Page 29 of Goldflame
The first sob tears from my throat like it’s being ripped out with pliers. My body curls in on itself as I fold forward, crimson hands covering my face as tears mix with sweat and blood. I can’t stop it. Can’t control it. Can’t do anything but let it consume me.
“He’s gone,” I choke out between sobs. “Adrian’s fucking gone. And that bitch… she…” I can’t even finish the sentence.
Emeric stands frozen, probably having no idea what to do with this version of me. No one except my mother has ever seen me like this. Not Aurelia, not even Adrian. I’ve spent my entire life building walls, creating the image everyone wants—the cocky, untouchable Julian Harrow who fears nothing and feels less.
“He was supposed to behere,” I continue, unable to stem the tide of words now that they’ve started flowing. “He was supposed to lead, not me. I’m not cut out for this shit. And Aurelia—” My voice breaks on her name. “I love her. I fucking love her, and she killed him. She killed my brother. What am I supposed to do with that?”
I look up at Emeric with my vision blurred by tears and blood. “What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m still in love with her. I had her locked up, and I still—” I shake my head, shame burning through me at the memory of taking her in Adrian’s bed. “I’m a fucking piece of shit. Just likehim.”
Just like Lucian.
Fuck! I need Adrian here. I’ve always needed him. Even when I hated him for being perfect. Even when I resented him for having everything or not being there enough to help our mother. He kept me… balanced. Now I’m supposed to do this alone? I can’t…
I swipe at my eyes with the back of my hand, smearing blood across my face and feeling like a fucking five year old.
Emeric stands there for what feels like forever, just staring with wide eyes. I half expect him to back away, to make some excuse and leave me to drown in my own fucked up life.
Instead, he sits beside me on the medical table, the metal frame creaking under our combined weight. “Shit, mate,” he whispers, his voice rough. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything,” I mutter, scrubbing at my face, trying to regain a semblance of control oversomething as pathetic as emotions. But it’s too late. The monster is out of the cage, and I can’t shove it back in. More tears wet my cheeks.
Emeric’s hand lands on my shoulder, hesitant at first, then firmer. “I didn’t know you felt this way. About any of it.”
A bitter laugh erupts from my throat. “That was the fucking point.”
His hand squeezes my shoulder. He’s uncomfortable—I can feel the tension in his fingers. But to his credit, he doesn’t run. Doesn’t make this about him. Just sits there, like trying to tether me as I’m caught in a storm.
“Just let it out,” he finally says. “No need to keep it in, mate. It’s just me and you here.”
The permission breaks me again. I lean into him, and he wraps an arm around my shoulders in an awkward side-hug. But there’s nothing awkward about the way my body crumples, how my fingers clutch at his shirt while sobs wrack through me.
I haven’t cried like this since I was a kid—not since the night I found my mother lying unconscious in a pool of her own blood after one of Lucian’s rages. I was six then, and I thought she was dead. I’d crawled under the bed and sobbed until Adrian found me, pulled me out, and told me she was still alive.
“She’s strong,” he’d told me. “So are you. Now get up. You can do this. Let’s get her cleaned up.”
With his confidence in me, I quickly dried my tears. He taught me I had to be strong, like him. Always had to be the strong one. Never show weakness, especially to our father.
Lucian’s voice slithers through my memory, cold and cutting: “Cry again, and I’ll kill your mother,” Lucian had snarled when he caught me with wet cheeks after he’d broken my arm during a drunken fit. I was nine. “Understand?”
Then later, when I was sixteen and he found me comforting my mother after he’d beaten her. “You’re pathetic. No wonder Adrian’s my heir. At least he has a fucking spine.”
And again, just last year, when Adrian and I stood at attention in his office after a shipment went missing. “Your brother understands what it means to be a Harrow. You? You’re just a disappointment wearing my name.”
My head is filled with so many of his taunts and cruel words, and I have no idea how to get them out.
But he’s dead. The bastard is finally dead.
The realization washes through me, offering a strange sense of relief despite the grief and confusion. He can’t hurt us anymore. Can’t hurt my mother. Can’t make me feel like I’m nothing.
That has to count for something in this fucked-up world.
CHAPTER TEN
AURELIA
The pen trembles between my fingers as I press it harder against the page; I worry it might run out of ink soon from how much I’ve been using it. The diary Julian left has been the only thing keeping me sane these past few days, my only sanctuary where truth lives.
My wrists are raw from beating against the door as part of my daily routine, my throat hoarse from screaming into empty air. Which reminds me: it’s been half an hour, so I turn toward the camera and flip Julian off, hoping the asshole is watching.
