They broke her trust. They broke his mind. But when the past claws its way back, survival isn't enough - vengeance demands blood. Victoria learned how to stay quiet. Grief became her shadow, guilt her constant companion. It whispered in her ear that she should have been the one to die instead. Not her mother. Never her mother. If she had, maybe her father wouldn't have walked away, leaving them to fend for themselves. But silence is a fragile shield-and when the past resurfaces, dragging her into a world she barely escaped, she realizes staying quiet won't save her this time. Xavier learned how to disappear behind scars, behind rage, behind the monster his past made him. Forged by cruelty, built by betrayal, and fueled by rage, he became the kind of man other monsters feared. Scars became his armor. Violence, his language. He doesn't believe in mercy-only vengeance. Especially for the man who made him this way. Victoria was everything he had been taught to avoid - soft yet unbreakable, damaged yet defiant. She had the kind of pain that mirrored his own, a past carved into her bones, a war waged behind tired eyes. She saw through him in ways no one else had ever dared, and he hated it. Hated her. Because she made him feel. He was chaos wrapped in quiet fury, a storm threatening to consume everything in its path. And yet, when she looked at him, she didn't just see the monster - she saw the man who had once fought to hold on to his soul. But love between two broken people is never easy. It's volatile. Cruel. A constant push and pull, neither of them willing to surrender, both too damaged to truly hold on. The closer they get, the more dangerous the stakes become. Yet, for all the ways they fought against it, they kept coming back to each other.