Serpent King's Bride: A Dark Mafia Romance Trilogy

It wasn’t…far from it, in fact.

“Alex was just ten. Ba knew I’d do anything to protect my brothers.” His confession seeped into the space between us, heavy and suffocating. “He told me if I didn’t do it, he would take one of my brothers down there. He would show them what being a man meant. He would…he would do whatever was necessary to make sure I was hard. He said he would give me a hand if I needed it, and all the people around him laughed. It made me sick, but…”

I opened my mouth to offer him comfort, but nothing came out.

“So I did it,” he murmured, the words seeming to tear from his throat. “I fucked that woman, and she wept the whole time.” His gaze met mine, raw and exposed. “And when it was done, when she was broken…my father put a bullet in her head.”

Nausea twisted in my gut, a mix of sorrow, rage, and something else—something like understanding. This wasn’t just a story; it was the moulding of the man before me, the creation of the monster he feared he was.

“God, Nathan…” I reached out, fingers trembling as they found his hand, gripping it tight. “You were just a kid…”

“Kid or not, I did those things.” He withdrew slightly, as if expecting rejection, as if bracing himself for the blow of disgust he thought was coming.

But I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—turn away from him. Not now. Not ever.

“Sex was violence,” he continued, his voice a low rumble, “a weapon to be used. Ba never saw it any other way.” His eyes hardened like polished obsidian, reflecting a world where brutality reigned. “My own father used my brothers as leverage. Alex hates him for it, but he doesn’t know half of what went on in that damn basement. And Justin, well, I hold onto the hope that he’s too young to remember.”

“Every time I think about what you’ve been through, it makes me want to—“ I caught myself before the words spilled out. The resolve in my heart was a dangerous promise—the kind that could get us both killed. But as I looked at Nathan, the man who’d become my anchor in this twisted underworld, I knew I would do anything to protect him from his father’s shadow.

I would kill Kenny Zhou if it was the last thing I ever did.

“Want to what, Abby?” he asked, his voice a soft probe.

“Nothing,” I lied smoothly, mustering a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Just thinking. Was that your first time?”

“Yeah, but I don’t consider it losing my virginity. That happened later.”

“With a girlfriend, I hope?”

“No,” he said. He studied me for a moment longer, searching for truth within the facade I offered. Then, his gaze dropped, and his confession continued, each word heavier than the last.

“Ba thought I was too soft, that my mother had been too gentle with me and had made me weak,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When I turned sixteen, he decided it was time for me to become a ‘real man.’” The scorn in his tone was palpable as he spit out the last two words like they were poison. “So he brought me to an older woman, a prostitute.”

The bile rose in my throat. “That’s not how anyone should—“

“Learn about sex? Yeah, I know.” Nathan’s lips twisted into a bitter half-smile. “But Kenny thought if I could handle a woman, maybe I wouldn’t screw up when it came to…other duties.” He paused, pain flickering behind his stoic mask. “I couldn’t even get hard. Not for that. Not for what Ba needed from me. It was like my body rejected the very idea of mixing pleasure and pain, affection and violence.”

“Jesus.”

“But this prostitute. She was pretty. Wore fake eyelashes and was very soft-spoken,” he sighed, the sound laced with a decade-old shame that should never have been his to carry. “She was kind, at least. She didn’t laugh or get mad. Just…undressed me and did a lot of things to make it happen. Anyway. We got there in the end. That’s my first time.”

My heart clenched as I listened. Assault wore many faces, and this, a formative experience twisted into a rite of passage, was one of its cruelest masks. He was just a kid, coerced into situations he couldn’t consent to.

“That’s so messed up,” I murmured, my voice breaking on the last word.

Nathan shrugged, a ghost of a smile flickering across his face. “What do you mean? She loved it.” His attempt to lighten the mood fell flat, the darkness of his past too heavy to lift with mere words.

I flinched, not at him but at the thought–at the normalization of such a vile act, at the belief that her supposed pleasure could justify the means. I wanted to scream, to tear down the walls that had been built around his heart, brick by brick, since that day.

But instead, I went quiet. There were no words for this kind of pain, this kind of wrongness. So I just listened—listened to the steady thump of Nathan’s heartbeat against my ear, to the rhythm of his breathing as it slowed and deepened. The tension that held his frame tight began to dissipate, and in the dim morning light, his features softened.

I could feel myself starting to drift off again, lulled by the warmth of his body next to mine when his whisper cut through the silence.

“Abby, do you hate me now?”

The question, barely audible, vibrated with vulnerability. I shifted, propping my head on my hand as I met his gaze. In the depths of his brown eyes, I saw the flicker of fear, the shadow of a boy who had been forced to grow up too fast, in a world that demanded violence and repaid innocence with cruelty.

“No, Nathan,” I answered, my voice firm even as my heart ached. “I could never hate you. Nothing’s going to get between us, no matter how fucked up it is.”