Chapter 26
Elora
I shoved my frozen hands into the pockets of my light gray coat, two bags of croissants from the corner bakery tucked under my arm, and hurried toward Rebirth Fragrance.
The moment I turned the last corner off Main Street, I froze.
Outside the shop, at the bottom of the wooden steps, stood a tall, imposing figure.
Lucien.
He wore a black cashmere overcoat, left hand buried in the pocket, back straight as a rod, staring up at the dark green awning above my door. What made my heart clench was the stark white medical sling across his chest.
Last night's scene crashed back. That moment when he'd yanked me to the inside without hesitation, using his own back and arm to take the full force of that deadly impact. But I'd been so consumed with checking on Julian's injuries that I'd completely overlooked his blood-soaked sleeve.
My nails dug into my palms inside my pockets. An indescribable ache and hidden guilt crawled up my spine.
That arm... how many stitches? What if it hit bone?
"Elora, stop. Don't be stupid." I bit down hard on my molars, snarling at myself internally.
This was Lucien Genovese. He had access to the best medical team in New York. He'd survive. Him standing here now with that damned sling was just another manipulation tactic, trying to guilt me back into that gilded cage of suspicion and bloodshed.
I sucked in a breath of cold air, forcing that treacherous emotion down into my gut. I straightened my spine and crossed the street.
At the sound of footsteps, Lucien turned. The second our eyes met, a faint light flickered in his gray eyes.
"Good morning, Elora."
I walked past him up the steps, fishing keys from my bag. "Morning, Mr. Genovese."
"Did you... sleep well last night?" He stood behind me, voice carefully tentative.
My gaze locked on his suspended arm against my will, and the sharp words I'd prepared died in my throat.
"Your arm—" The words came out flat.
Lucien followed my line of sight, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly before spreading into a smile.
"Don't worry." He looked into my eyes, hope flooding them. "Just a few stitches."
"I'm not worried!" I whipped my head away and pushed through the door.
"Elora..." He rushed after me. "About talking—"
"Maybe later. I need to open. Mr. Genovese, please leave."
I hardened my heart and turned away, refusing to see the disappointment in his eyes. His footsteps retreated. Finally, I could breathe.
All morning I was distracted, his image standing in the wind and snow with that sling replaying in my mind. To refocus, I left the shop to my assistant and headed to the market for ham and vegetables—Leo wanted ham sandwiches tonight.
But as I rounded the corner from the market, bags in hand, a shrill, grating voice shattered the quiet.
"Elora!"
My breath caught. I spun around.
At the mouth of a dark alley stood three people. Brenda supporting Richard, Eleanor behind them, staring daggers at me.
God. They looked like rats crawled out of a sewer.
Brenda, who used to screech for half an hour over a broken nail, her face covered in frostbite and deep wrinkles.
Eleanor, the socialite who'd never worn anything but haute couture, now in filthy blackened jeans, her once-golden hair brittle and greasy, face gaunt, eyes full of venom.
"Elora!" Brenda's dead eyes blazed with manic fervor as she stumbled toward me, cracked lips trembling, tears already falling. "Elora... my good daughter... I was wrong, we were wrong..."
She reached for my coat. I jerked back, nausea surging up my throat.
"Don't touch me."
Brenda's hand froze mid-air, her face cycling through shades of gray and white, then her legs buckled, and she dropped to her knees in the snow.
"Elora, don't be like this! I know you still blame us...
It's my fault! But we've been sleeping on the streets for almost two years!
Fighting homeless people for food, digging newspapers out of trash cans for warmth!
Those loan sharks hunted us like rabid dogs—they stomped on Eleanor's fingers and broke two of them! "
Richard hunched forward too, tears streaming. Looking at these three haggard "family members" groveling before me, something deep inside still twisted. A decade of neglect and cruelty was real, but blood ties made it impossible to be completely cold.
I exhaled slowly and pulled all the cash from my wallet. "Take this. Find a motel, at least get a hot meal."
Brenda's eyes lit up instantly. She snatched the bills and stuffed them inside her coat, the grief vanishing from her face.
"I knew you still cared about us!" Brenda wiped her tears, expression turning sycophantic. "My good daughter, I have one more favor to ask! Just say one word to Mr. Genovese—tell him to call off the dogs! The debt... we can't pay it!"
My heart sank into a pit. There it was. This whole tearful performance was just to get me to beg the man I'd fought so hard to escape.
"I'm not Mrs. Genovese." I put away my wallet. "Haven't been for four years. Your debt has nothing to do with me."
"How can you be so heartless!" Brenda snapped, breaking into curses. "We raised you! One word from you could save your father and sister! You want to watch us die?"
"This is all your fault!" Eleanor finally looked up, venom practically dripping from her face. "If you hadn't provoked that devil, the Vance family never would've gone bankrupt! You owe me! You destroyed my perfect life!"
"I owe you?" I almost laughed at the absurdity.
"We fed and clothed you for twenty years! You never went without!" Richard's face turned vicious, voice threatening. "Fifty thousand dollars, Elora! Give us fifty thousand, and we'll disappear. You'll never see us again!"
My fists clenched, nails digging into flesh. "Dream on."
Richard's face went rigid, then furious. Brenda completely dropped the act, pointing at my nose and shrieking. "You ungrateful little bitch! Cold-blooded snake! We slaved to raise you, and this is how you repay us? Aren't you afraid of divine punishment?"
"What right do you have to talk about conscience?" I finally exploded. "When did you ever treat me like a person? I asked God so many nights what I did wrong, why my own parents treated me this way! If this is the family you gave me, I'd rather never have had parents like you at all!"
Brenda went red with humiliated rage, chest heaving. Seeing the pointing crowd, she suddenly broke into a vicious, almost manic grin. "Fine... just fine! Since you have no shame, I don't need to protect you anymore! You wish you were an orphan? You think you have Vance blood in your veins?"
My heart lurched, body freezing like I'd been struck by lightning.
"What... what did you say?"
"What did I say?" Brenda screeched. "You think I was disgusted by you from birth for no reason? Why I couldn't stand to look at you? Because you're not my daughter! You're a little bastard who doesn't even know who her real father is!"
My head exploded with a deafening buzz, like a thousand bees screaming in my skull. My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Your cheap birth mother died on a filthy cot in some slum hospital with you rotting in her belly! If Richard's crazy old bat of a mother hadn't insisted on dragging you home, you'd have been left to rot in an orphanage!"
Brenda spat. "You thought that shabby jade necklace was some treasure? It's not even Vance property! It's the worthless funeral gift your short-lived dead mother left you before she croaked!"
"I should've strangled you the day you walked through our door! Ungrateful piece of trash!"
The sound of the slap shattered the silence. Brenda's face swelled instantly as she toppled into the snow. Eleanor lunged at me with a snarl. "Dad! Grab her! We'll make Lucien pay with her as leverage!"
But before her hand touched me, a towering shadow descended. Lucien materialized in front of the crowd, those abyssal gray eyes locked on Eleanor's frozen hand, the murderous intent he'd been suppressing detonating in that instant.
"You're dead."
The bone-chilling cold drained the color from all three Vances. Their legs gave out and they collapsed.
"Enzo. Rocco."
Black-coated guards stormed out like panthers, surrounding the Vances.
"Drag these vermin away." Lucien looked down at them with contempt. "Break their legs. Sever every tendon in their hands. Dump them outside the U.S. If they ever show their faces again—bury them alive in Black Mountain Forest. Feed them to the wolves."
Rocco sneered and planted his boot on Richard's back. The guards gagged all three and threw them into an SUV trunk.
The whole thing took under thirty seconds. The gathered crowd scattered in terrified silence. The street went dead quiet.
Lucien slowly turned and walked toward me. But I had no energy to think about anything else.
I was an orphan.
All those years of cold stares, insults, injustice, and torture in that house—it wasn't because I wasn't good enough, wasn't lively enough, wasn't worthy of love. It was simply because I wasn't her daughter.
How absurd. I'd spent twenty years groveling for maternal love in a house where I never belonged, from a woman who shared no blood with me.
"Elora..." Lucien tentatively reached out his left hand toward my trembling shoulder. "Don't listen to that lunatic. I'm here... you have me. You have Leo."
I looked at him, vision blurring.
"Huh..."
"Elora? What's wrong? Don't scare me..." Lucien panicked.
I covered my face with both hands, laughing louder and louder, hysterically, tears streaming through my fingers.
"Elora!" Lucien dropped to one knee despite the pain in his arm, pulling me against him. "Cry it out! Hit me, curse me, just don't do this!"
I jerked my head up, shoving his hands away, lifting my tear-streaked face to look into his terrified gray eyes.
"Why do you look like that?" I laughed, wiping my face hard, feeling like the air in my lungs had never been clearer. "Lucien, don't you know how happy I am?"
I pushed myself up using the steps, arms spread wide, staring up at the gray sky, letting the tears fall. "It wasn't my fault! I'm not damaged! I don't owe them anything—not a damn thing!"
From this moment on, I was severed completely from that suffocating Vance family. I was free. My soul had never felt this light.
Lucien slowly stood, his hand gently cupping my face, thumb brushing away the cold tears.
"Yes." His voice was low and certain. "You were never damaged. No one in this world is better than you."
My heart skipped.
I saw the devotion and anguish in his eyes, so intense it could swallow me whole. Four years ago, I might have craved the warmth of that palm. But not now. I didn't need it anymore.
I didn't owe the Vances anymore. And I'd long since repaid what I owed the Genoveses.
I took a deep breath and calmly lifted my hand, removing his from my face.
"Thank you, Lucien." I looked into his eyes seriously. "Thank you for dealing with that mess today. And thank you for taking that hit last night."
"But as you can see, I'm fine. I'll be better. I'm done dwelling on the past, and I don't want any entanglements with people from it."
"Your arm needs rest. The wind and snow out here aren't good for healing."
"Mr. Genovese, please leave. And don't come back."