Chapter 29 #2
“Leave Blackwater,” Vincent said.
Daniel scoffed, but it came out weaker than he intended.
“You don’t get to order me around, boy.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You think because you’ve got money—”
“I know precisely what money can do,” Vincent said calmly. “That is why you should listen carefully.”
Daniel’s jaw shifted. I knew that look. He was deciding whether violence would help him. Vincent saw it too, and something almost like amusement moved through his eyes before the regret returned.
“You will receive one payment,” Vincent continued. “Not from her. Not from her mother. From me. In exchange, you will leave Maine and never contact either of them again.”
My stomach turned.
Daniel’s attention flicked toward me. “How much?”
The fact that he asked so quickly should not have hurt, but it did anyway.
Vincent named an amount quietly enough that I could not hear it.
Daniel heard. His expression changed. Greed was an ugly thing on a familiar face.
For a second, I saw him not as a monster but as something smaller.
A man who had sold his daughter’s fear faster than he had ever protected her.
A man so ordinary in his cruelty that hating him felt almost humiliating.
Then he looked at me.
“Guess you got yourself a new keeper.”
My arm moved before I realized I had decided to display my rage.
My palm cracked across his face hard enough to turn his head.
The courtyard went silent. Daniel touched his cheek slowly, eyes widening with shock first, then rage.
I thought he would hit me back. I wanted him to.
That was the frightening part. I wanted the whole world to see him become what I knew he was, so I could stop sounding dramatic in my own memories.
Vincent stepped between us. A wall in a dark coat. Daniel looked from him to me, calculating again, adjusting himself around witnesses and money and the threat in Vincent’s silence. Then he smiled at me with a split of something almost paternal and completely vile.
“You always were your mother’s daughter.”
I did not answer. If I opened my mouth, I might scream.
Daniel stepped back first.
“I’ll wait for your call, sweetheart.”
“No,” Vincent said. “You’ll wait for mine.”
Daniel’s smile twitched. Then he left. He walked out through the archway with his shoulders hunched against the cold, just another poor man disappearing from a rich campus that would forget his face by dinner.
No one moved until he was gone. Then the sound returned all at once. Whispers. Footsteps. Someone asking what happened. Wendy saying my name from somewhere too far away.
I turned toward Vincent. He looked at me, and for the first time since I had known him, I saw something like caution in his face. Good. He should be careful.
“You did this,” I said.
“Yes, I did not plan for this to happen, though.”
My hand still stung from hitting Daniel. My mouth tasted metallic, though there was no blood this time. I thought of Katherine’s wrist slipping from my fingers and wondered if this was my punishment, finally finding me in another form. Maybe that was all life was.
The hands you let go return as hands around your throat.
“You brought him here so I’d run to you.”
Vincent’s expression did not change.
“Yes.”
Wendy made a small sound behind me. I had forgotten again. I turned and saw her standing by the stairs, face pale, eyes wide with the horror of someone who had heard too much without understanding enough. Behind her, two other students pretended to look away. This was public now.
I looked back at Vincent. He understood at the same time I did.
Damage had already happened. The name Selena.
My father. Money. Professor Moreau. Whatever rumour grew from this would not be accurate, but accuracy had never mattered much with student gossip.
People filled gaps with whatever made the story more interesting.
I had spent years making Céline believable. Daniel had undone part of her in less than ten minutes. My chest tightened. The panic tried to rise again, but anger held it down.
“Come with me,” Vincent said quietly.
I laughed.
“No way.”
“Céline.”
“Do not say my name like that.”
His eyes sharpened, but he did not move closer. Smart.
“People are watching.”
“They always are.”
“You need privacy.”
“I needed privacy before you turned my father into a campus event.”
The words struck him. Good. I wanted him wounded.
I wanted him bleeding in some way I could see.
But beneath the anger, my mind was already moving, cold and practical and traitorous.
Daniel had found me. People had heard. Wendy had heard enough.
My mother was still at the Montgomery estate, unaware that the man she had escaped had reentered our lives with Vincent Moreau’s hand at his back.
And Vincent was right. I needed privacy.
I needed locks. I needed a place Daniel could not reach, and students could not gossip through thin walls.
I hated that the only answer standing in front of me had created the question.
“I’m not going with you,” I said.
Vincent’s gaze held mine.
“No?”
“No.” My voice steadied. “Not like this.” I lifted my chin. “If I come, it is not because you won. It is not because you frightened me properly. It is not because I forgive you, and it is not because you get to keep me.”
The courtyard had blurred around us, the students, the wet stone, Wendy’s pale face, the old buildings watching like judges. None of it mattered as much as the rules forming in my mouth before fear could steal them.
“Miss Astoria comes with me.”
“Of course.”
“I get my own room. With a lock.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “Yes.”
“Sophia and Anya know where I am at all times.”
“Yes.”
“I can leave whenever I want.”
There was a small, dangerous pause.
Then he said, “As you wish.”
“You stay out of my phone, my laptop, my bag, and my medication.”
His eyes changed at the last word. I saw the question form. He nodded once.
“Okay.”
“You do not contact my mother.”
“Céline—”
“No.” My voice sharpened. “You do not contact my mother. You do not use her, scare her, help her, protect her, pay her, speak to her, or stand near her unless I tell you to. She is not one of your pressure points.”
For a moment, he was silent.
Then he said, “Agreed.”
“You burn the file on my father.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately, and my anger flared again.
“Vincent.”
“No. You may hate me for it, but no. Information keeps you alive.”
“You used that information to hurt me.”
“Yes.” The word carried a flicker of regret, the first real crack I had seen in him all day. “And I regret how it unfolded. I did not intend for him to come here. The arrangement was only for the call. I wanted you to feel the threat so you would choose safety. I see now that was a mistake.”
His honesty unsettled me. He was dangerous.
He was cruel. He had orchestrated this. But Daniel was out there, and Vincent was here, offering locks and silence and a man far more dangerous than the one I feared.
With my father circling, Vincent had become the safest option I had left.
I needed to keep Sophia, Anya, and my mom safe.
I could not let Daniel get to Miss Astoria either.
I turned away before the look could do something unforgivable to me.
Wendy stood near the steps, still pale.
“I’m fine,” I told her.
She looked like she might cry.
“No, you’re not,” she whispered.
I had no answer for that. So I walked past her, away from Westgrave Hall, away from the courtyard, away from the version of myself Daniel had dragged into public and Vincent had offered to hide.
Vincent followed several steps behind me.
My phone buzzed in my pocket as I crossed campus.
Sophia. Then Anya. Then Sophia again. They had already heard.
I answered Sophia’s call with wet fingers and a voice I barely recognized.
“I’m safe.”
“What happened?”
I looked back once. Vincent stood under the archway, watching me with the stillness of a man who had set fire to my house and was now waiting to see if I would choose his.
“My father came to campus,” I said.
Sophia inhaled sharply.
“I’m moving out for a while.”
I heard Anya’s voice in the background, sharp and panicked.
“Absolutely the hell not.”
Sophia ignored her.
“Where?”
I looked at Vincent again. He did not smile. Good. If he had, I might have changed my mind out of spite.
“With Vincent,” I said.
The silence that followed hurt.
Then Sophia said, very carefully, “Céline.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I do.” My voice shook then, but only once. “And I need you to know where I am. I need you to know I’m choosing it because right now every other option is worse.”
Behind Sophia, Anya said something I could not make out. Probably a curse. Probably a threat. Probably both.
Sophia’s voice returned softer.
“We’re coming with you to get your things.”
I almost said no. Then I thought of Miss Astoria. My room. The medication in my bag. Daniel’s face in the courtyard. Vincent’s yes to my demands. Katherine’s hand slipping from mine. It was all too much.
“All right,” I said.
When I hung up, Vincent was beside me.
“You understand,” I said without looking at him, “that if you lie to me again, I will destroy you.”
“Yes, I know you’re capable of it, my love.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No,” I said, finally turning to him. “You don’t. You have seen me survive. You have seen me steal. You have seen me lie. But you have not seen what I become when someone takes the last safe thing from me.”
His gaze moved over my face slowly. The regret was still there, quieter now, but real.
“I would like to see you safe instead.”
I looked away first.
“This is exactly why I should never trust you.”
“No,” Vincent said. “It is why you should never bore me. Next time, listen to me when I ask nicely, and things won’t get to this point.”
I laughed once, sharp and unwilling, at the ridiculousness of my situation.
Then I walked toward the dorm to pack my life into bags, while the man who had ruined all my safety nets followed me home to offer his own.