Chapter 25 #8
At 4:20, I try not to let my gaze linger too long on the door.
At 4:30, I start to feel stupid.
I check my phone—no messages, no missed calls, nothing but the quiet confirmation that I have been na?ve enough to believe that someone, for once, might have actually wanted me here.
I feel it then, that creeping humiliation settling in my throat. How could I have thought—why did I think—this would be any different?
I should have known she was only joking.
A lump forms in my throat, and my eyes sting with tears as I trace circles in the condensation on one of the glasses.
Around me, people laugh, talk, smile. And I stare at the empty chairs across from me, the untouched croissants, the two drinks that aren’t mine, and it hits me that I don’t belong here. Not here. Not anywhere.
An hour passes.
They never show up.
Accepting my foolishness, I make my way to the bathroom, and unsurprisingly, they still aren’t here when I get back.
The table is almost exactly the same. Almost.
The napkin I’d smoothed out is slightly crumpled, and the two croissants I had left in the centre? There’s only one now.
And right beside it, a ten-pound note that I know I didn’t put there.
I stand there for a long moment, staring at it, something hollow cracking open inside me.
I don’t know what’s worse—that someone felt bad enough to leave it, or that they didn’t feel bad enough to stay.
Christian
Around five years ago
My mother’s grip on my hand tightens as we approach the massive double doors.
She doesn’t need to say she’s afraid—I can feel it in the way her pulse hammers against mine, in the way she hesitates just short of knocking.
I don’t blame her.
This is her brother. The man who has spent years pretending she didn’t exist. The man she swore she’d never turn to. And yet, here we are, standing on the doorstep of the most well-known—and most feared—family in town.
It’s our last option. But a necessary one, I convince myself. After our house burned down and we lost everything, there really is no other rational thing to do.
For what feels like forever, we just stand there, her hand hovering near the door, but never quite making contact.
“Should I do it?” I finally ask, staring at her.
She exhales slowly, her fingers withdrawing, and nods.
I don’t hesitate. With a short, stiff tap against the wood, I knock.
The door swings open almost immediately, and a maid stands before us, her expression blank, her posture rigid. She must be used to turning people like us away.
“Mr. Steele isn’t expecting guests,” she says, not unkindly, but with the kind of detachment that makes it clear we’re nothing more than an inconvenience.
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
Then my mother does something I don’t expect. She lifts her chin, steadies her voice, and says, “Tell him Elena Ryder is here to see him.”
The maid blinks. Just once. But that’s all it takes.
A flicker of recognition passes over her face, and then, without another word, she disappears into the house.
My mother lets go of my hand. I don’t think she even realizes she does it.
Her fingers are trembling, and I take them in mine again.
She looks down at me, startled, as if she’d forgotten I was here at all. I squeeze her hand lightly, and something shifts in her expression—something softer, something grateful.
Footsteps.
Heavy, slow.
Gabriel Steele steps into view, and suddenly, I understand why my mother is afraid. This man is enormously built with a powerful, terrifying presence that practically takes up the entire doorway. His grey eyes cut straight through my mother before landing on me.
I don’t flinch.
“Lena,” he says finally.
His voice is slow when he says it, indifferent, then his gaze flickers back to me, assessing.
I stare back in the same way.
“Come in,” he says, stepping aside.
I glance at my mother, waiting for her signal, but she’s already moving. So, I follow.
“I presume you’re here to ask for forgiveness and beg to stay?” he says, and it is not a question.
My mother hardly reacts.
“Understand that I would not be here if I had any other option,” she says, her voice quiet but steady.
Gabriel tilts his head slightly, considering. “I see,” he says, taking a seat on a nearby couch. “Do you have a reason for thinking that I would want to help you?”
“You need me,” my mother says simply.
A flicker of amusement crosses his face. “Do I?”
“You need my compliance. You want the whole world to know where you’ve been sending your kids? Why, quite suddenly, the orphanage was shut down afterwards?”
Something in Gabriel’s expression shifts, just barely. It’s the smallest crack in a wall so thick it might as well be concrete.
He stands.
And then, with a voice that carries through the vast room, he calls out, “Kai. Wren. Elliot.”
The doors at the far end of the room push open, and three children step inside.
They are Steele children, through and through.
The girl is a copy of Gabriel. Same dark hair, same grey eyes, though her face is softer. The youngest boy, around six, I notice resembles their mother more, and somehow, appears the gentlest of the three.
Kai, though, with his odd, gold-ringed eyes and light-brown hair that’s so close to his skin tone that it almost blends in under the dim lighting, didn’t resemble Gabriel much. Or even his mother, Irina. But no one in this room could mistake him for anything other than their son.
In fact, I’ve heard he’s my age. Though I never would have guessed that myself. Because there’s something profoundly wrong in the way he carries himself, and despite looking my age, there’s nothing youthful about him.
There’s something empty in his gaze, something so hollow it feels like he isn’t here at all. Like his body is, but the rest of him got lost somewhere along the way.
It frustrates me that I don’t understand. That I don’t understand him at all, when I usually understand everything.
Because here is a kid, barely old enough to have seen much of the world, yet there’s a depth about him… a maturity carved entirely not from age.
I don’t know what it is about this boy that makes me feel almost sad for him.
Beside him, his sister stands still, barely breathing. Wren. She is younger, smaller, her face delicate and doll-like.
There are no bruises. No marks. No outward proof of what is troubling them. No indication of what has happened to make them this way. Nothing but the haunted look in their eyes, and the sorrow radiating off of them like an aura.
My mother inhales sharply, and when I look at her, I see it.
Recognition.
“Wren?” Her voice trembles.
The little girl’s lips part slightly, as if she wants to say something, but she hesitates. Then, my mother’s eyes snap back to Gabriel, her expression shifting from shock to fury.
“What did you do to them?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he says evenly, and my mother’s breath shudders.
“You sent them there!”
I don’t know what there is, but I know it must have been hell, because my mother looks like she wants to strangle him.
I barely hear them anymore.
I’m watching Kai.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. But his hand lingers on Wren’s arm, holding her back—not cruelly, not forcefully. Just… knowing. Like he already understands what’s happening better than anyone. Like he’s protecting her from it.
And then, his gaze flickers to me.
His expression betrays nothing. But his eyes—they dare me to say something. To look at him with pity. To react like everyone else.
They’re just so dead, so dim and empty. They seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, and for a moment I consider looking away.
Because I know—instinctively—that this boy doesn’t need empathy.
He doesn’t want it.