Page 29 of Heir of Darkness

Luna bit her lip. “How old were you?”

“When what?”

“When you built the cabin?”

“I was sixteen. But I was nine when I found her dead in the bathtub.” He grabbed the two glasses, bringing them over to where Luna was sitting. He placed them on the table, sitting down on the couch. “She shot herself.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he told her. “She made the decision herself.”

“Who else have you brought here?” Her attempt to change the subject wasn’t subtle, but he appreciated it.

“Not a single soul outside of us in this room knows about this cabin,” he told her. “And it’s gonna stay like that.”

She frowned. “Why did you bring me here then?”

“You know why.”

“This feels like too personal of a thing for me to know about,” she told him.

“You’re going to be my wife one day. If anyone is going to know my secrets, it would be you,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be too generous with giving away your secrets,” she warned him. “Things could change.”

“And if they don’t?”

“You know that answer,” she said.

He stared at her for a long minute. She reached for the drink on the table, taking a sip. “Good juice,” she muttered, setting it down.

“What do you want from your life?” he asked out of curiosity.

“That’s a loaded question.”

“Just answer it.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I want to graduate college, travel the world, write some books, fall in love, do anything and everything that would make me happy. I want what all people want in life: true and genuine happiness.”

“Happiness is overrated,” he told her.

She shrugged. “Maybe it is. But that’s what I want from life.”

“And you could never have those things with me?” he asked.

Her breath hitched. These were not the types of questions he was expecting to be asking tonight, but they seemed necessary.

“Men in our world take what they want without caring about who they hurt in the process. They lie, they cheat, and they destroy you until you are just a shell of a person unable to find meaning in life. I’m sorry if it hurts to hear I could never be happy trapped in a life I didn’t choose, but that is my reality,” she said. “It’s time you understood the reality too.”

“Why fight me? Why not fight your father?” Valerio asked.

Luna let out a sardonic laugh. “Do you really think I haven’t? It earned me a slap to the face and a month forced on lockdown. I can’t fight him. I have no power to fight him.” She shook her head. “You’ve seen what this world does to women. How it tears them away from their identity, leaving them with nothing.”

“Is that how you see me? Capable of ever doing something like that to you?” Valerio asked.

“Do you want the truth?”

“Always.”

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