26. The Note That Broke #2
My grip loosened involuntarily, and Victor took advantage of the moment to push me back, to straighten his tie and smooth his disheveled hair.
“You're lying,” I said, but the crack in my voice betrayed me, revealing the doubt he'd planted like a virus in my bloodstream .
“Am I?” Victor's eyes glittered with predatory satisfaction.
I slammed him against the wall again, my hand trembling with the effort not to crush his windpipe. He coughed, blood staining his lips, but his laughter didn't stop—if anything, it grew more delighted, more intoxicated by the chaos he'd created.
“You think he's innocent,” Victor continued, his voice hoarse but unbroken.
“That he's some wounded bird you can rescue with gentle touches and patient love.
But I saw the truth underneath all that carefully constructed vulnerability.
He's hungry, Elias. Hungry to be touched, taken, consumed. He wants to be owned by someone strong enough to handle his darkness, and I gave him what you were too frightened to offer.”
“You're filth.” The words came out like venom, carrying all the disgust and hatred I'd been storing up for years of his casual cruelties, his calculated manipulations, his reduction of human beings to chess pieces in games only he understood.
“I'm practical,” he corrected smoothly, dabbing at the blood on his lip with a handkerchief that probably cost more than most people's monthly grocery budget.
“I neutralized a potential threat to this family's reputation while simultaneously discovering the source of your recent distraction. And I must say, after experiencing him myself, I understand the appeal.”
He straightened his tie with hands that barely shook, already reassembling the mask of civilized authority that let him move through the world without anyone seeing the monster underneath.
“He's intoxicating, isn't he? That combination of fire and fragility, that way he looks at you like you're salvation even while he's begging to be destroyed. I can see why you've been so distracted lately, why your work has suffered, why you've been making such poor decisions.”
“Stay away from him.” My voice was barely recognizable, raw with rage and something deeper—fear that Victor had seen something in Rowan that I'd missed, had touched something I'd been too careful to reach for.
Victor's smirk didn't falter, if anything growing more pronounced.
“Or what? You'll expose me? Destroy my reputation?” He laughed, the sound sharp and brittle as breaking glass.
“Then the whole town will learn not only what young Rowan and I did in the privacy of his apartment, but what you've been wanting all along.
Every careful touch, every loaded glance, every moment of improper desire you've been hiding behind a mask of mentorship and familial duty.”
The trap closed around me, each word a new bar in the cage he'd been building since the moment Rowan had set foot in Harbor's End. Destroy him, and Rowan went down with him. Expose the manipulation, and expose my own feelings in the process.
“Tell me,” Victor continued, his voice dropping to that same intimate whisper he'd used to describe violating Rowan's trust, “what will Harbor's End think when they realize that Elias Grant, pillar of the community, respected teacher and beloved widower, has been harboring indecent feelings for his dead wife's son? How long do you think it will take for the whispers to start?”
He moved back to his desk, pouring himself another whiskey with hands that were steady now, completely in control.
“The beautiful thing about small towns is how quickly reputations can be destroyed. A few carefully placed words, a photograph taken at the wrong moment, a witness willing to testify about inappropriate behavior—it all adds up so quickly.”
The office felt like a tomb now, airless and suffocating, the walls pressing in from all sides. Every surface reflected back my failures, my weaknesses, my inability to protect the person I loved from the monster who wore my brother's face.
“Even father knows better than to fight me now,” Victor continued, settling back into his leather throne with the satisfied air of a king surveying his conquered territory.
“He gave me his house, his dignity, his silence.
He sold out his own son's privacy for the price of keeping a roof over his head. Why should Rowan be any different? You both bend eventually, Elias. Everyone does, when I apply the right pressure.”
My fists trembled at my sides, every muscle in my body screaming for violence, for the simple satisfaction of watching Victor's smug face crumble under my knuckles.
But even through the red haze of rage, I could see the cameras in the corners of the room, could imagine him reviewing the footage later, using my loss of control as more ammunition in his war against everything I cared about.
“You don't get to say his name,” I managed through gritted teeth.
“Rowan?” Victor smiled, tasting the syllables like fine wine. “Such a beautiful name for such a beautiful boy. Do you know how he sounds when he's stripped of all that armor he wears? When the whiskey and the want have burned away everything but need?”
He leaned back in his chair, eyes half-closed like he was savoring a particularly pleasant memory.
“Low, throaty sounds that come from somewhere deeper than thought.
He looks up through those dark lashes and you feel like a god, like the only person in the world who can give him what he's really craving.
He'll do anything if you tell him it will make the hurt stop, Elias. Anything at all.”
I almost lost myself then. My vision tunneled, my hands rising of their own accord toward his throat. For a split second I could see it—the life leaving his eyes, the silence that would finally follow, the peace that would come with knowing he could never hurt anyone again.
But even as the violence surged through me, I caught sight of Victor's expression—not fear, but anticipation. He wanted this. Needed me to snap, to become the monster he'd already painted me as in whatever narrative he was constructing.
“Disappointed in yourself?” he asked conversationally, dabbing at his lip with that expensive handkerchief.
“I can see it in your eyes, brother. You wanted to kill me just now, wanted to wrap your hands around my throat and squeeze until everything stopped.
But you didn't, because deep down you know I'm right about what you are.”
“This isn't over,” I said, my voice raw and shredded by fury that had nowhere to go, no outlet that wouldn't make everything worse.
“Oh, but it is,” Victor replied smoothly, settling back into his chair like nothing had happened, like he hadn't just systematically destroyed everything I thought I knew about the person I loved.
“Rowan has already chosen, you see. He knows you'll always hesitate when it matters, always choose propriety over passion, always leave him wanting something you're too frightened to give.”
He smiled, and it was the most genuinely pleased expression I'd ever seen on his face. “And me? I don't hesitate, Elias. I don't waste time with moral qualms or ethical considerations. I see what I want, and I take it.”
I turned to leave, my hand already on the door handle, when his voice followed me one last time, soft and lethal as a blade sliding between ribs.
“Do you want the last detail, brother? Do you want to know what he tasted like after the whiskey burned away and he finally stopped fighting what he really wanted?”
I froze, my entire body locking up like I'd been struck by lightning.
Victor's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow managed to fill the entire room, to seep into every corner and crack. “Like surrender. Pure, sweet, desperate surrender.”
I walked out before I killed him, before I gave him exactly what he was hoping for.
The corridors felt endless as I moved through them, every step echoing like a gunshot in the institutional silence.
The fluorescent lights were too bright, casting everything in harsh relief, making the shadows seem deeper and more threatening.
The air was too thin, recycled and stale, carrying the smell of fear and failure and Victor's cologne.
Outside, the night hit me like a slap of cold water, but it wasn't enough to wash away the sickness he'd left crawling under my skin. The municipal building loomed behind me like a monument to corruption, its windows glowing with the light of a dozen small tyrannies playing out behind closed doors.
But under all the lies, all the manipulation, all the carefully crafted cruelty, was a truth I couldn't escape: I had abandoned Rowan when he needed me most, and Victor had been waiting in the shadows to take what I'd left unguarded.