Chapter 1 – Glass Beneath Winter Lights
1281 Words
HEARTBREAK wasn’t supposed to feel like this—at least, not the way Lily Brook had always imagined it. People described it like drowning, slipping beneath cold water, quiet and suffocating. But as she stood outside the half‑closed door of Robert Hale’s penthouse bedroom, twenty days before Christmas Eve, she realized it felt more like fire. Wild, raging, unpredictable. Something tearing through everything she thought she knew.
It started with a sound. Low laughter—feminine, throaty, indulgent. Not hers.
Her fingers tightened around the chilled champagne bottle she’d stupidly picked up on her way over, its gold foil glinting under the twinkling garlands strung along the penthouse hall. Red and white Christmas lights reflected in the polished floor, casting festive warmth on a moment that felt anything but warm.
Lily pushed the door open.
And the truth hit her like shattered glass.
Robert Hale—her fiancé, her supposed future, her carefully chosen escape from the cursed Brook legacy—was sprawled across his sheets, a blonde woman straddling him. Her lipstick smeared across his mouth, his hand fisted in her hair like she was his favorite possession.
For a beat, he didn’t even stop. He only glanced at Lily and smirked. Like she’d caught him unwrapping an early Christmas present.
The champagne bottle slipped from her grasp and hit the floor with a c***k. Fizz hissed out, snaking across the marble like dying breath. Her pulse roared in her ears.
Lily Brook wasn’t supposed to rage.
Her family—her father, her brother Ronan—were the fighters, the brawlers, the ones with bloody knuckles. She was supposed to be the polished one. The refined Brook. The one who would be saved.
But something inside her snapped.
“Wow,” she said, her voice raw, slicing through the air. “Couldn’t even wait until after the wedding, Robert?”
The blonde squealed, clutching the sheets to her chest. Robert didn’t bother to look ashamed. He simply leaned back, utterly unfazed, Christmas lights from the street outside reflecting in his eyes.
“Lily,” he drawled, her name dripping from his mouth like a leash he thought he held. “Don’t be dramatic. You knew what this was.”
She laughed—a sharp, broken sound that didn’t fit the glittering wreath hanging behind her. “Oh, right. This was my escape plan. My life traded in for a ring so you could screw whoever you wanted?”
The blonde gasped. He silenced her with a snap of his fingers.
Lily didn’t hesitate. She yanked the engagement ring off her finger—the diamond he had paraded like it was her salvation—and hurled it at his chest. It hit him with enough force to leave a mark.
“Keep it. Or shove it. I don’t care,” she spat. “But don’t you ever think for a second you own me.”
For the first time, Robert’s charming mask cracked. Beneath it simmered something uglier, darker—like he was finally showing the cruelty he’d always kept hidden behind polished smiles and expensive suits.
“You’ll regret this,” he hissed. “Who else will have you, Lily? You’re a Brook. Cursed. I was doing you a favor.”
The words stung more than she wanted them to. Because there was truth buried in his cruelty. The Brooks were feared, avoided like a curse. A legacy soaked in violence and blood.
Her brother made sure of that.
But Lily lifted her chin, unwilling to flinch. “If being with you is a favor, I’d rather be damned.”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond.
Her heels cracked sharply against the marble as she stormed out. Her body shook—rage, heartbreak, adrenaline boiling together. Wreaths and garlands blurred around her. The penthouse lobby smelled faintly of pine and cinnamon, but none of it softened the sting in her chest.
When she shoved open the building’s front door, the December air slapped her across the face. Sharp, cold, winter‑clean. Her breath puffed out in white clouds. Christmas lights blinked along the street, and soft flakes of snow drifted from the sky, settling in her hair.
Only then did she realize she’d been crying.
Her heels clicked fast, too fast, carrying her down the slick sidewalks. The city throbbed with holiday music from distant storefronts, but Lily heard none of it. She felt larger than her skin, furious and raw.
For the first time in years, she didn’t feel fragile.
She felt dangerous.
She kept walking, not caring where she ended up. Anywhere except here. Anywhere except with him. The wind stung her tear‑raw cheeks, mixing with the metallic scent of the season. Somewhere far off, carolers were singing—but the sound only deepened the hollow inside her.
Then danger found her.
“Hey, sweetheart,” a man slurred.
Lily turned sharply. Two men staggered out of a shadowed alley, reeking of whiskey and stale smoke. Their gazes crawled over her like insects.
“Pretty girl out alone,” one sneered. “Bad idea.”
She tried to brush past them.
The other grabbed her wrist.
Her pulse spiked. Not again. Not tonight.
“I said—”
He never finished his sentence.
A low roar thundered down the street—the growl of a motorcycle engine tearing through the winter air. The ground trembled beneath Lily’s boots.
Then he appeared.
Jeremiah Veyne.
A ghost from her past. A man she hadn’t seen in years. The kind of man her mother prayed she would avoid, the kind of man her brother respected because he had bones tough enough to break others.
He swung the motorcycle to a sharp stop, leather jacket crackling with frost. Snowflakes clung to his dark hair, melting down his jaw. Tattoos curled across his throat. His eyes—stormy steel—locked on the man holding her.
“Let go,” Jeremiah growled.
The man didn’t move.
Jeremiah did.
What followed wasn’t a fight. It was destruction—swift, brutal, silent except for the crunch of bone and gasps of pain. He tore the first man away from her, fist slamming into his jaw with a c***k that echoed off frosted brick walls. The second swung wildly. Jeremiah dodged effortlessly, his boot driving into the guy’s ribs with a dull thud that sent him crashing into a pile of slush.
Snow fell harder, flakes drifting down like silent witnesses to the violence.
Lily couldn’t move. She watched, transfixed, as Jeremiah dispatched them with a level of precision that was terrifyingly beautiful. Violence soaked through every line of him—yet it wasn’t sloppy. It was controlled. Cold.
Magnetic.
Heat pooled low in her spine, shameful and intense. She hated how her body responded to him—how it always had.
When the last man fell wheezing into the snow‑coated ground, Jeremiah finally turned toward her.
Their eyes locked.
And Lily’s world stuttered.
Jeremiah’s chest rose and fell, breath fogging in the cold air. Snow dusted his shoulders. His knuckles were bloody. His gaze—dark, piercing—dragged over her, lingering, remembering.
“Lily,” he said, his voice low, rough, scraping across her like a match against stone.
Her name in his mouth was dangerous. Her name in his mouth was a claim.
The wind blew harder, rattling Christmas lights overhead. Somewhere down the street, bells chimed on a shop door. But all she heard was him.
It had been years since she last heard Jeremiah Veyne say her name.
And it sounded nothing like a curse.
It sounded like fate finally catching up.
- Writer
