The click echoed louder than it should have.
Misty stared at the phone for three long seconds, her fingers still wrapped around the receiver like she might shatter it if she squeezed just a little harder.
"He hung up on me."
The words didn't even feel real.
Christian Velloran hadn't shouted, hadn't cursed. He hadn't even indulged in anger. He had dismissed her like a clerk with an expired ledger—cold, quiet, and efficient.
As if she were already irrelevant.
Her hand trembled, then jerked back. The receiver clattered against the edge of the desk, then the floor. She barely heard it.
'No.'
'No, no, no.'
She turned, sweeping her arm across the surface of her desk, sending pens, files, and a crystal vase crashing to the floor in a cascade of breaking glass and pointless expense.
The silence that followed wasn't soft.
It rang.
Sharp. Violent. Breathing with her fury.
She gripped the edge of the desk with both hands, her chest rising and falling in short, restrained bursts. Her heart was pounding—not from fear, but from the kind of rage that starts deep in the bone. The kind that doesn't scream.
The kind that kills.
That boy—that ungrateful, overdressed little symbol of everything she'd worked for—had turned her into a villain in the eyes of the one man who was supposed to remain useful. And now the vultures would circle. The court would whisper. The investors would freeze. She could already feel the chill in the floor beneath her feet, like ice sliding under silk.
The door creaked open.
"Mama?" Ophelia's voice, soft. Hesitant.
Misty didn't look up.
"Mama, what's going on? I heard—" she stopped when she stepped fully into the room and saw the shattered remains of the vase, the chaos on the floor.
Misty finally lifted her head, eyes wild, sharp, gleaming like glass that hadn't finished breaking.
"Get out."
"Mama—"
"I said out!"
Ophelia flinched, taking a step back. "But—was it Christian? Did he—"
Misty's laugh was short. Harsh. Joyless.
"Christian," she spat the name like poison. "Christian has decided I'm no longer useful. That I'm disposable." She turned fully now, robe askew, hair half-loosened from its morning pins. "He thinks he can end me with a button and a banker."
Ophelia opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Misty stepped forward, slow, deliberate, like a predator pacing through glass.
"Tell me, darling," she whispered, her voice trembling with venom, "when did you start thinking you were safer with them?"
Ophelia didn't answer. She didn't know how.
Because Misty wasn't asking for comfort.
She was searching for blame.
And if she couldn't give Christian consequences yet—someone else would have to bleed.
—
The room was too quiet.
Lucas stirred beneath layers of silk that didn't belong to him, in a bed too large and too soft to feel real. The scent of lavender and aged wood lingered faintly in the air, filtered through thick drapes that dulled the light but not the weight of the morning.
He didn't open his eyes at first.
Just breathed.
Slow. Careful. Waiting to feel the ache behind his ribs, the pressure in his throat, the distant throb of something he couldn't name.
But it didn't come.
The pain had retreated into something softer now—like bruises beneath the skin, not screaming anymore, but still there.
Trevor was gone.
Lucas remembered the low murmur of the doctor's voice last night, calm and clinical, promising he'd be fine, that the body hadn't gone into collapse. There had been hands—gentle, for once—not restraining, just checking. A cool cloth. The quiet hiss of medicine he didn't need explained.
And then Trevor, helping him lie back again, saying nothing but not leaving until he thought Lucas was fully asleep.
Except Lucas hadn't slept.
Not really.
Not until long after the door clicked shut and the fire in the hearth burned low enough to feel safe.
Now, as the light grew more golden through the curtains, he exhaled and opened his eyes—slowly, like someone expecting the world to tilt again.
It didn't.
Not yet.
The knock on the door was soft. Barely there.
Then it opened, without waiting for permission—but not rudely.
Just… as if the person on the other side had every right to walk through the silence he was hiding in.
Serathine entered like she always did—perfect posture, flawless lines, not a thread out of place. She wore green again today. Not bright. Moss-dark. Expensive. Her hair was swept back, her jewelry understated but absolute.
She took one look at him—still curled in the bed, robe loose, hair unbrushed—and closed the door behind her.
"It's almost noon," she said gently, but without apology. "And I thought I'd check whether you were dead, unconscious, or simply avoiding everyone."
Lucas blinked once. Then turned his face toward the pillow.
"I wasn't avoiding."
She walked to the window, her steps measured and quiet, and drew back one of the curtains just enough to let in a single line of light. Morning spilled in, soft and muted, casting a narrow glow across the edge of the bed—like it, too, was uncertain whether to intrude.
"I didn't know he would be there," she said at last, her tone perfectly even but lacking the effortless polish it usually carried. "I'm sorry, Lucas. I was supposed to be your guardian. And I failed."
She didn't elaborate.
Didn't make excuses.
Just let the words exist—low and firm and shaped by something heavier than guilt.
Lucas didn't answer right away.
He stared at the line of sunlight, at how it crept slowly across the silk blanket, warming the fabric but not him, not really. The silence stretched between them, thick and oddly forgiving.
She remained by the window for a moment longer, her hands folded loosely in front of her, gaze turned outward—but not seeing anything.
And then she turned.
Not slowly, not dramatically.
Just… fully.
She faced him with nothing between them now. No velvet gowns, no ballroom distance, no court masks. Only presence. Only the quiet weight of someone who understood, perhaps too late, that they hadn't seen the storm until it was already inside the house.
"I didn't know I would react this way," Lucas murmured, his gaze still locked on the floor, on the way light stretched and faded against the carpet like it was trying to reach him and giving up halfway. "I thought of him as a stranger."
The words left his mouth too gently, too carefully, as if speaking them louder would betray him—crack something that hadn't yet broken.
He didn't look at her.
Because the words weren't really meant for her at all.
They were spoken the way one whispers to a ghost behind their own ribs—soft, bitter truths no one else was meant to hear.
He was a stranger. And still, Lucas had felt his body remember him.
He said the words more for himself than for Serathine, more for the boy who had woken in this world still remembering the last—still haunted by a life that no one else could possibly know
He was sure—painfully sure—that if he ever told anyone the truth, if he dared to say it plainly, I died once already, they would look at him the same way Misty had when he first learned to flinch: like a problem to fix, not a person to listen to.