***ADRIAN'S POV***
I closed the door behind me, unravelling with the weight of what I had just seen.
It couldn't be Lance. Hell no.
He was the enemy I'd always stayed away from. The tattoo I saw better be a mistake.
I walked towards the table by the side of my bed, picking up my mobile phone which I had dropped there.
Lost in my haze, I dropped the drug in my hand on the table as I picked up the phone.
"Find all tattoo shop owners in Ravenshore and find out who got a snake tattoo. From two days ago to ten… No, twenty years back."
I typed it out and sent it to my assistant.
I had contemplated leaving the period at ten years back, but I recalled that the man I had felt on top of me that night was too muscular.
Perhaps i was too lean for a twenty-one-year-old, or maybe there were others my age who were more muscular and broad than I am. But I didn't want to put all my eggs in that one basket, hoping to find the other man from that night.
That was the only way I might find an answer. Landon was out of the question.
Images of Lance leaving my room crept into my skull again, threatening to consume me.
The head of the snake I'd seen on his back, through the torn seams of his shirt. His broad and muscular shoulders.
And worse—he was within the time frame I had given for those who got their tattoos.
"Shitttt," I muttered, spitting on myself for allowing such thoughts.
Shaking my head as if that would snap me out of my trance, I overheard a noise at my door.
Without thinking, I reached for the drug on the table and threw it under my bed, hoping that whoever it was barging into my room wouldn't notice.
"What is it, Lance? Haven't I warned you to stop barging into my room without knocking?" I charged at the door, eyes fixated on it as I hoped Lance—or whoever it was—wouldn't notice my fidgeting.
"Father?…" I corrected, surprised to see my father at my door.
I'd thought it was Lance who came back to the room and had been worried about his reasons for returning.
Seeing that it was my father, a part of my mind calmed down. It wasn't Lance and neither had he returned to question me on the drug… like I'd thought.
But another part of me was anxious. Especially with the bitter scowl on his face.
Whatever it was that brought him here, it wasn't good.
"Where is your bride?" His steel voice cut through the pin-drop silence in the room.
"She went home. She'll move in to live with us tomorrow," I managed to reply, my voice barely above a whisper.
Why was he asking? Lizabeth had said she needed to go home to pack her belongings. The marriage had been so fast that she didn't have time to. She would move in tomorrow for all I cared.
And besides, we were already married. Wasn't that all that mattered to him?
*SMACK*
I got hit right across my face.
Clutching my reddened cheek, I glanced ahead at my father who just struck me, looking for an explanation.
What had I done? I went through with the wedding. I smiled for the paparazzi and I'd stayed away from problems at the ceremony—what had I done against his wishes now that led to this?
However, instead of a reason I had expected him to provide as the cause of his outburst, I heard nothing.
He walked further into the room and bolted the door behind him, towering towards me next.
I knew what was coming. What those locked doors meant.
Even if I were to leave it unbolted, no one would come to my aid.
Not my uncle, Marius. Not his adopted son, Lance. And definitely not the soul of my late mother, like I always prayed to the moon goddess to grant when I was younger.
Before I could do anything, I felt my hair being pulled.
"What have I done, Father?…" I dared to question as I got dragged by the hair to the bathroom.
"Father?" Darius shouted on top of his voice as he pushed me into the bathtub.
"I'm ashamed I got such a disgrace to call me father!" he sneered, striking me again before I could say another thing.
He switched on the water, including the water heater, allowing the hot water to fall freely on me, scalding my skin.
I didn't scream but held it in. My head was dipped in and out of the water pooling in the bathtub.
"Why haven't you secured the merger with Power Corporations?! Why are you so incompetent? Did you see the smug look on Marius's face when he was mocking me with your incompetence?" he snapped over and over.
"I'm trying, Father. I'm trying," I managed to say before he dipped my head into the hot water again.
"Trying? I don't need a son that just tries!" he thundered as he pulled my head out of the tub.
"I want a son worthy of my blood flowing in his veins! But you? You've always been a disappointment! It's always one bad news or another about you! I'm so tired of your wretched stars!"
My eyes had begun to sting now. Tears pricked at the sides, threatening to fall.
Why did the moon goddess send me to this family? To this man? As this Alpha's son?
Of all people, of all families.
But I didn't let the tears fall. I was supposed to be the next Alpha, and with Alpha blood flowing in my veins.
Weakness was not something to be associated with me.
Perhaps if he had gotten Lance as a son instead of me, the infallible and competent son he always wanted might have been fulfilled through him. Unlike me—the failure.
Thinking about it only increased the malice I kept hidden deep in my heart for Lance.
With a few more dippings of my head into the water and some smacks, my father was finally done.
I fell into the tub with a thud, barely able to maintain my gaze at the door as I watched him leaving the bathroom.
The tears finally fell as I watched him leave.
"Why me?" I muttered, unable to move out of the water or even switch off the heater.
"Why not someone else?" I muttered again, in between sobs.