Chapter 33
Céline
That evening, I had become calm enough to be dangerous.
Vincent had left for work earlier with a kiss pressed to my forehead, the kind of casual affection that made my stomach twist because it felt real. I spent the afternoon pretending to work on Katherine’s proposal while the same sentence glowed back at me from the screen.
Cells do not merely endure stress; under repeated pressure, they learn to organize survival around it.
I read it until the words lost their meaning and became something I could almost touch.
Stress. Pressure. Survival. Organization.
Katherine had written science like she was trying to explain my own body to me, and maybe that was what made her a genius. She could explain me brilliantly in her own way. Maybe that was what made me monstrous.
I had taken her work because I needed a door. I had let her fall because I needed the door to stay open. And now Vincent had Katherine’s phone tucked in a drawer beside his bed, proof that he had been close enough to the terrace to know what everyone else did not.
He knew. He had known. Maybe not the exact thought in my head as my fingers loosened around Katherine’s wrist, but enough.
Enough to look at me after the funeral and see something other than grief.
Enough to blackmail me with her proposal.
Enough to touch the ugliest thing inside me and call it fascinating instead of unforgivable.
I do not believe he could love someone like me. He just enjoyed having something dangerous under his control and possession. A pet snake he could tame.
Miss Astoria slept on the window ledge, her white body curled neatly against the grey rainlight. Every few minutes, she opened one blue eye, watched me pace the room, then closed it again, apparently deciding that human moral collapse was beneath her unless it involved dinner.
Dinner.
The thought steadied me.
I searched recipes until I found something delicious enough to look like surrender.
Not Thai food this time. That was his move, and I refused to repeat anything he had given me.
I chose pasta with cream and herbs, roasted vegetables, bread warmed in the oven, and a salad dressed lightly enough to look effortless.
Nothing complicated enough to invite suspicion.
Nothing messy. Nothing that looked like desperation.
I was a good cook because I had taken over my mother’s chores at the cottage almost as soon as we arrived.
She worked long hours keeping the Montgomery house spotless, so I learned early how to chop onions without crying, how to season a sauce until it tasted like comfort, how to make simple ingredients stretch and shine.
Those afternoons in the small kitchen with the ocean roaring outside had been the only time the world felt manageable.
I had cooked for my mother then to make things easier for her.
Now I cooked for Vincent with the same steady hands, only this time the intention was different.
I showered before I cooked.
I washed Vincent from my skin with water hot enough to leave my shoulders pink and stood beneath the steam until the mirror blurred completely.
The marks on my throat did not disappear.
They sat there faint and unmistakable, less visible than last night but still present enough to make me feel claimed whenever I looked down.
I covered them with a high-necked black dress.
Then I took the small prescription bottle from the inner pocket of my bag.
It sat in my palm, ordinary and almost weightless.
I did not think about dosage. I did not think about the method.
I did not let the act become detailed enough to frighten me.
I only thought about Vincent’s drawer, Katherine’s phone, the way his eyes had looked at me for weeks with knowledge sitting behind them like a locked room.
He could ruin me. Not with the proposal.
Not anymore. That was nothing compared to what the phone meant.
He could say he saw me. He could say he knew I had let go.
He could say Katherine Montgomery did not jump, did not simply fall, did not leave the world through the neat, tragic story everyone had accepted because the dead could not contradict it.
Vincent could contradict it, and they’d believe the esteemed professor easily.
By the time he came home from work, the apartment smelled like garlic, butter, rain, and something dangerously close to domesticity.
The kitchen had become warmer from the oven.
The table was set. A candle burned near the window because I wanted the scene soft enough to insult him.
Miss Astoria sat on one of the chairs, watching me with grave suspicion, as if even she understood I was behaving too pleasantly to be trusted.
Vincent stopped just inside the doorway. His eyes moved over the table first. Then me. He said nothing for several seconds.
I smiled. “You’re late.”
His gaze stayed on my face. “I wasn’t aware we had plans.”
“We didn’t.”
He removed his coat slowly and hung it by the door. “You cooked.”
“I have eyes, Vincent.”
“That does not explain why you used them in my kitchen.”
I turned back to the stove. “You fed me last night. I’m returning the gesture.”
“That sounds unlike you.”
“I thought that was the polite thing to do.”
“You’re rarely polite when no one else is watching.”
“I can be grateful.” I rolled my eyes.
“No,” he said, walking closer. “You can be strategic.”
My hand tightened around the spoon. I kept stirring.
“Maybe both.”
He stopped beside the table, close enough that I could feel him studying the scene I had arranged. The plates. The candle. The glass was waiting near his place. The second glass near mine, untouched and harmless.
I had planned it carefully.
His gaze moved to the wine.
“Did you open this?”
“Yes.”
“You hate red wine. Thad made you suffer through it with every dinner because he owned a vineyard. You don’t have to do that with me.”
“I got used to it,” I say bluntly. Thad never knew that about me, but somehow Vincent paid enough attention to notice.
He laughed softly. The sound moved through me before I could stop it.
I turned away faster than necessary and picked up the serving bowl.
“Sit.”
There was a pause.
Then, behind me, his chair scraped softly against the floor, and he sat down.
I brought the food to the table and placed his serving first. He watched every movement, not openly enough to accuse, but with the calm attention of a man who had never trusted a gift in his life.
We ate in near silence at first. Vincent took one bite, then another. His face gave nothing away, which annoyed me because I had cooked well and wanted the satisfaction of him admitting it before everything changed. It was his last meal after all.
“This is good,” he said eventually.
I looked up. “You sound surprised.”
“I am.”
“Rude. I did chores for my mom all the time. We didn’t have housekeepers, unlike you or Katherine. We were the housekeepers.”
He leaned back slightly, still watching me.
The candlelight softened the severe lines of his face.
That felt unfair. Monsters should not look beautiful at dinner.
They should not sit across from you in white shirts with rolled sleeves and dark hair still damp from the weather.
They should not know how you take your coffee, or buy treats for your cat or stop when your breath catches wrong.
They should not make killing them feel like destroying shelter. I did not want him to die, but my life was more important than whatever love I could feel for this man.
I reached for my glass.
He reached for his.
For one suspended second, my heartbeat stopped.
His fingers closed around the stem.
He lifted it and paused. His eyes moved to mine over the rim.
I held still.
Vincent set the glass down without drinking. The sound was almost silent. It still struck the room like a gunshot.
“Drink mine,” he said.
My mouth went dry. “What?”
He pushed his glass toward me with two fingers. “Drink mine.”
I laughed once, lightly enough that it almost sounded real.
“Why?”
“Because you prepared it.”
“So?”
“So you should have no objection.”
My hand tightened around my own glass. The apartment seemed to shrink around the table. Rain moved against the windows. Miss Astoria jumped down from her chair and disappeared into the hallway with the excellent survival instinct she denied me most days.
“I have my own.”
“I know.”
“Then drink yours.”
“I would rather watch you drink it.”
The softness of his voice made my stomach drop.
He knew.
I had been stupid to think otherwise.
I hadn’t made an obvious mistake. I know I hadn’t. But Vincent knew me too well now. He knew anger. He knew performance. He knew the difference between Selena cooking dinner because she wanted to and Céline arranging an execution in a black dress with a candle burning between us.
I tried to stand.
He moved faster.
His hand closed around my wrist, firm enough to stop me, careful enough not to bruise.
“Where is your medication?”
Everything in me froze while he watched my face.
There was no point pretending not to understand, but I did anyway.
“What medication?”
“Your bag.”
“No.”
He released my wrist and stood. I stood too.
“Do not touch my bag,” I said.
He looked at me.
“That was one of your terms.”
“Yes.”
“And you broke mine first.”
“I didn’t agree not to cook dinner.”
“No,” he said with gritted teeth. “You agreed, implicitly, not to drug me at my own table.”
“You don’t know that.”
His expression softened with amusement.
“Céline… Selena. Be real with me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He entered my room and opened my bag. My bag sat on the chair beside the bed, exactly where I had left it. He unzipped the inner pocket without hesitation, as if he had always known where to look.
He removed the bottle. Empty.
The small plastic thing looked obscene in his hand.
He turned it once, reading the label. Then he laughed.
“Benzodiazepines, my love?”