My Heart, His Cruelty

The phone buzzed frantically during my board meeting. It was my mother, her voice a shredded mess, whispering, "He's here. At the university. He's making us..." before the line went dead.

"He" was Gustav Bradford, the man I loved, the man who was destroying me.

I raced to Westwood University to find my parents on their knees, humiliated, with Gustav standing over them, beautiful and terrifying, beside his therapist, Estelle Strong.

Estelle, his new everything, whispered lies about my parents disrespecting them, while my father, a man who debated world leaders, bowed his head in shame. My mother sobled silently as a drone live-streamed their humiliation.

When I confronted him, Gustav, with a chilling smile, ordered his guard to break my father's leg.

A sickening crack echoed, followed by my father's agonizing scream. Then, my mother's. They both lay broken. The love I had for Gustav shattered, replaced by a cold, vast emptiness.

"I will kill you," I whispered, the words tasting like poison. He just smiled, kissed my cheek, and left, telling me he'd be home for dinner.

That night, my parents, in a desperate act to free me, took their own lives.

My scream was soundless. I called Amit, my friend, for the drug that would make me look dead.

I had to die to live, and I had to live to see Gustav Bradford burn.

Chapter 1

The phone buzzed against the polished wood of the conference table. I ignored it. Gustav hated interruptions during my board meetings. He said it made me look weak.

It buzzed again. And again. A frantic, desperate rhythm.

Something was wrong.

I excused myself, my voice tight. "I need to take this."

I stepped into the hallway, my heart pounding a sick beat against my ribs. It was my mother. I answered, my breath held tight in my chest.

"Janey," she sobbed, her voice a shredded mess. "He's here. At the university. He's making us..."

The line went dead.

I didn't need to hear the rest. He. There was only one he who had the power to make my mother, a tenured professor, sound so broken. Gustav Bradford. The man I loved. The man who was destroying me.

I ran. I left my laptop, my notes, my company. I ran out of the building and into the street, flagging a cab with a wild wave of my arm.

"Westwood University! As fast as you can!"

The driver took one look at my face and floored it.

The campus quad was crowded. Too crowded. Students and faculty were gathered in a wide, silent circle, their phones held up like a thousand accusing eyes. In the center of that circle, on the cold stone ground, were my parents.

On their knees.

Gustav stood over them, a king surveying his conquered. He was beautiful, as always, in a tailored suit that probably cost more than my first car. But his face was a mask of cold fury. Beside him, clinging to his arm, was Estelle Strong. His therapist. His new everything.

She was whispering something to him, her face a perfect portrait of concern, but her eyes, when they flickered toward the crowd, held a glint of triumph.

My father, a man who had debated world leaders, had his head bowed. My mother's shoulders shook with silent sobs. A live-stream drone whirred above them, broadcasting their humiliation to the world.

"Gustav!" My voice ripped from my throat.

He turned, and a slow smile spread across his perfect lips. It didn't reach his eyes. His eyes were for me, and they were full of a terrible, possessive love that felt like hate.

"Janey, darling," he said, his voice smooth as silk, carrying across the silent quad. "You're just in time. Your parents were just apologizing."

"Apologizing for what?" I choked out, pushing my way through the wall of bodies.

"For their disrespect," Estelle said, her voice soft and wounded. "They said terrible things about me, Gustav. About us."

She was lying. My parents had confronted him about his control, his paranoia, about the bruises he'd left on my arms that I tried to hide with long sleeves. They had tried to protect me.

"They came to my office," Gustav continued, his gaze never leaving mine. "They accused me of hurting you. Can you imagine? Me, hurting the woman I adore more than life itself?"

He gestured to Estelle. "They insulted Estelle. My healer. The one person who has helped me manage the... intensity of my feelings for you."

"They're lying, Janey," Estelle whispered, burying her face in his shoulder. "I would never want to cause a problem between you and your family."

"You lying bitch," I snarled, my last shred of composure snapping.

Gustav's face darkened. "Apologize to her, Janey."

I stared at him, my mind reeling. The man who once wrote me poetry, who flew to another continent just to bring me a specific brand of tea when I was sick, was gone. This was a monster.

"No."

"No?" He laughed, a short, ugly sound. He turned to one of the two large men standing behind him. "Break his leg."

"Gustav, no!" I screamed.

But it was too late. The man moved with brutal efficiency. He kicked the back of my father's knee. A sickening crack echoed in the silence. My father screamed, a raw, agonized sound that would haunt me forever, and collapsed onto the stone.

"Now, ask me again, Janey," Gustav said, his voice dangerously calm. "Nicely."

Tears streamed down my face. I looked at my father, writhing on the ground. I looked at my mother, her face ashen with terror.

"Please," I begged, my voice a hoarse whisper. "Please, Gustav. Stop. I'll do anything."

"Anything?" he purred. He knelt, grabbing a fistful of my mother's hair and forcing her head up. "Then you will kneel with them. And you will beg Estelle for her forgiveness."

My mother looked at me, her eyes pleading. Not for herself. For me. Run, her eyes said. Save yourself.

I saw it then. The final sacrifice. They would endure anything to see me free. But I couldn't leave them. I couldn't.

I took a step forward, ready to fall to my knees, ready to say whatever he wanted.

But my father, through the haze of his pain, spoke. "Don't you dare, Janey. Don't you dare let him win."

He tried to push himself up, his face contorted in agony and defiance.

Gustav sighed, a sound of theatrical disappointment. "Such a shame." He nodded to the other guard. "The other one, too."

Another crack. Another scream, this time from my mother. They both lay broken on the ground.

Something inside me shattered. The love I had for him, the hope that I could fix him, all of it turned to ash and blew away. All that was left was a cold, vast emptiness.

"I will kill you," I whispered, the words tasting like poison and promise.

Gustav smiled, a true, radiant smile this time. "I know, my love. That's why this is so much fun."

He leaned down and kissed my cheek, his lips cold against my tear-stained skin. "I'll be home for dinner. Don't be late."

He turned and walked away, Estelle still attached to his arm, the two of them disappearing into the stunned crowd like royalty departing a stage. The drone whirred one last time and then zipped away.

The spell was broken. People rushed forward. I fell to my knees between my parents, the world a blur of pain and flashing lights from the campus emergency services.

My mother grabbed my hand, her grip surprisingly strong. "He framed us, Janey," she rasped, her breath shallow. "He planted files. Corporate espionage. Everything will be seized."

"It doesn't matter," I sobbed. "I'll get you out. I'll fix this."

"No," my father said, his voice weak but firm. "There's no fixing this. There is only one way out. For us. For you."

Before I could understand, before I could stop them, they acted. In the chaos of the arriving paramedics, my father grabbed a dropped syringe from a medical kit. My mother pulled a small, deadly vial from her own pocket-a chemistry professor always had access. It was a pact. A final, desperate act to free me from a debt they believed I would feel forever.

They were gone in seconds, together, even in death.

The world went white. My scream was soundless, a hole ripped in the fabric of the universe.

That night, hiding in the sterile silence of a hotel room, I made a call.

"Amit," I whispered into the phone, my voice raw. "I need it. The drug you told me about. The one that makes you look dead."

There was a pause on the other end. "Janey, what happened?"

"He killed them, Amit. Gustav killed my parents."

Another silence, longer this time. Then, his voice, low and full of a cold, shared hatred. "I'll have it for you by morning."

I hung up and curled into a ball on the bed. I took the small pill bottle from my purse. It was from Amit. A single, white tablet. Hope in a tiny, bitter package. I swallowed it with a glass of water, the first step in a plan born of grief and rage.

I had to die to live. And I had to live to see Gustav Bradford burn.

I walked back into Gustav's penthouse a day later. It felt like walking into my own tomb. The air was thick with the scent of lilies, his favorite, and the silence was heavy, oppressive. He was punishing me with it.

He sat in his favorite armchair, a glass of dark liquor in his hand, staring out at the city lights. He didn't turn when I entered.

"You were gone for twenty-six hours," he said, his voice flat. "I was worried."

"My parents are dead, Gustav."

"A tragic accident," he said, still not looking at me. "They were under a lot of stress."

I felt a surge of rage so pure it made me dizzy. I wanted to scream, to claw his eyes out. But I remembered Amit's words. Be smart, Janey. He expects you to be emotional. Be cold. Be nothing.

I walked past him and into the bedroom. Our bedroom. The whole place was a museum of our relationship. A monument to his obsession.

On the wall was a massive, floor-to-ceiling photograph of me, taken on our first anniversary. I was laughing, my head thrown back, a genuine, unguarded smile on my face. I didn't recognize that woman anymore.

I remembered when he took it. We were in a villa in Italy he'd rented for a month. He' d woken me up at dawn, pulling me out onto a balcony that overlooked the sea. He told me I was the most beautiful thing he' d ever seen, more beautiful than the sunrise.

I had believed him.

I had met Gustav at a tech conference. He was the keynote speaker, a venture capitalist with a reputation for being a kingmaker. He was charismatic, brilliant, and intense. He pursued me relentlessly. He saw something in me, he said. A fire that matched his own.

It was intoxicating. For the first year, I was deliriously happy. He supported my work, challenged my ideas, and loved me with a ferocity that felt like the center of the universe.

The first red flag was subtle. A comment about a male colleague I'd had lunch with. "You don't need to waste your time with mediocrities like him, Janey. You have me."

Then he started "helping" me with my work, making suggestions that slowly isolated me from my own team. He bought out a majority share in my company, a move he framed as a romantic gesture. "Now we're true partners," he'd said.

I learned about his family later. The Bradfords were old money, and they had a history. A pattern of obsessive, all-consuming loves that often ended in tragedy. His grandfather had kept his wife a virtual prisoner in their mansion. Gustav had spoken of it with a strange sort of pride. "That's how a Bradford man loves," he'd said. "Completely."

The control escalated. He checked my phone, my emails. He installed tracking software on my car and my laptop. He chose my clothes. He alienated my friends one by one, subtly turning me against them until I had no one left but him.

Six months ago, I had tried to leave. I packed a bag while he was at a meeting and called a cab. He was waiting for me in the lobby. I never found out how he knew. He didn't yell. He just looked at me with those wounded, intense eyes.

"You would leave me?" he'd whispered, his voice breaking. "After everything I've done for you? Everything I am?"

He took me back upstairs and locked the door. He didn't touch me. He just sat and watched me for two days, not sleeping, not eating, just watching. It was the most terrifying experience of my life. On the third day, I broke. I promised I would never leave him again.

That's when he'd insisted I see a therapist to deal with my "instability." He chose her, of course. Estelle Strong.

I found out about them by accident. I came home early and heard them in the bedroom. I heard her laugh, a sound of smug satisfaction. I heard him call her name with the same intensity he once used for mine.

The betrayal was a physical blow. When I confronted him, he didn't deny it.

"She understands me, Janey," he'd said, without a trace of shame. "She understands the burden of my love for you. She helps me carry it."

Now, standing in the marble-and-glass cage he called home, the memories swirled around me, fueling the cold fire in my gut. He had taken everything from me. My company, my friends, my parents. My life.

It was all my fault. I had stayed. I had chosen this. I had let his passion blind me to the poison beneath. The regret was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, stealing my breath.

He appeared in the doorway, blocking the light.

"Are you going to stand there all night?" he asked.

I turned to face him, my hands clenched at my sides. The grief and rage were a tidal wave, and this time, I let it sweep me away.

On his desk was a heavy glass award my company had won last year. My name was engraved on it. I grabbed it, the weight solid and real in my hand, and I lunged at him, a scream of pure hatred tearing from my throat.

He moved faster than I thought possible.

Gustav caught my wrist in a grip of steel, the glass award stopping inches from his face. The force of it sent a jarring shock up my arm. He didn't even flinch. He just stared at me, his eyes wide with something that looked like hurt.

"Janey," he breathed, his voice a raw whisper. "You would... you would do this to me?"

He twisted my wrist, and I cried out, dropping the award. It hit the plush carpet with a dull thud.

"I'm going to kill you," I spat, my voice shaking with rage and despair. "For what you did to them. I will kill you."

"No, you won't." His face hardened, the hurt vanishing, replaced by that familiar, cold control.

With my free hand, I grabbed the jagged edge of the broken award from the floor. Before he could react, I slashed it across my own throat.

I didn't want to die. I wanted him to feel the panic of losing me.

He shouted my name, a sound of pure terror. He dropped my other wrist and lunged, his hands clamping over mine, trying to pry the shard of glass from my fingers. It was a clumsy, desperate struggle.

"Stop it! Stop it, Janey!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Don't you dare leave me!"

His strength was overwhelming. He pinned me against the wall, his body caging mine, and ripped the glass from my hand, tossing it across the room. Blood, warm and sticky, trickled down my neck. It was a shallow cut, but it was enough.

"You are mine," he hissed, his face inches from mine, his breath hot and smelling of whiskey. "You don't get to die unless I say so."

He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. "Do you think I can't get to him? Your little friend, Amit? The one who makes your special pills? I can have him disappeared so completely no one will even remember his name. Do you want that, Janey? Is that what you want?"

The threat was real. I knew it. He could do it. He would do it.

The fight went out of me, replaced by a wave of cold, bottomless despair. My legs gave out, and I slid down the wall to the floor, a puppet with its strings cut. I was trapped. Utterly and completely trapped.

The world went dark at the edges.

I woke up in our bed. The sheets were cool and smelled of lavender. The cut on my neck was cleaned and bandaged. For a moment, a disoriented, foggy moment, I could almost pretend none of it had happened.

Then I saw him, sitting in the chair by the window, watching me.

"You're awake," he said softly. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to stroke my hair. I flinched.

He pulled his hand back, a flicker of pain in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Janey. I'm so sorry. I lost my temper. Your parents... they pushed me. But it will never happen again, I promise."

He was a child, apologizing for breaking a toy. He had no concept of the magnitude of what he had done.

"I have to go out for a little while," he said, standing up. "Estelle needs me. She was very shaken by your parents'... aggression."

The name was like a slap. He had destroyed my family, and now he was going to comfort the woman who helped him do it.

"Rest," he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "I'll be back soon. We'll have dinner. Just the two of us."

He left, the lock on the bedroom door clicking shut behind him. A prisoner.

I lay still, listening to his footsteps fade. The despair was still there, a cold stone in my stomach, but something else was growing alongside it. A tiny, hard seed of resolve.

He thought he had won. He thought he had broken me. He was wrong.

I slid my hand under the pillow. My fingers closed around the new pill bottle Amit had given me. Not the one for a fake death. This was different. A series of them. Meant to be taken over days. A drug that would slowly, undetectably, stop my heart. It would look like a suicide. A real one this time.

I would take one every day. And on the last day, I would make sure he was the one to find me. It was a pathetic revenge, but it was the only one I had left.

I swallowed the first pill without water. It was bitter, but I welcomed the taste. It was the taste of the end. His end.