Chapter 47 Madeline #2
“I’m going to be fine,” I added, because if I kept saying it maybe it would become true.
“I’ll move. I’ll work. I’ll watch my shows in a different time zone and annoy a different set of men in boardrooms. I’ll have an ordinary dynasty life with an extraordinary anxiety disorder.
You can go back to your syndicate and your empire and your next submissive who doesn’t come with a mother-shaped trauma trail. ”
“Don’t talk about yourself like that.” He shook his head once. “You’re not meant to disappear into some other court.”
“Watch me.”
That landed. He went still, eyes searching my face as if there was a loophole written there.
“Where are you staying in St Cross?” he asked. “Thorne estate?”
The question was too casual.
“No,”
His gaze sharpened. “No?”
“I’ve… got my own place.”
“You’re not allowed to move out,” he said immediately, as if reciting law. “Your father said—”
I just looked at him.
He stopped.
The silence between us thickened.
“What changed?” he asked.
I lifted one shoulder. “Circumstances.”
His jaw worked. “Madeline.”
“It’s… complicated.”
His eyes narrowed. “Complicated how.”
I exhaled, tired in a way that felt cellular. “It isn’t like I’m moving in with someone. I’m staying in his house until I make the final move overseas. There’s a difference.”
“His,” Vince repeated, very quietly. “House.”
“You’d like him. He thinks in spreadsheets.”
His stare didn’t blink. “You’re staying in another man’s house.”
“Calm down. We’re supervised by three dynasties and four legal teams.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“The Marcellus dynasty doesn’t have a station in Villain,” I said instead, as if we were back at the summit. As if this were just another briefing. “St Cross is their base. It makes sense.”
The name hit him like a physical blow. I saw it.
“Marcellus,” he said.
I nodded once.
“You’re… aligning with them.”
“Apparently. My father is thrilled. My mother is in shock. It’s quite the event.”
He stared at me like he was waiting for the punchline.
It didn’t come.
“You’re moving there permanently, until after the wedding.” He caught his own phrasing, froze, then repeated it like he needed to hear it out loud. “You’re engaged.”
I let out a small, humourless laugh. “That’s the headline, yes.”
“To Aurelio Marcellus.”
“Aurelio likes my ability to negotiate. Personally, I think he oversold me to his board. I’ve been doing terribly this month. But foreign courts might be different. Maybe once I’m out of Villain and away from—”
I stopped myself.
Away from the version of myself that believed you.
“—away from the noise,” I finished instead. “Who knows. I might remember how to be competent.”
His stare didn’t move from my face.
“Were you even going to bother telling me,” he asked, each word deliberate, “that you were moving away and getting fucking married?
My nails dug into my arm. “You blocked my number. And, if you recall, told me you didn’t want me. That doesn’t exactly scream, ‘please keep me updated on your life events.’”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No. I wasn’t going to tell you. Formal announcement is more than enough.”
Something ugly flickered through his eyes at that.
“Aurelio is nice,” I went on, because saying it fast made it sound less surreal.
“My family gets a pretty merger announcement and a televised wedding. I get a fresh start in a city where no one knows my childhood trauma. You get me out of Villain’s courts.
” I met his gaze, steady. “It’s a win-win for everyone. ”
“It’s not a win. Marcellus wants heirs.”
“Most dynasties do,”
“Aurelio will expect them,” Vince pressed. “That’s what his board wants. Bloodlines. He won’t be satisfied with anything else.”
I held his eyes, feeling something cold and stubborn settle in my chest.
“You can’t judge. Crows breed six from their wives and call it legacy. You don’t really get to criticise other dynasties’ breeding expectations.”
His jaw clenched hard enough I could see the strain.
“You’re really going to marry him?”
“Yes,”
“You’ll move into his dynasty.”
“St Cross until the wedding. Then over to his court. New crest. New codex. New handlers.”
“You’ll carry his name,” he said, like he was testing how the words tasted.
“Apparently,”
He stared at me, eyes dark, breathing just a fraction too slow, like he was actively holding himself together.
“He doesn’t deserve you.”
“I’m just glad someone wanted me.”
I hoped this would be the moment he left. He didn’t.
He looked at me like I was slipping out of his hands and he’d only just realised he’d been the one to open them.
“Do you—” he exhaled once, shallow. “Do you like the fucker?”
“Lord Marcellus.”
His jaw flexed at the title.
“And yes, I like him.”
He let out a low, furious scoff. “Of course you do. Tell me why.”
I stared at him. “Because he was honest.”
That shut him up.
“Aurelio wants heirs. He said it in the first meeting. He wants three, minimum. Two would be acceptable. One would be a disappointment, but not a disqualifier.”
He flinched. Tiny. A muscle under his eye, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Easy to miss if you hadn’t been trained to read men for weakness.
“I drafted the clauses for raising our kids myself,” I added.
“I wrote in shared custody contingencies. No cutting me out of their lives. No exile or reallocation.” My throat tightened, but I kept going.
“Everything that’s expected of me is on textured paper.
Ink signatures. Finger scans on datapads.
Everyone saw. Everyone agreed. It’s all very civilized. ”
His eyes were dark enough to look almost black. “Civilized.”
“And I’m good at following rules. You proved that. I’ll make sure to tell Aurelio to thank you for the training.”
That one landed like shrapnel.
Something flashed across his face, hurt, anger, something. His shoulders rolled once, like he was trying to shrug off an invisible weight.
“He wouldn’t want to come near me,” Vince said, voice low and dangerous. “If he knew what I’m thinking right now, Marcellus wouldn’t set foot in this hall.”
“Relax, I haven’t told anyone I was your dirty secret.”
His head snapped a fraction. “You were not—”
“Stop. It’s fine. There is no feelings left to be hurt.”
He looked like he wanted to argue. He didn’t. Maybe he realised, finally, that my version of events mattered more to my life than his intent.
“Are you done now?” I asked. “Can this conversation be over.”
“You mean say goodbye?”
“We did that three months.”
Something like panic flickered in his eyes. It was quick and ugly and gone before it could become anything as human as begging.
“Do you want it,” he asked.
I stared at him. “Want what. The marriage? The move? The dynasty breeding package?”
“The out,” he said. “Do you really want to go. To leave Villain. To leave…” He swallowed. “Me.”
“Yes. I want out of Villain,” I said, each word deliberate. “I want away from my mother. Away from your courts. From you. I don’t care what I have to sign to get it.”
His mouth tightened like I’d put a hand around his throat.
“Because I actually think something’s fucking broken in me,” I continued, the words scraping on their way out, “and maybe if I get away from this city, I can force the parts back together. Or at least rearrange them into something that hurts less.”
“There is nothing wrong with you,” he said, too fast. Too raw. “You’re perfect.”
“Okay,”
His eyes flared, like he hadn’t expected me to accept that so easily.
I turned, ready to walk. Ready to find a bathroom, lock the door, get the hell away from him.
He stepped forward and cut me off.
Directly in my path, that Crow wall he’d always been able to become when he wanted to keep something in or out.
“Move,” I said.
“No.”
“You can’t block exits at a summit,” I muttered. “It’s rude.”
“Then I’m rude. You want a goodbye? Fine. Say it.”
I stared up at him, anger and grief twisting together until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. A small part of me thought he just wanted to keep me talking.
“You want a goodbye,” I repeated. “From me.”
His throat bobbed. “Yes.”
The unfairness of it almost made me laugh.
“You ended it.”
His eyes shut briefly like the memory physically hurt. “Madeline—”
“You don’t get to do that and then ask me for a clean exit,”
“Say you don’t want it,” he said hoarsely.
Silence pressed in around us. The corridor, the summit, the whole fucking dynasty.
“I want out. Of you. Of this. Of standing in front of you and forgetting how to breathe. If that requires a goodbye, fine. Let’s do it fast.”
His jaw clenched. “I’m listening.”
Of course he was.
I straightened my spine, smoothed my hands over my dress, and stepped back just enough to see him clearly without feeling like his body heat was going to melt whatever resolve I had left.
“Vincent Crow. Thank you for allowing me to work in your courts. For the opportunities, the training, and the experience.”
His eyes darkened at training.
“I wish you a long, profitable life. May your dynasty expand, your syndicate thrive, and your brothers stay alive and intact.” My voice tightened on that last part; I pushed through it anyway. “I hope Villain continues to worship you the way it always has.”
Pain flickered. Barely there, but there.
“And personally,” I added, softer now, “I hope I never see you again. Because every time I do, it rips my heart back open. I wish, that I’d learned how to shut it off the way you did.”
He closed his eyes like that physically hurt.
When he opened them again, they were full of something I didn’t have a name for.
His hands flexed at his sides, like he was restraining himself from reaching for me. Or at least thats what I hoped. The reality was, the man in front of me. I didn’t know.
We stood there, ten feet apart, three months older, a thousand cuts deeper.
Then I stepped around him.