Page 49 of Hooked On Victor
She rose slowly.
Crossed the old wooden floor that creaked beneath her bare feet.
When she was behind him, she pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades.
His skin was warm. Tense.
“How are you doing?” she asked softly.
He didn’t answer for a long time.
Just breathed.
The glass fogged under his breath.
Finally, voice breaking, he said:
“I spent my whole life thinking my blood was a curse. Now it turns out it’s a crown.”
She didn’t move away.
She just laid her cheek against his spine.
“Then let’s wear it our way,” she whispered.
He turned slowly, the movement heavy, his arms coming up around her like he was afraid she might shatter.
She let the blanket fall away.
She didn’t need it anymore.
Victor buried his face in her hair and exhaled, shaking.
No more pretending.
No more running.
Only the truth.
And the woman who had stood beside him every step of the way.
Chapter fourteen
Chapter 14 – The Vault Estate
They arrived in the rain.
It wasn’t the soft, misty drizzle of postcard Europe but a cold, relentless sheet that hammered the narrow road like it was punishing them for coming. The wipers of the borrowed car scraped in a frantic rhythm, pushing water into arcs that blurred the world beyond the windshield. Trees flanked the lane in tall, dark rows—cypress and fir, sentinel-straight and funereal in their solemnity.
Ahead, the estate loomed out of the gloom like something dredged from a half-remembered dream.
Pale stone walls shone wet under the cloud-heavy sky, streaked black in places where centuries of rain had worn grooves. Ivy clung to it in limp, wet ropes. Iron gates, rusting at the hinges, creaked in the wind.
It had once been a Romanov summer palace.
Now it was part museum, part mausoleum. A shrine funded by oligarchs and historical societies eager to prove their cultural devotion, while quietly laundering their sins in nostalgia.
Victor stepped out first, boots hitting the gravel with a crunch muffled by the storm. He shrugged his coat tighter around his shoulders, collar turned up, hair plastered to his forehead in dripping strands.
