I’ve never been capable of loneliness.
Now, I’m a walking fucking apocalypse.
The night outside wraps the mansion in silence, the wind whispering about fire and fate as it hisses through the cracks. The house feels like it’s holding its breath. The whole world does.
This isn’t over.
The USB gleams like a gun, loaded with consequences. A harbinger of everything I’ve built, threatened by the woman who said she’d fight beside me.
Maybe I should have at least told Giselle what was on it. She betrayed me, but she’d never betray her sister.
If I can’t have her loyalty, I can still weaponize her grief.
She can still help me destroy the men who broke us both.
Or maybe she just deserves to know, because anyone hurt that deeply deserves to know who’s to blame.
Everything I’ve done has been to survive. So has she. She thought she had to survive me when she gave them my DNA.
I could forgive that.
But not the lies.
Every time she looked at me, it was a lie.
Every breath she took in my presence, a lie.
Every kiss, every heartbeat, every orgasm—lies, lies, all fucking lies.
I plug the USB into the port. Even that reminds me of her: how perfectly I fit between her legs. How easy it’s always been to slide inside and drug her with pleasure, make her chant my name like an acolyte and their god.
The contents load slow enough for me to brace myself, heart thumping in my chest. With each beat, her face flashes in my mind. Deep brown eyes blinking up at me, blood splatter marring her cheek, and her bottom lip disappearing between her teeth only for my thumb to tug it free.
Finally, the files load.
A name leaps from the screen, burning into the monitor like a curse.
The person tied to Pavel, who made all this possible.
The one Giselle’s been chasing in the dark.
Some part of me recoils. Not out of fear, but out of instinct to protect her.
This is the raw truth, the hot, beating vulnerability right at the heart of everything: even now, whatever happens to her—happens to me.
Afanasy was wrong. This won’t bea test of Giselle’s loyalty.
It’s a goddamn reckoning.
We’re staring down the same gun barrel, and I’ll finally find out if she pulls the trigger with me…
or at me.
“Fuck,” I whisper, standing before the monitors as they flash chaotic snippets of security feeds.
Everywhere but the place I most want to be, and fear I’ll never be able to return to.
Closing my eyes, I envision the moment I left her, pain glistening in her eyes. I think I heard her scream, like I’d torn something out of her.
