Page 30 of Heir of Darkness

“Yes,” Luna said. “And maybe it’s because I know my father was capable of forcing me into something I didn’t want, but I didn’t think you were capable of doing the same.”

The silence was suffocating. For the first time in his life, Valerio was at a loss for words. There was the truth—the ugly, horrifying, foul truth.

In her eyes, he had committed the same crime as her father. She equated the two to each other. But whereas her father did it for monetary gain, Valerio did it because he wanted to be with her, to stop her from being with anyone else.

That made him as much of a selfish bastard as any other.

“Don’t ever compare me to your father,” Valerio growled, disgusted at the comparison.

“What does it matter anyway? You’ve proved there’s no way out. You’ll take what you want, kill who you want, and destroy me in the process.” She shook her head. He could finally see the vulnerability in her eyes. “I’m tired of the fighting. It’s not getting me anywhere. It never has.”

That broke Valerio worse than it should have. Suddenly, he was his father and she was his mother forced into a marriage she didn’t want. Would she birth his children just to end her life with a gunshot to her head in the middle of the night? Valerio loved her more than anything, but he didn’t know if loving her could keep history from repeating itself.

If he trapped her and she harmed herself because of it, he would never be able to live with himself. But that was what she had been trying to tell him all along, wasn’t it? That she wouldn’t give him a chance to trap her. She would take any opportunity necessary to escape.

He saw the signs in his own mother once upon a time. She fought and fought, until one day the fighting stopped. And it was the minute that the fighting stopped that he lost his mother forever.

Luna was already there. Her fighting was over, so if the marriage to him was the one thing that could send her over the edge, then he would set her free.

It was no secret that Valerio was an asshole, selfish, and obsessive, but above all that, he loved Luna far too much. More than he loved himself and more than he would ever love anything else, so he wouldn’t do that to her. He loved her.

He stood. “Let’s go.” All the emotion he once held was wiped clean, leaving a shell of the Valerio she knew.

Luna stood along with him. He threw the juice in the fire, leaving it a smoky mess. He stomped to the front door, leaving Luna to follow.

He sped the entire way back, ignoring the way Luna held onto the seat in anxiety. He swerved in front of the apartment building, stopping there instead of going into the garage. It was necessary to cut the routines out now. It would make the transition smoother. Luna grabbed the door handle, pushing it open, only for him to reach over her body and slam it closed.

“Tomorrow morning, the contract will officially be void. You and I are no longer together,” Valerio said, cutting straight to the point like they were talking business. And maybe they were. That was all this could be from now on. “Good luck, Luna. I hope you get everything you want from life.”

Luna stared back at him in shock.

With shaky hands, she opened the door. He could only assume she finally got what she wanted. And when the door closed, he took off down the street, leaving her to stare at the disappearing brake lights.

TWELVE

LUNA

The constant knockson the front door at eight in the morning were enough to wake even the deepest sleeper. Luna covered her head with the pillow, trying to drown out the sounds.

Her bedroom door opened, heels clicking along the wooden floor. The pillow was ripped away from her face. Luna groaned, finally opening her eyes.

She expected Blair or Cecilia, maybe even Gianna, though that was rare this early in the morning. Instead, it was the one woman whose face was permanently carved into a scowl—her mother.

“Get up, now.”

Luna’s eyes widened as she sat up. Her mother didn’t say another word before she left the room, leaving her stumbling out of bed in a hurry. She grabbed a robe, tying it, and then stopping dead in her tracks when she saw that her mother wasn’t alone. Her father was there too.

Finn looked like he had gotten hardly any sleep, sitting on one of the armchairs in the room. Eleanora Kingsley sat at one end of the L-shaped couch, while Reece Kingsley stood beside her, his arms crossed over her chest.

He was a scary man. His hair was beginning to gray and wrinkles covered his face; anyone would have assumed he was just an aging man. But when he got angry, his entire face twisted into a monstrous expression that used to terrify Luna when she was younger. Now, at twenty-three, she felt that same fear.

“Good morning,” Luna told them, sitting on the couch. She was on edge, trying desperately to remain unfazed, but it was impossible.

“Do you want to tell me why Valerio Vitali canceled the contract?” her father shouted, his voice echoing through the living room.

It had been an entire week and she was wondering when her parents would not only find out, but when they would finally confront her about it. She just assumed she could run away before the day came, but it came far sooner than she hoped.

Luna swallowed harshly. “I don’t know.”

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