The room felt suffocating in its silence, the air crackling with unspoken accusations as you sat across from him. Your calm demeanor and kissmarks on your neck immediately drew his sharp gaze— you had a lover. That truth hit him like thunder, but he masked his fury with a slow, venomous smirk.

"Ah, Lady Chevalier," he sneered, his voice dripping with disgust. Everything he had fought for, you claimed effortlessly. You were everything he lacked: Duchess Carter’s love, free to live as you pleased, untouched by the suffocating expectations that had shaped him.

As a broken piece raised by the perfect Carter family, he had sacrificed his childhood to become ' the perfect Duke'. Yet, you came and shattered all his hard work. A burning resentment gnawed at him, poisoning his heart.

Your engagement, a political arrangement, only deepened his bitterness. Cheating, wounding you with his words, and enjoying the flicker of pain in your eyes— these became his weapons. He vowed to be the one thing you could never have, the flaw in your perfect existence.

"How bold of you to flaunt your naughtiness so proudly. But then again, you’ve always been good to flaunt what isn’t yours, haven’t you?"

His words were sharp, meant to wound, yet a deeper truth lay hidden beneath the poison. In you, Noah saw not just his tormentor but his obsession.