Chapter 70
LEX
Our Apartment - scared to fucking death
“Knox, this isn’t fucking working,” I mutter, dragging a hand down my face. My jaw’s so tight I can barely get the words out. “You need to take over.”
Haley’s arms cross over her chest, her voice is soft, trembling at the edges. “Yeah, babe. Lex is right. She needs you. It’s been two days. You have to bring her back.”
Knox doesn’t move. He just stares at the couch like it’s holding a bomb. “I don’t know if I can,” he says finally and the defeat in his voice makes my stomach turn. “Look at her. She hasn’t moved. Hasn’t eaten. She hasn’t even blinked since yesterday.”
“She did this after Zeke,” Haley whispers, voice cracking. “You were the one who got through to her. You pulled her out.”
She presses her knuckles to her mouth, trying to hold it together. “Please, Knox. Help her. I can’t,” her voice breaks completely. “We can’t lose her.”
“That was different, Hales,” he says, his voice shakes just barely, but enough to make me look at him. “Last time she never saw Zeke’s body. Never saw the blood. The damage. Just a closed casket and a thousand things left unsaid.”
He swallows hard, jaw gritted like it hurts to speak. “This time… she saw him. She held it. In her hands.” He glances toward the couch, where she sits in the same damn spot she collapsed in two nights ago. “Right when she was finally starting to connect with him after all these years.”
His voice drops to almost nothing. “She held her father’s head in her hands.”
A beat of silence.
“I’m worried that there isn’t anything left inside of her for me to pull out this time.”
Footsteps pad softly across the floor. Ellie appears beside us, her makeup smeared, blonde curls flat and limp like the air’s been drained out of her too. She’s holding a bottle of water in both hands, fingers wrapped so tightly around the plastic it crinkles.
“She wouldn’t drink it,” she says quietly. “I tried. Sat next to her for like fifteen minutes.” The tears start to fall from her deep blue eyes. “She just… looked right through me.”
I swallow hard. My pulse is hammering behind my eyes.
Dr. Monroe steps forward from the back wall, hands folded, shoulders tense under his dark green sweater. He’s been here the whole time, watching. Waiting.
Completely fucking failing.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice low and measured. “I don’t know what else I can do. If we can’t get her to eat or drink… if she won’t talk to me, won’t let me in.” He pauses, then says it straight. “We’re going to lose her.”
My chest caves at his words. Then I hear it, soft, broken, almost under her breath. That hum. Low and steady. A pattern.
“Hmm… hmm… hmm…
Hmm… hmm… hmm…
Hmm… hmm… hmm…
Hmm… hmm… hmm…”
Twelve notes. Just like Luca warned.
Something in Cade snaps. “Just fucking do it, Knox!” he roars, voice sharp enough to slice the air in half. Everyone freezes. Even Tex looks over. Cade’s fists are shaking, his chest heaving like he can’t get enough air.
“I don’t care what you have to do—beg, scream, slap her out of it—just get her back!”
He storms past me, nearly shoulder-checking the counter, pacing like a caged animal. His hands go to his head gripping his hair, clawing through it like he’s seconds away from shattering.
“Bring her back to us,” he mutters again, quieter this time, hands braced on the wall like it’s the only thing holding him upright. “Please, Knox.”
Knox exhales, shoulders sinking. “I’ll go try again.”
He walks toward the couch taking slow, measured steps like he’s approaching a crime scene.
Bella hasn’t moved. Not once. Still curled up where she first sat two nights ago, like she’s been carved out of stone.
She’s in one of Cade’s old hoodies now, sleeves bunched at her fists. No makeup. No shoes. Just… hollow.
Sabine and the girls got her inside and changed.
Haley held her up while Ellie wiped the blood from her palms. Sabine whispered something in Creole while she pulled the pins from her hair.
They got her out of the gown. Cleaned the smudged lipstick.
Then she sat down on the couch and hasn’t moved since.
Just stares out the window toward the city.
Knox lowers himself to the floor in front of her, cross-legged, just like he did yesterday. “Hey, B…” he tries, voice soft. “It’s me again.”
Nothing.
Cade drifts over to me, silent at first. His gaze doesn’t leave her.
“She looks like she’s already gone,” I mutter.
“She’s not,” he says automatically, but his voice falters at the end. “She can’t be.”
“Then where the fuck is she, Cade?”
Haley whispers next to us, “It’s like Zeke died all over again. Like he took whatever was left of her with him and now…”
“Now there’s nothing left.” I say.
She doesn’t argue. Just nods. Barely.
Knox keeps talking, still gentle, still useless. Her eyes don’t move. Her chest barely rises.
Tex’s phone buzzes sharp in the silence. He answers. “Yeah.”
A pause.
“Okay… Yeah… Thanks, Jack. Keep me posted.”
I turn to him. “Any news?”
“NYPD questioned every single person at the Masquerade. Nothing. No witnesses. No footage. No one saw a damn thing.”
He slips the phone back into his pocket. “Jack’s gonna head over to her dad’s place now. See if he can find anything useful.”
I nod, barely. “This has to work.”
There’s a knock at the door. Nate opens it and he walks in.
Roman Russo.
Impeccably dressed.
Calm and fucking alive.
“You shouldn’t be here.” My voice comes out low. Too calm. Too even. A warning before the detonation.
He just stands there, looking past me and at her. At Bella. Still curled on the couch. Still broken.
I lunge forward and slam him into the wall so hard the pictures rattle off the nails. “You shouldn’t fucking be here!” I shout, fists bunching in his suit jacket. “She didn’t deserve this!”
He grunts but doesn’t fight back.
“It should’ve been you,” I snarl. “Not her father. Not Henry. It should’ve been your fucking head in that box!”
“Lex!” Cade shouts.
Khoza’s already moving. Rez crosses the room in three strides.
Dad’s behind me in a flash, “Lex. Son, breathe. Stand down.”
I don’t hear him. I can’t. My vision’s gone red, hands shaking, pulse roaring.
“Let me go!” I bellow, trying to shove free.
Rez pins my left arm. Khoza grabs my shoulder. Dad wraps me in a brutal hold from behind.
“Get off me!” I roar, body straining. “She’s broken because of him!”
Sabine steps forward and presses a hand to my cheek and somehow, everyone goes still. “Your rage won’t heal her,” she says. “Your fury will not sew her soul.”
I freeze.
“She does not need your fire right now, l’ombre,” she murmurs, fingers still warm on my skin. “She needs your tether. The part of you that wraps around her and holds her to this world. That is your offering. That is your gift.”
I’m breathing hard. Glaring over her shoulder at Roman. But I stop fighting.
She nods and drops her hand. Dad lets go first. Then Rez. Then Khoza. No one speaks. Roman straightens his jacket but doesn’t say a word.
“Balcony,” Sabine says tilting her head toward the door.
Cade is already there, sliding the door open. We step outside. I lean on the railing, fingers digging into it. I can’t fix this. I can’t fight this. And for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do.
Cade shuts the balcony door behind us, sealing off the silence. Cold night air cuts through my shirt, but I barely feel it. I’m burning from the inside out. Cade stands a few feet away, staring out at the city like it might offer answers.
It won’t.
Not tonight.
I press my palms flat to the stone ledge. Try to steady my breathing. Try to find a rhythm. I can’t.
Sabine steps forward. The hem of her dress whispers against the floor as she moves toward us, like she’s walking onto sacred ground. “You’re both breaking,” she says simply.
Cade turns to her. “Because we’re losing her.”
“She’s not yet lost, Cade” Sabine says. Her eyes flick to the window behind us, to the shape on the couch that hasn’t moved in two days. “She is… drifting. Between this world and the next.”
My stomach twists.
“Then how do we pull her back?” Cade asks. “Tell us, Sabine. We’ll do anything.”
“She will not come back with noise. With logic. With fire. For her spirit is no longer in a place of reason.” She steps closer, looking between us like we’re pieces of some ancient ritual. “You must meet her there in the darkness. Where the soul bruises and the spirit hums beneath the skin.”
I shake my head. “You’re talking about her heart, her soul. What if we can’t reach it?”
Sabine places a hand over my chest, fingers splayed. “Then you’ll bleed with her.”
I sink to my knees. It happens so fast. One second I’m standing. The next, I’m on the cold stone floor, hands gripping my hair, throat closing.
“We can’t lose her,” I whisper, shaking. “I can’t. Not like this.”
Cade kneels beside me, wrapping an arm around my back, anchoring me as I fall apart. “We won’t.” But I hear the fear in his voice too.
Sabine kneels in front of us, her hands warm and steady on both our chests. Her eyes go half-lidded, like she’s seeing something none of us can. “You boys, you ain’t just her lovers. You’re her line of life. Her weight in this world.”
Her fingers press a little deeper, right over our hearts. “You’re the fire and the flood. Her balance and her madness. The pull in her bones when the dark starts whisperin’. You two boys are the gravity in her chaos.”
She leans in close, eyes glowing like coals. “If you don’t show her the path back, she won’t find it. She’ll keep wandering’ through shadows, lookin’ for a door that ain’t there.”
I lift my head, tears streaking my face. “How?”
Sabine’s gaze softens, “Once she is truly broken, your boy Knox will call to her and have her face the truth. But it is you she must follow once he’s through,” she says, eyes locking on mine.
She rises slowly, silk swaying with the wind. “She will walk through hell if she knows that you, l’ombre, are waiting on the other side.”