Chapter Twenty-One – Jessa
Chapter Twenty-One
Jessa
From floor to ceiling, the vault is filled with gold bars, platinum bars, precious stones, and jewelry.
I stand in the doorway, unable to move. The gold bars are stacked in neat pyramids on the floor, resting on plush burgundy rugs that look like they were woven centuries ago but haven’t aged a day.
Platinum bars sit beside them in the same arrangement.
There are hundreds of bars. I don’t know how to count this kind of wealth.
I don’t have a frame of reference for it.
The walls are lined with shelves which are filled with glass boxes.
Inside the boxes sit precious stones: diamonds, topazes, sapphires, rubies and emeralds.
Some of the gems are loose, resting on velvet cushions, others are set in jewelry – necklaces draped across silk, tiaras propped on stands, rings, earrings, and brooches.
Between the shelves, paintings hang in gilded frames.
They’re old, the sort that belong in museums behind glass and rope barriers.
The canvases have darkened with age, but the colors are still vivid and alive.
I don’t recognize any of them. They’ve been locked in this vault for so long that the world forgot they existed or never knew about them.
Sculptures are mounted on stone pedestals.
A woman’s torso in pale marble, a bronze head with curls carved so finely they look soft enough to touch, a child reaching upward with both hands, fingers spread wide.
Against the far wall, there are cases filled with coins.
I can’t see the details from here, but I expect them to be rare and ancient.
Wooden crates hold rolled parchments. On a separate shelf, books with cracked leather bindings lean against one another, and I’m certain they’re first editions.
Illuminated manuscripts, maybe, texts that scholars would kill to study, and collectors would pay fortunes to own.
I take a few steps inside the room and collapse. I fold forward, pressing my hand over my mouth. The vault is impossibly full, and I sit in the middle of it like a child dropped into someone else’s dream.
This is mine. All of it. By birthright, by blood, and by surviving what no other Holloway could survive. No one will contest it. No one can take it from me.
I am officially one of the richest people in the world.
My brain won’t accept it. I’ve been poor my entire life.
I’ve split rent with my mother in a cramped apartment where the heat barely worked, eaten ramen for dinner more nights than I can count, checked my bank account before buying coffee and decided I couldn’t afford it.
I’ve worn the same boots for three years because replacing them wasn’t in the budget and lied to my mother about eating lunch out, so she wouldn’t worry about me skipping meals.
That was my life an hour ago. That was my life this morning.
Things I never even thought about are possible now.
My psychology practice was always the dream, and it still is, but it was enormous when I was broke.
It was reaching for the stars. Now it feels small, insignificant.
I could open ten practices. I could fund research, hire the best staff, and treat patients who can’t afford to pay because I don’t need their money.
I could do everything I ever wanted and barely make a dent in what’s sitting in this room.
“Are you all right?” Castien asks.
I shake my head. I can’t form words just yet.
“I see there’s another door,” he says. “Do you think it leads to the exit?”
His practical thinking snaps me out of my trance. I clear my throat and push myself to my feet.
“Yes,” I say. “I believe it leads to the beach. We’ll need help. Maybe a helicopter.”
“I can contact Yasmin Bayard and ask for one once we’re outside.”
I laugh.
“Can you believe I can afford to pay for a helicopter?” I walk toward the nearest pyramid of gold bars and run my fingers over the top one. “Fuck me, I think I can afford to buy a private plane.”
Castien looks around the room.
“I believe you can buy many things with what’s in here. A castle, an island, a whole country.”
A squeak comes out of my throat, high and involuntary, and then I’m dancing. I spin past the gem cases, jumping up and down. I peer into glass boxes and stare at rubies the size of grapes.
“I’ll have to get all of this appraised,” I say, circling back toward the paintings. “I’ll need experts, accountants, lawyers. I’ll need a whole team just to catalog what I have.”
“Congratulations, Jessa. You did it.”
I turn to face him, and my smile dies.
He’s standing near the entrance, rigid. His wings are pulled tight against his back, his shoulders are locked, and his body looks like it’s bracing for impact.
There are tracks on his cheeks, two faint lines of silver.
I know they’re the evidence of tears dried into pale streaks.
Seeing them siphons all the joy out of me.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I whisper. “Thank you, Castien.”
He nods, but he’s not looking at me. His gaze is fixed on a point somewhere over my shoulder.
“Shall we see where the exit leads?”
He walks to the second door before I can answer and pulls it open. Nothing happens. There’s no trap or final test. I watch him step through, and I can’t help but wonder…
Is it over between us? Does it have to be?
I feel something for him, and it’s not just lust. I’m sure of that much.
But everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours has been so intense, so compressed, that I can’t tell where adrenaline ends and real emotion begins.
I need time to sit down with no death threat hanging over my head, and sort through what I feel without the pressure of survival distorting everything.
I know I broke his heart. I watched it happen.
His eyes flickered and dimmed, and tears ran down his face, possibly for the first time.
But there was no other way. The magic demanded truth, and the truth is that I don’t love him yet.
I don’t believe you can love someone after a single day, no matter how extraordinary he is.
But that doesn’t mean love isn’t possible.
He told me he loves me, and I believe him.
His emotions are young and unguarded, free of the walls I’ve spent years building around me.
He feels without filtering, without second-guessing.
I’m not built that way. I question everything, especially my own feelings, because I’ve seen what happens when people confuse passion for love.
But I’m getting there. I can feel it growing.
Something that started as attraction and curiosity has become deeper, heavier, and harder to dismiss.
I just need time to understand whether it’s real, or whether twenty-four hours in deadly conditions made me mistake the relief of being alive for something more intimate.
It’s easy to mistake lust for love, or love for lust.
“Are you coming?”
I snap out of it and rush after him.
“Yes, of course.”
I follow him into a wide corridor that slopes upward.
The air grows warmer with each step, salt and wind replace the damp cold of the caves, and soon enough, we emerge onto a beach.
The sun is up in the sky, and its warmth on my skin feels like a blessing.
Thank God it’s not raining again. It’s an unusually lovely day for November in Cornwall, and I choose to take it as a sign that things are finally turning for me.
Above us, rocky cliffs jut toward the sky. The tide is low, and the sand is wet and dark where the water has pulled back.
I look back at the mouth of the cave and notice that from out here, it looks like nothing. It’s a shadow in the cliff face, a shallow indentation that wouldn’t warrant a second glance. Glamor, probably, magic that hides the opening from anyone who doesn’t already know it’s there.
I open my mouth to make an observation about the cleverness of it, but something drops on top of me. I hear pebbles scattering down the cliff, then everything goes black.