Page 74 of Her Cruel Empire
“I mean—more than protecting her. She’s grieving. Make sure she’s okay?”
I might hate her. But I can’t stop caring about her. It’s my stupid, naïve heart. I can’t stop loving once I’ve started, no matter how much it hurts. Even my father, who deserted us.
And even Eva Novak.
Soon enough, I’m sitting in the back of a car watching the castle disappear behind the trees. The driver doesn’t speak, but I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. They’re kind, sympathetic.
We drive through the village one more time, past the black ribbons and the bowed heads. I wonder if they realize what I am. Another girl who went to the castle and didn’t come back—not the same, anyway.
I’m leaving.
But the girl who arrived here is gone forever.
And now the question is: what’s left of me to take home?
As the car reaches the main road and the castle fades from view, I press my face to the window and allow myself one last look at the place that became my prison and my paradise. I told myself I wouldn’t get attached.
Now I don’t know how to let go.
Chapter 26
Eva
Iwatch from my bedroom window as the black car disappears down the winding mountain road, carrying Robin back to her pathetic little American life. My chest tightens like a vise, but I force myself to remain perfectly still, remind myself that this is no different from any other woman I’ve had in the past.
She was nothing more than a distraction—a sweet little plaything who forgot her place.
I press my palm against the glass, and for one insane moment, I want to chase after that car. Want to drag her back to my castle where she belongs.
Mine. She was mine.
No—that was always a lie. She was a mirage, not salvation. And now it’s back to business.
The next few hours pass in a blur of action. This is what I know how to do—command, organize, control. It’s all I have left.
I organize the cremation, the urn, the plaque.
After that, with nothing else to do, I find myself in the medical wing, staring at the empty bed where my father once lay. The machines are gone, disconnected and wheeled away by the same careful hands that tended him for months. The room feels hollow, sterile. Dead.
I press my palm to the cool mattress and close my eyes, letting the memories wash over me. Papa teaching me to aim a pistol when I was barely tall enough to hold it steady. The way he’d laugh when I beat him at chess, proud of the strategic mind he’d helped shape.
He’ll smile at you again, Robin’s voice echoes in my memory, soft and certain.I know he will.
Lies. All of it. Hope is poison, and I was fool enough to drink it.
I slam my fist against the wall, the impact sending shockwaves up my arm. The pain is grounding, real. Unlike the fairy tale Robin spun with her optimism and her ridiculous faith in happy endings.
My phone buzzes. Leon, checking on funeral arrangements. I text him back curtly, then realize I should see him in person. He took a bullet in Paris—for me—and I’ve barely given him a thought since we returned.
Guilt is an unfamiliar emotion. I don’t like it.
I find Leon in the security room, his massive frame hunched over surveillance monitors. His left shoulder is bandaged, his arm in a sling, but his fingers are still flying over the keyboard. Still protecting me, even when I don’t deserve it.
He looks up when I enter, and I see something flicker in his weathered face—concern, maybe. Or pity. I hate both.
“You look like hell,” he says bluntly. Leon’s never been one for sugar-coating.
“Charming as always.” I move to stand behind him, studying the screens. “How’s the shoulder?”
