Page 56 of Hooked On Victor
Silence roared in the vault.
Dust motes floated lazily through the cold air, caught in the flickering light.
Victor didn’t speak.
Didn’t even seem to breathe.
Nikolai didn’t push.
But his gaze was steady.
“You can destroy the vault,” he said quietly. “But if you do, you destroyherhope. You destroyhisgift. And you become the one who buries us all over again.”
The words hung there like smoke.
Thick.
Suffocating.
Victor’s chest rose and fell, ragged, the breath of a man deciding if he would live or die by his choice.
Rose stepped forward at last, her boots scuffing softly against the old stone.
Her voice didn’t waver.
“Maybe the vault isn’t meant to be destroyed,” she said, voice calm, the center of the storm. “Or exposed.”
Victor’s eyes snapped to hers, wild and wounded.
She didn’t flinch.
“Maybe it’s meant to beguarded,” she continued.
His breathing slowed.
She held his gaze, unwavering.
“Not sealed. Not erased. But protected. Preserved. For the right moment. For the right truth.”
Victor exhaled.
It was a sound of surrender.
Not defeat.
Acceptance.
He nodded once.
Slow.
Grave.
“We keep it,” he said, voice steady at last. “But we decide what gets shared—and when.”
Nikolai let out a slow breath of his own.
He nodded once.
