness. "I refuse."

Alonzo's lips curved into a smile that held no humor. It was the smile of a predator.

"Very well," he said calmly. He turned to his bodyguards. "Take her to the cold storage in the hospital's kitchen. Let her cool off until she changes her mind."

My blood turned to ice. The hospital's cold storage was a massive, walk-in freezer kept at sub-zero temperatures. For a person in my condition, with shock and blood loss, it was a death sentence.

"No!" I screamed, scrambling backward on the floor, the movement sending daggers of pain through my body. "Alonzo, you can't!"

The bodyguards seized me again, their grips like iron. I fought, I kicked with my good leg, I screamed until my voice was raw, but it was useless. They were machines, programmed to obey their master.

They dragged me through the pristine white corridors, past horrified nurses who were too intimidated to intervene, and into the cavernous hospital kitchen. They wrenched open the heavy, insulated door of the cold storage unit and threw me inside.

The door slammed shut, plunging me into frigid darkness. The heavy thud of the bolt being thrown echoed like a coffin nail.

The cold was immediate and brutal. It seeped through my thin hospital gown, attacking my skin, my muscles, my bones. The metal brace on my leg felt like a block of burning ice. Every nerve ending screamed in protest. My teeth chattered so violently I thought they would break.

Time ceased to have meaning. There was only the cold, the dark, and the pain. I could feel my body shutting down, my consciousness fraying at the edges.

This is it, I thought. He's finally going to kill me.

My pride, my anger, my heartbreak-it all meant nothing in the face of death. A primal, desperate instinct to live surged through me.

I banged my good fist against the metal door until it was numb and raw. "Please!" I begged, my voice a pathetic, frozen croak. "Please, let me out! I'll do it! I'll make the pastries! Please!"

Silence.

Then, after what felt like an eternity, I heard the bolt slide back. The door opened, and the blinding light of the kitchen flooded in. One of the bodyguards looked down at me, my frost-covered form huddled on the floor, with an unreadable expression.

He hauled me to my feet. I collapsed against him, unable to stand. He half-carried, half-dragged me to a stainless-steel counter.

My body was a wreck. My hands shook so badly I could barely hold the flour sifter. My vision blurred in and out of focus. Blood from the gash on my head dripped onto the countertop, mingling with the spilled sugar.

Somehow, through sheer, desperate will, I made the pastries. My hands moved on autopilot, following a recipe I knew by heart, a recipe I had once made with love. Now, every movement was an act of profound self-hatred.

When they were finally done, golden brown and glistening with honey, the bodyguard took the tray from my trembling hands.

Alonzo appeared at the kitchen doorway. He didn't look at me. He glanced at the pastries, a flicker of satisfaction on his face.

"Good," he said, his voice flat. He turned to the bodyguard. "She's served her purpose. Take her to surgery."

They pushed me back onto a gurney. As they wheeled me away, back towards the operating room I had been stolen from, I saw Alonzo pick up one of the warm pastries and carry it back towards Cinnamon's room.

Lying on the gurney, the world spinning around me, a single, solitary tear escaped the corner of my eye and traced a cold path down my temple.

It wasn't a tear of sadness. Or anger. Or even pain.

It was a tear of finality. A final farewell to the foolish girl who had believed that love could conquer all.

He had won. He had broken me completely.

But as the anesthetic began to pull me under, a tiny, cold thought formed in the ruins of my mind.

You can't break something that's already dead.

My love for Alonzo Taylor was dead. And in its place, something new, something hard and unyielding, was beginning to grow.