Chapter 32
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
IVY
Veilarath stretches on forever, and I spend every minute of the drive with my forehead pressed to freezing glass.
Nobody talks as Khloe drives. Everyone breaths carefully, like I'm a fragile ticking time bomb.
Asher’s thigh brushes mine.
I refuse to look at him.
Every lesson Emeric drilled into me is connecting more and more, and I grip my knees as his design becomes clear.
I fucking hate that some part of me always knew. The maps never matched, and Désamour smelled of pine and cold stone instead of the French countryside.
“Ivy.” Asher hasn’t let anyone stitch him up yet. Whatever’s lodged in his side is still in there, keeping his blood where it belongs. “Baby, say something.”
My jaw locks.
“Anything. Scream at me. Call me a piece of shit. Put another bullet in me—I don’t give a fuck. Just—“
“You’re le parrain of the French Mob.” I blink. “You’re Le Boucher Sans Loi, a ruthless killer who chops people into pieces.”
Silence fills the car.
“Not people. Fucking enemies, Ivy. And Le Boucher was a means to an end so that we can regain control of an organization that completely lost its way.”
My eyes snap to him. “And who created him? Le Boucher?”
Asher stares right through me. “You did. You started it, my grandfather trained it, and I fucking finished it.”
I’ve got nothing else to give him but silence.
“I created a monster.” My throat swells.
“That monster is your fucking pet, Ivy, and you fucking know it.” He leans forward, wincing when the movement pulls at his wound. “I knew what would happen if I told you.”
“I don’t care what you knew.” I turn back to the window. “I care that you didn’t tell me.”
I wish he’d fight me. Push me further. Atleast then, I’d have something to sharpen my rage on. Instead he takes every word I throw at him.
Khloe guides the car up a long private road, and I freeze.
Désamour.
Stone walls rise around the courtyard, their cracks threaded with wilted ivy. The fountain sits at the center, sealed beneath a thick skin of ice, every carved figure caught mid-pour.
No warmth resides inside. Because Nonna is dead and never coming back, and without her this home is just a house.
The engine cuts.
Khloe shoves her door open first, and winter pours in, stinging my eyes. The others spill out after her, Punk, Atlas, Luce, and Leon, their boots crunching toward the house while I stare through the windshield.
Asher doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
“You coming in?” He asks, fully prepared and not caring about whatever I throw at him.
“No.”
A breath leaves him. “Ivy—”
“I’m coming in.” I shoulder the door open. “Just not with you.”
I slam the door before he can answer.
My body belongs to someone else as I move up the steps, feet raw inside the boots someone shoved on me before we left Dovecrest.
I pause halfway up.
Daniel stands on the patio with his hands buried in his coat pockets, snow settling across his shoulders. His brows are drawn tight, carved deep by everything he kept from me.
Emeric knew.
Nonna knew.
Leon, Luce, Punk—they all knew.
But Daniel?
Daniel was my driver, my bodyguard, the face I searched for in every room and on every job. One look at him, and my entire nervous system would relax. I had someone there—a confidant, a fucking friend.
I trusted him.
He opens his mouth.
I walk past him like he’s a stranger.
“Ivy—”
I slam the front door closed, so caught up in Daniel’s betrayal that I forget I’m walking back into Nonna’s crime scene. My stomach caves in on itself and I squeeze my eyes shut, grabbing the stair rail before my legs give out.
Voices filter in from somewhere deep in the house.
I fucking trusted all of them.
“There was a house that needed to be built.”
I scoff, eyes snapping open onto the familiar wallpaper.
Fuck that house. The foundation was cracked before I ever moved in, and the walls came with blueprints someone else drew. Security? Oh no. You don’t get that either. Every lock in the place answered to someone else’s key. Right, Punk?
They all knew.
Footsteps on the stairs behind me.
I don’t turn.
“Ive, come, Luce is making hot chocolate,” Leon murmurs, unease thick in his tone.
I keep my eyes locked on the wall. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not, and it’s okay.”
“I’m fine,” I repeat. “Go back to whatever you were doing. Pretending. Scheming. Whatever.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“You want to be angry at me,” he says. “That’s fair.”
“I don’t want to be angry.” I pause. “I want to not have spent my entire life being a puppet for men.”
Leon doesn’t answer.
“Was any of it real?” I ask the question to the floor, letting our childhood memories run through me.
“Not the training. I’m talking about the nights we stayed up because I couldn’t sleep and you made me tea and told me stories about the places you’d been.
Was any of that real, or was it just—conditioning? Part of the script?”
“It was real," he mutters. “Ivy, it was real. I swear to you—”
“Don’t.” I back up, legs steadier than I expect.
I rush up the stairs before he can answer, slamming my door closed when I’m inside.
When you don’t know who you are, ask yourself how you feel.
Nonna’s words float up from the wreckage, and I close my eyes.
How do I feel?
Like a marionette with half its strings cut, still dragging itself across a stage it never asked to stand on.
Now what? Now I’m supposed to be in this house and remember that the only woman who could help me out of this mess is dead.
Sniffing, I push off the door and head for the shower. No amount of scrubbing is going to remove how dirty I feel, but it’s a start. The water beats down on my shoulders while I stare at the spot Asher shoved me against the last time I was here.
Is he still here?
Probably. I can’t imagine him leaving me to wallow on my own.
I stand under the spray until the water runs cold, scrubbing blood from under my nails, from the creases of my palms, from the place behind my ears where Aléia’s blood splattered when I opened her throat.
The reaction of her death as soon as that memory landed is exactly why I’m classified a weapon. “Give her more sedation. But not enough that she can’t feel what’s happening. Emeric?” Aléia called over her shoulder, the light above burning through my retinas. “Scalpel.”
Bitch. Fucking bitch.
She was a fucking Monét. A Monét. A shit one at that. Does Camille know who true family line? No doubt she does.
I need to stop thinking about it. So I scrub, mechanical and thorough, until there’s nothing left but clean skin and the faint tremor in my hands.
Stepping out, I wrap a towel around my body, and throw on a pair of linen pants and a cardigan. I can’t even be bothered brushing my hair as I tie it in a wet knot on the top of my head.
Teeth. I need to brush my teeth.
I go through the motions, but everything reminds me of everyone.
Tightening the cardi around my waist, I shift the curtain aside and look down at the yard.
Nonna’s greenhouse sits opposite the shed.
Whenever she’d have a quiet day, or she’d be battling with something none of us knew, it always seemed to help her.
She’d say that nature had a way of providing us answers if we were listening hard enough.
I pull on socks and boots, listening at the door before slipping into the hall. Fresh cookies sweeten the air, making my stomach rumble. Liars. My appetite vanishes, as low voices drift from downstairs, broken by long stretches of silence.
“I want to see her,” Jord muffles around his cookie.
My hand flies to my mouth to catch my laugh.
“Well, you can’t. Not yet…” Leon sighs. “She will come when she’s ready. You know what Ivy’s like.”
“She needs to know that I knew nothing.”
I know.
“She already does, dipshit,” Punk snaps, but there’s a heavy sadness in her tone.
What little smile I had slips.
I head down the opposite way as if Nonna herself were directing me.
Snow swallows my boots. The yard stretches white and empty between the house and greenhouse, and I cross it with my arms pinned to my chest, breath fogging as the wind cuts straight through my cardigan.
I shoulder the door open, pausing when I reach inside. Dead. All of it. Rows of brown stems collapse over the edges of their pots. Leaves curl into brittle fists on the soil. Nonna’s orchids hang off their stakes like wet tissue. It smells of frozen dirt and rot.
Moving slowly down the center aisle, I trail my fingers over a table of shriveled herbs. Basil, thyme, the mint she swore would survive a nuclear winter. The roots have gone black, my throat closing tighter with every step because this is what she left behind and we let it die.
At the end of the far bench, half-hidden behind a fallen trellis, ivory petals open to the gray light. Green veins mark their throats, the single stem standing straight in frozen soil, built for the cold. Hellébore.
My hand closes around the choker.
“The Hellébore has quite the rep in French folklore,” Asher murmured as he drapped the necklace around my throat.
His fingers brushed against my skin. “It was believed to ward off evil spirits and protect against dark magic.” Metal settled against my collarbone as he worked the clasp.
“Sounds suspicious.” I managed to breathe out with a chuckle.
“It was also known as the ‘Winter Rose’ because it flourishes in cold temperatures, where other flowers wither and die.”
I pick up the pot. Soft petals brush my knuckles, alive against my skin. My chest caves in around a ragged breath as I hold the last living thing in this dead garden, tears sliding hot down my face.
“Huh, would you look at that?” Asher mumbles from the doorway, and every muscle in my back locks.
I set the pot on the bench, and wipe my cheeks with the heel of my hand before turning around.
Dressed in a black hoodie and sweats, I can smell the soap on him from here. God, does he have to be so beautiful? I feel like i’ve spent a large chunk of the time I’ve known him cursing the Gods for creating someone quite literally perfect, with every fucking red flag known to man.