Page 72 of Goldrage
“I understand perfectly.” His eyes hold mine, and for a moment, I see regret flash across his features. “Which is why you need to return to your room. Now.”
“But—”
“Go. Before someone spots us.”
Frustration burns in my chest. Every instinct screams to fight past him, to reach Adrian and make him understand. But Valentine’s logic cuts through my desperation. He’s right. Being caught now would only make everything worse.
“Fine,” I mumble.
He disappears back into the night, leaving me alone in the hallway with my racing thoughts and breaking heart.
I stumble the rest of the way to my room on unsteady legs. Once inside, I sink onto the bed. The silk nightgown that felt so seductive before now clings to my skin like shame.
Someone could’ve been in Adrian’s room. Someone who wanted him to think it was me.
It had to be Bianca, unless Lady Harrow brought in some outside woman. Either way, I know Lady Harrow is involved. I just don’t knowwhy.
The tears I’ve been holding back finally fall, but they’re not because I’m still hurt from myargument with Adrian. They’re tears of rage and of the terrible understanding that Lady Harrow would go so far. Trying to kill him wasn’t enough, apparently. She had to violate and humiliate him too.
I scream into my pillow and then stare at the ceiling. I really pray I’m wrong; I pray it was a hallucination from his meds.
But somehow I need to find out the truth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
JULIAN
The ballroom at Sergio Castellano’s estate is filled with sweaty bodies in designer clothes. Seattle’s most lethal elite, but their voices blur into meaningless static around me. I stand near the towering windows overlooking the city below, the familiar taste of whiskey on my tongue.
Feels like I’m barely here though.
For three sleepless nights I’ve been watching my life flash before my eyes like I’m dying. My control has unraveled thread by thread. Every muscle in my body feels coiled too tight, ready to snap. Each conversation with my mother has become a dance around landmines, her familiar touch and gentle words now carrying subtext that makes my ribcage feel too small for my lungs.
The past keeps bleeding into the present, uninvited and unwelcome. I keep getting fragments of random conversations from years ago.
“My darling boy,”she’d whisper, her fingers coolagainst my skin as they swept through my hair.“Adrian doesn’t have to fight as hard as you do. He’s the heir, the chosen one. But you… you have to earn everything. You have to be better, stronger, more ruthless. That’s the burden of being second.”
Again and again she’d whisper shit like that. Different words, same subtext.
As a kid, those words felt like comfort. Like someone finally understood how suffocated I felt every time Adrian walked into a room and easily commanded the attention I had to bleed for. Mother’s comfort had been the only light in the darkness of our family’s expectations.
Now those same memories bring the darkness back.
I drain the rest of my whiskey, savoring the burn. Each word she spoke echoes differently now, edged with implications that make my hands shake. The way she’d hold me close while subtly driving the knife deeper between Adrian and me. Her gentle suggestions that my brother saw me as competition, not family. The careful way she’d nurture my resentment while appearing to offer support.
But even as doubt gnaws at my insides, I grip onto the one truth that keeps me sane. Even if she manipulated me—and Christ, I’m not ready to accept that yet—it doesn’t mean she tried to murder Adrian. Mothers protect their children. They sacrifice for them. The alternative, that everything I’ve built my understanding of love on is a lie, would end me.
Maybe she’s always favored me because I defended her against Lucian’s wrath. Maybe she doesn’t likeAdrian because he never stood up for her the way I did. That doesn’t make her a killer. It makes her human. Parents play favorites, even if they lie and say they don’t.
“Julian.”
Lotterio Passero’s oily voice drips over me and I sigh. I turn to find the man approaching with that sickening smile he thinks passes for charm. He’s shorter than me by half a foot, with graying temples and eyes that are beady little dots. The Passero family handles waste management for the Consortium—the kind of waste that breathes. They’re small-time operators always looking for an angle to enter the big leagues.
His navy suit is expensive but fits wrong, and the gold watch on his wrist says new money. Everything about him reeks of ambition.
“You seem distracted tonight,” he says, stopping next to me. “Business troubles?”
I laugh but there’s no humor. I know exactly what this is—Passero fishing for information, hoping to discover some trouble between the main families so his people can swoop in. His motives are transparent, and tonight I don’t have the patience for it.
