Love as My Poison

The day after I married Thorne Blackwood, I took a briefcase full of his money to the hospital to see my brother.

Jude, his leg still mangled from the accident, slammed the cash against my chest, his face a mask of bitter disappointment.

Sloane, you actually did it. You married Thorne Blackwood. He's the man who destroyed us.

"Is this what it's all about?" he snarled, his voice cracking. "Do you think money can fix Dad's death? Mom's coma? My leg?"

For years, whenever he begged me to leave Thorne, I had only one answer for him: "Jude, I really love him."

But this time, I said nothing. I just knelt, gathered the scattered bills, and walked away without a word.

That night, Thorne was in high spirits. He pulled me close, his hand tracing my spine as he whispered, "What do you want, little bird? Name your reward."

I turned in his arms and said softly, "Freedom."

My brother's freedom.

Thornes large hand was still wandering over my skin.

He chuckled, a low rumble in his chest.

"I don't recall putting you in a cage. You've gone wherever you pleased for years, haven't you?"

I snuggled deeper into his embrace, my voice a carefully crafted purr.

"I was talking about Jude. Call off your men at the hospital. Please?"

"I'm your wife now. My brother hasn't caused any trouble for years. What are you still worried about?"

In the darkness of the bedroom, his features were a blur, but I could picture the faint, self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. The look of a man who owned the world and everyone in it.

His voice was a slow, deliberate drawl.

"Freeing your brother isn't so difficult, you know. If your mother were to pass away, he wouldn't have a reason to stay at the hospital, would he?"

My heart stopped. The blood drained from my face, a mercy that the darkness hid my terror.

I forced another playful note into my voice. "Thorne, you wouldn't want to see me sad, would you?"

He pulled me tighter against him, but his voice was laced with a cool warning.

"No, I wouldn't. Which is why we're never speaking of this again."

I closed my eyes, the scent of him filling my lungs, a wave of nausea churning in my stomach.

It took every ounce of my willpower not to be sick all over him.

My brother hated me for marrying our family's destroyer. But did he really think I had a choice?

Thorne Blackwood's influence was a cancer that had metastasized throughout Sterling City.

Years ago, my parents were top researchers in a lab owned by one of his subsidiary companies.

He treated them like lab rats, exposing them to a lethal experimental gas.

My father died on the spot.

My mother slipped into a coma, a shell of a person kept alive by machines.

Faced with the wreckage of our family, Thorne had simply stood there, one hand in his pocket, looking down on me and my brother as if we were insects.

"Bury the dead one," he'd ordered his men.

"And get the other one to a hospital. I want to know when she wakes up. That data is crucial to my research. There can be no mistakes."

Jude, his fists clenched, had lunged at him, screaming, "You monster! I'm calling the police!"

Thornes bodyguards swarmed him. Thorne didn't even flinch, just gave my brother a look of utter disdain.

"The police? You won't even be leaving the hospital."

At his signal, they snapped my brother's legs.

From that day on, Jude was under constant surveillance.

I was only thirteen at the time. Too young, Thorne thought, to be a threat.

His watch over me was lax. That changed when I was fifteen.

I jumped from a third-story window and ran, delirious with pain and purpose, straight for the nearest police station.

I didn't even make it two blocks before I ran straight into him.

His hand closed around my throat. With my free arm, I plunged the fruit knife I'd hidden in my sleeve into his wrist.

Blood bloomed, dark and sudden. His men descended on me. I was ready to die.

They twisted my arm until the bone snapped, but I held onto the knife, driving it deep into one of the bodyguard's ribs.

As the man screamed, Thorne finally gave me his full attention.

Our eyes met. My own were bloodshot, a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of my mouth.

Pinned to the ground, I glared at him with every ounce of hate I possessed.

Just as the world began to fade to black, he raised a hand.

His men backed off. He walked toward me, his steps measured and deliberate.

With a flick of his expensive shoe, he kicked the knife from my grasp.

His eyes held a flicker of something newa dark, analytical amusement.

"Vicious little thing," he murmured.

After that, he took me to his estate. He had my broken arm set and healed, and he made me a promise: as long as I behaved, he would provide for me.

In the three years that followed, I learned the true chasm between us.

Defy him, betray him, challenge himit always ended the same way: a beating and the cold, damp dark of the basement. I was only let out when I had learned my lesson.

So I spent the next two years earning his trust.

The price of that trust was my brother.

When Jude found out Thorne had taken me, he stormed the estate, a wild, desperate animal. He was beaten until he was spitting blood, but he still crawled toward me, grabbing my hand, begging me to leave with him.

My face was a mask of indifference. I pulled my hand from his grasp.

"I'm in love with Thorne," I said, the words like acid on my tongue.

The shock in my brother's eyes was a knife in my own heart.

But I got better at it. The more I broke his heart, the more convincing I became.

Eventually, I could look down on him with the same condescending air as Thorne himself.

"Just go, Jude," I sneered one day.

"I'm going to marry him. Mom's been in that bed for ten years. Who knows when she'll finally die? I have to look out for myself."

CRACK.

The force of his slap sent a ringing through my ears.

"Have you lost your mind? Have you no shame?" he roared, his eyes red-rimmed and filled with tears.

"Tell me the truth, Sloane! Is that monster forcing you to do this?"

And Thorne was standing right behind me, watching it all.

I calmly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and ordered the guards to throw my brother out.

It was that very day that Thorne told me he was going to marry me.

There was no engagement. No ceremony.

He tossed a diamond ring at me that probably cost less than his watch.

That was it. We were married.

Because that was all I deserved.

I often prayed to the heavens, to my dead father.

What am I supposed to do? What other way is there to save us, to save my brother?

But the answer was always the same. This body was my only weapon.

And it would only work as long as Thorne Blackwood was still interested in it.

Ring

The sudden shrill of Thorne's phone cut through my thoughts.

He answered it, and a sweet, feminine voice cooed from the other end.

A few minutes later, he was dressed and heading for the door.

The moment the front door clicked shut, a text message lit up my phone. It was from my brother.

Just one line.

[Sloane Hawthorne. As of today, we are no longer brother and sister.]

My brother could curse me, hate me, call me anything he wanted.

But for him to disown me... that was the one thing I couldn't bear.

I knew then that I had to accelerate my plan.

When Thorne left, he was usually gone until at least noon.

I waited until the house staff were taking their mid-morning break, then slipped into his study.

All the data from his illegal labs was on his computer. Even after all these years, there had to be a digital trail.

Id tried before, but the computer was protected by a three-tiered security system that would stump professionals.

So, for the past few months, I had been secretly teaching myself to code.

I bypassed the first two layers of security with relative ease.

The third was just a matter of time.

My hands trembled with a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

As I typed the final character of the bypass code, I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming in triumph.

The desktop flared to life. And from behind me, I heard a soft, derisive chuckle.

I spun around, my heart seizing in my chest, and looked straight into Thorne Blackwood's ice-cold eyes.

He was leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed.

His words were a death sentence.

"I trust you remember the basement, Sloane."

I hadn't been in the basement for five years.

Thrown back into the damp darkness, my arm broken again, I felt like I was suffocating.

My face and body were slick with blood. This time, Thorne had done the honors himself.

He stood over me, a baseball bat resting on his shoulder, his eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.

"I thought you were the smart one. It seems ten years wasn't enough to teach you your place."

"Sloane, I was actually going to let it all go. Why couldn't you just behave?"

My mouth was full of blood. I spat a pink-tinged gob onto the concrete floor, sticking to my one and only story.

"I was bored. I just wanted to play a game."

Thorne sneered. "That's a pathetic excuse. Do you really expect me to believe that?"

I cradled my shattered arm, my voice flat.

"You walk out on your new wife to see another woman. Can't I have a little fun of my own? Or is there something on that computer you don't want people to see?"

He ran his tongue over the inside of his cheek, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

To my shock, he admitted it. "Of course there is. It contains a complete record of your mother's biometric data for the past decade."

He crouched down, his voice a low, mocking whisper.

"I know what you want, Sloane. But you're being naive. Even if you got that evidence, it would be useless in this city."

He was right. He had his hands in everything, legal and illegal.

His public image as a philanthropist was impeccable.

Without concrete, irrefutable proof, I could never touch him.

I gritted my teeth. "I want your love, Thorne."

His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, the same flash of surprise he'd shown the day I stabbed his wrist.

"I want your absolute, undivided love," I pressed on, my voice gaining strength.

"I don't care if my mother lives or dies. But you... you have to love me."

He moved closer. "So that's what this is about. That phone call."

He tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze.

"Don't worry. You'll never see that woman in Sterling City again."

His voice was a soft, dangerous caress.

"This is the Sloane I know. Vicious. I like it. But you still tried to hack my computer, and I can't just let that go."

"So here's what we'll do. I'll give you one more chance. Go to your brother. Make things right."

...

At the hospital, I found Jude slumped on a bench in the hallway, his head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed.

He was only three years older than me, but he looked like a man in his late thirties.

Ten years of this hell had eroded the strong, vibrant young man he'd been, leaving this exhausted, broken shell.

My fingers curled into a fist. I walked over and sat down beside him.

He opened his eyes at the sound, and when he saw it was me, he recoiled as if he'd been burned.

He scrambled to his feet, limping a few steps away, putting distance between us.

"What are you doing here? I thought we were done."

The hospital was crawling with Thorne's men.

I looked at him, my gaze deep and unwavering, but my voice was cold enough to freeze water.

"Jude Hawthorne, a text message has no legal standing."

"I have the papers here. A declaration of severance. Once you sign it, you and your mother will be nothing to me."

His mouth fell open, his eyes filled with a fresh wave of shock and despair.

He knew a text wasn't legally binding. He'd sent it as a last-ditch effort, a final plea for me to come to my senses. He never thought I would take it this far.

I fought back the lump in my throat and pulled the documents and a pen from my bag.

"Sign it. After this, we're strangers. What I do will no longer be your concern."

He clenched his jaw, his eyes boring into me.

"Sloane, I'm asking you one last time. Are you really in love with him? Have you forgotten what he did to our parents? Have you forgotten my leg?"

The words wouldn't come. I had spoken so many cruel, decisive words to him over the years. But this time, my throat was closed.

He stepped forward and grabbed my hand, his eyes shining with unshed tears.

"Sloane, this is your last chance. Leave him. Come back to me. We'll find a way to get justice. As long as we're together, we can survive this! Do you want Dad to be unable to rest in peace?"

A sharp pain shot through my nose, and I almost broke down.

A last chance. Everyone was giving me a last chance. But what was I supposed to do?

If I went back to Jude, everything I had worked for, everything I had endured, would be for nothing. All my pain, all my humiliation, would be meaningless.

If I stayed with Thorne, it was just more of the same, a slow, agonizing death of the soul.

After all these years, I was still no closer to getting the evidence I needed.

What if I never got it?

What if one day, my mother and brother couldn't hold on any longer?

What was I supposed to do?

As I stood there, paralyzed by indecision, Jude's grip on my hand tightened, his eyes pleading.

And from behind me came the slow, mocking sound of applause.

"What a touching scene. A pair of suffering siblings. How pathetic."

Jude's expression turned murderous.

He let go of me and limped toward Thorne.

Just as he was about to swing, I grabbed his arm.

"Jude, sign the papers!"

"You!" he choked, enraged. The punch that was meant for Thorne swung wide and connected with my face.

The world spun. I collapsed to the floor, the impact jarring my broken arm.

He stood over me, his entire body shaking with fury.

"How could I have a sister like you? Have you no shame? Why wasn't it you who died? Why aren't you the one lying in that bed?"

"Do you think Mom and Dad would be proud of you? Am I?"

Pain, sharp and white-hot, shot up my arm.

I couldn't meet his eyes. My voice was a trembling whisper, but I repeated the words. "Sign it!"

He looked at me, his face a mask of utter defeat.

He nodded, a single, jerky motion. He snatched the pen and scribbled his name on the line.

I let out a silent breath of relief.

I struggled to my feet, snatched the contract from his hand, and looped my arm through Thorne's, turning my back on my brother.

I could feel his gaze burning into my back all the way down the hall.

Back in the car, Thorne traced the swelling bruise on my cheek. His voice was laced with a triumphant smile.

"Now, Sloane," he said. "You have no one left but me."