Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
Lucian
Istand frozen in front of Vittoria’s living quarters long after Elliot’s retreating footsteps echo down the corridor, with the choker necklace I gave her broken at my feet.
Her words…her anger…they hit harder than anything I could have imagined.
I’ve hurt her. She thinks I’ve betrayed her.
The thought claws at me. Picking up the collar, it feels heavy in my palm, like it now holds all my sadness.
I want to run after her, to pull her back into my arms, to explain, to fix, but I can’t. Not yet. Not like this. Not when she needs space to breathe, to process what I have done…or what she thinks I’ve done.
My attention snaps to Vittoria. She’s leaning casually against the wall where Elliot had landed, the hole in the plaster big, her expression neutral like she hasn’t just detonated my world. I feel a sudden, icy pulse of anger.
“You,” I growl. “What did you do?”
She just stares at her nails, picking blood out from underneath them—Elliot’s blood—unbothered. “What do you mean?”
I step forward, my eyes narrowing. “Don’t act stupid with me. Her friend, Kayla. You turned her. Without telling me. You hid it.”
“I did.” Vittoria shrugs, as if this were an afterthought. “So what?”
Her disobedience scrapes against my control.
“If she doesn’t matter to you, then I’ll kill her and whatever inconvenient attachment you’ve developed along with her.”
“V-Vittoria?” the girl calls from the bed, her voice thin with worry.
I step toward the bed, but Vittoria moves fast and blocks me.
“Don’t.”
“You have one chance—just one—to tell me how this happened and convince me not to end her,” I say.
“Lucian—”
“One chance.”
She bares her fangs at me. “Fine.” Then, after closing the door and blocking Kayla from view, she says, “The girl…became someone I care about, if you can believe it.”
“I can’t.”
She ignores me. “And I knew if I told you, you’d either forbid it or, worse, mock me for it. So I kept it quiet.”
She’s right. I would have done both those things because with the way Vittoria is, I have to keep limits on her younglings, otherwise she’d raise an army of them and bleed Tenebris dry. Not to mention she was my harshest critic when it came to Nell and also with Elliot.
“I thought loving a human was a weakness,” I say and cock a brow.
She grunts. “See, this is what I mean.”
“But am I wrong?” I ask. “There’s a saying about glass houses and throwing stones.”
“Fuck you. I told you I had my reasons.”
“So you want me to believe that you turned Elliot’s friend because you actually have a heart?”
“Is it that shocking to you?”
“It is,” I say.
“Yeah, well, things happen. What else do you want me to fucking say?”
I grit my teeth. I should be furious with her.
I am furious. And really, I should kill Kayla just for Vittoria’s insubordination, and if it were anyone else besides Elliot’s friend, I probably would have.
But erasing Kayla from this will only makes things worse.
Not only that, but it’s not what Vittoria did that I’m consumed with—it’s Elliot.
Her hurt, the fire in her eyes, the betrayal she feels so completely.
I can’t take my mind off the way she looked at me when she left, convinced I’d manipulated her in the worst way possible.
“You may have just pushed Elliot straight into Santiago’s arms,” I mutter.
“Me?” she says with bite. “Don’t pretend it’s not your own failures she’s punishing you for.”
My own failures.
I run a hand over my face, and my memory latches onto something else—the words she spoke before she stormed off.
Elliot thinks I’ve betrayed her. She thinks I’ve used her, controlled her…lied to her.
The phrasing, the venom, the way her mind worked through the betrayal… Santiago. This entire thing reeks of him.
The only people who could have told her about Nell are him or Vittoria. Vittoria wouldn’t fucking dare, but Santiago…he’s wanted Elliot since the moment he laid eyes on her.
He’s always tried to take what’s mine, always circled my life looking for leverage. He knew Elliot would never choose him willingly.
And if he couldn’t kill me in the fire, he’d settle for something worse. Destroying me by breaking her heart.
I’m going to have to find her. Tell her what really happened. Admit to my faults in the past.
Elliot deserves to know what kind of monster chose her.
Nell wasn’t a plan. She wasn’t strategy. She was a consequence.
One bad night. One lapse in discipline. An innocent couple who never should’ve crossed my path. I realized what I’d done only after, when I found the address, the proof that something fragile and innocent had been left behind.
A child.
I didn’t watch her because I wanted to.
I watched her because the guilt wouldn’t let me leave.
It may have been stupid of me to do, but watching over Nell as she grew up gave me purpose, connected me back to a part of me I thought had been lost a long time ago.
As she grew, I told myself I was protecting her. That distance and money and shadows were enough. But by the time I understood what was happening, I was already woven into the edges of her life. I had gone from an observer to a devotee.
I fell in love with the idea that I could keep her untouched by the darkness I knew so well.
That was my sin.
Not so much a desire, but possession disguised as something else.
I never told Nell the truth, that I had been the one to rip her parents from her that night. But it was not because I was afraid to lose her. It was because she would’ve finally seen me clearly. And I wasn’t ready to be seen.
Elliot was different.
She met me with her teeth bared. She pushed back. She challenged me—used me, even—to get what she wanted.
She chose me knowing exactly what I am. Knowing what I’m capable of.
I love Monty. And that’s why…I need to let her go.
“You’re not going to go get her, are you?” Vittoria asks. “Santiago will be expecting you to. He’ll want a fight.”
“I know,” I say. I draw in a breath and hold it until my chest burns. “But I’m not going after her.”
Vittoria’s brows lift. “Since when do you let anything you want walk away?”
I don’t answer right away. My gaze drifts to the elevator door which Elliot had disappeared behind.
“She wasn’t happy,” I say at last, my voice flat. “Not with me. I took her choice away when I turned her. I—”
“So what? You’ve made mistakes.” Vittoria looks at me. “Besides, she loves being a vampire. It’s obvious. You did her a favor.”
But I shake my head. “If there’s even a chance she can find peace without my shadow over her, then I don’t want to interfere.”
She scoffs. “You’re just going to let this destroy you? You love her. Even I know that.”
I glance at her. “Life will go on. As it always does.”
Vittoria watches me like she knows I’m lying—to her, to myself—but she doesn’t argue. Instead, she says quietly, “For what it’s worth, this might be the cruelest thing you’ve ever done to yourself.”
She’s probably right. But if letting Monty go is the only way she might find happiness, then I’ll bear it.
Because the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes.
As much as I hate to admit it, I was never capable of loving her the way she deserved to be loved.