I think I gave him more than just a piece of my heart.
My eyes lock on Julian’s as everything inside me is breaking. His eyes are almost completely black; he’s a stranger now.
Mom, you tried to warn me in your diary. About masks and monsters wearing human skin. But you never warned me they’d wear the faces of those I love.
CHAPTER TWO
JULIAN
What seems like a lifetime ago, I burst into this damn room to find my mother and Aurelia in a standoff.
There was blood. Blood everywhere. Pools of blood seeping into the carpet, staining everything crimson. My brother was lying there, his life draining away while the fucking woman I thought I knew stood ready to shoot the one who raised me.
My mother—who gave me life, who suffered endless nights of abuse to protect me, who gives me purpose. She was threatened, terrified, clinging to me like I was the only thing keeping her from drowning.
What the fuck was I supposed to think?
Aurelia was the one with the gun. My brother was the one bleeding out. And my mother has always wanted what’s best for us—there’s no way she’d do something like this.
I love Aurelia. God help me, I love her in a way that tears me open, that makes my chest splinter and crackwhenever she’s near. But if she thinks I’ll believe her insane lies, or choose her over the woman whobirthedme, who endured twenty-eight years of hell to keep me and Adrian safe, she’s out of her fucking mind.
Aurelia’s taunting, the way she fought me and tried to get my gun, is like the nail in the coffin. Why fight like a lunatic when you’re innocent?
If there’s one valuable thing I learned from my fucked-up father, it’s this: the more they run their mouths, the more they’re guilty.
Now, Valentine’s wide shoulders block most of Adrian’s body as he drapes a white sheet over him. The fabric settles like snow, pure against all that red, and my throat constricts at the sight. Adrian. My brother. The smug bastard who always had to be perfect, who looked at me with that mix of judgment and pity that made my blood boil.
But he was still my brother.
And now he’s dead? Murdered by the woman who set my world on fire.
Aurelia’s inching toward the door, those green sweatpants making her look more vulnerable than she usually appears. The gun tucked into her waistband shows its outline under her baggy white shirt. Blood has soaked through the fabric in abstract patterns—my brother’s blood. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, and I hate that even now, even after everything, my eyes trace the movement and curve of her tits.
But it’s her hair that really fucks with my head. She’s got it pinned up in this messy bun, but it’s not straightened like usual. No—those wild red curls are breakingfree around her face, still damp like she just washed it. Natural. Untamed. The way I always begged her to wear it.
The fucking irony burns. She finally wears it the way I love on the night she murders my brother.
Her eyes are feral now, darting between me, Adrian’s body, and the exit like a cornered animal. She looks dangerous, unpredictable. I used to think I knew every side of her.
Fuck, how wrong I was.
She didn’t manage to wrestle my gun away, so I’m still gripping it. My fingers tighten around the handle as she shifts her weight. Will she reach for the weapon in her waistband and try to finish what she started? Shoot me? My mother?
Disgust coils in my gut like a serpent because this isn’t the Aurelia I know. It’s not the girl who wrapped a hair tie around my wrist when we were kids, declaring us “forever friends.” Or the woman who scowls at snow or knows my favorite cookie shape is a star. Who looked at me like I was more than just Lucian Harrow’s son.
“Julian.” Her voice cracks on my name, but that’s all she says. Maybe she’s finally feeling the weight of regret and wants to beg for my forgiveness.
I don’t forgive that easily; I don’t know if I can forgive something like this.
Still, I can’t make sense of what happened. Why would Aurelia kill Adrian? What’s her endgame?
I should’ve seen the signs when she defied me about Victoria. I told hernotto kill her yet, to wait until the moment was right, but she lied and did it anyway, like abrat. That one act of rebellion got Lucian killed as payback from Victoria’s family.
I thought Aurelia was finally letting me into her world, letting me help for fuck’s sake, but this entire time she was just using me. I should’ve known then what she was—not just untamed, but untamable.
This entire time she’s claimed to want revenge for her mother, but what if there’s a deeper plan? What if, instead of burning this place to the ground, she actually wants total control of the Inferno Consortium? Wants it all to herself or wants Valentine in control.
My head spins with questions that have no answers. The weight of Adrian’s death presses down on my chest like concrete, making it hard to breathe. Everything I thought I knew is shifting beneath my feet, leaving me unsteady.
