Lahat ng Kabanata ng Shattered Vows: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

CHAPTER 21 – BLOOD AND LEGACYThe hospital air always felt cold. Sterile. Too clean. Too quiet in ways that made the skin itch. I sat in the corner of the waiting room, my elbows on my knees, fingers laced together so tightly I could feel my pulse throbbing against my palms.Althea was still with her mother. She’d barely spoken to me since the call earlier — and I hated how easily I’d felt her slipping away from me.Not physically.Emotionally.Quietly.Piece by piece.I had felt her withdrawal the way an addict feels the lack of a drug sharp, unexpected, destabilizing.I thought space would help.I thought time would fix whatever had shifted between us.And then…The letter.The damn letter.I still didn’t understand what Darius meant by it or why Althea had hidden it so carefully. But seeing her handwriting on the envelope, seeing his name on it, seeing her guilt…It had carved a paranoia into my bones.My throat tightened. I leaned back, staring at the ceiling as if answers were h

CHAPTER 23 – THE SILENT PACTDarius’s POVI’ve spent my entire life trying not to become him.Lucas Aurelius.People call him a patriarch, a visionary, a titan—the kind of man whose footsteps echo long after he leaves the room. But to me, to Damian, he’s always been something else.A warning.A presence you survive by reading, anticipating, obeying just enough to avoid becoming the next casualty of his ambition.And now he’s back.Which means everything is about to rot from the inside.I walk down the hall after leaving Althea, but my body doesn’t follow my mind. My thoughts stay behind—with her. With the tremble in her voice. The way she tried to act composed when she was anything but. The way she lied to me with her eyes when she said she was fine.She’s not fine.And worse—my father knows she’s not. And Lucas never sees people in pain without wondering how he can use it.By the

CHAPTER 25 — THE FAMILY DINNERAlthea’s POVI never realized how loud silence could be.The Vega dining room was a cathedral of expensive quiet — marble floors swallowing footsteps, crystal chandeliers suspended like judgment overhead, and one long table stretching forever, covered in immaculate white linen. It was the kind of space built for power, not comfort, and tonight that power felt like a hand around my throat.I was seated near the end, a polite distance from Damian, yet close enough to see the tension in his jaw. His suit jacket was still on, his tie still knotted, as if he came here straight from a battlefield and forgot to take his armor off. He hadn’t looked at me since we arrived.Across the table, Darius sat quietly, posture relaxed, but there was a warning in his eyes — a steady kind of alertness. He was studying the room, reading every breath, every glance. He always did that. He noticed everything.And at the head of the table, like a king staring down at his kingdom

CHAPTER 27 – Whispers in the Dark(Darius Pov)I didn’t sleep.When I got home after walking Althea back to her room, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, hearing one sound on repeat — the tiny broken inhale she made when she finally stopped crying. That sound dug under my skin and lodged itself there, refusing to let go.I kept replaying everything:Her fingers gripping my shirt.Her forehead against my shoulder.The way her voice cracked when she whispered, “I can’t keep doing this.”And then —Celine.The click of her heels in the hallway.The glint in her eyes when she saw us standing too close.The slow smile she tried to hide but didn’t.That was not a woman surprised.That was a woman taking notes.By morning, everything in the house felt different — quieter, charged, fragile in a way nothing should be. Father was still asleep after draining half a bott

CHAPTER 29 – THE ULTIMATUMAlthea’s POVI didn’t sleep that night.The marriage certificate sat on my kitchen table like a bomb with no ticking sound — silent but deadly, waiting for one careless breath to detonate everything.I tried eating. Couldn’t.Tried showering. Shaking too much.Tried convincing myself this was some cruel prank Samantha staged to make me break.But the truth sat right in front of me, signed and stamped. I stared at it until the words blurred.Damian Navarro&Althea Cruz-NavarroLegal Union — City Clerk’s OfficeI traced my name with a trembling finger.Samantha didn’t just find evidence.She found ownership.Morning came like punishment. Outside my window, the city looked alive and careless, unaware that my life was crashing spectacularly.At 8:35 a.m., my phone buzzed.Samantha:Room 502