Chapter Thirty-Six
Lia
“Rose was an impediment. I resolved it. Efficiency demands difficult choices.”
He says it like she was disposable. Like she was nothing.
To me, she was everything.
“You killed the woman you had three children with because—why, exactly? You needed more power? You—”
“Silence, child.” His eyes narrow. “She began conspiring against me. I removed the threat. I upheld my role. I provided for my wife, my family. I kept you and Leo safe and out of my business. If Rose had done her part as a devoted wife, she’d still be alive.”
Safe? Is he insane?
“You terrorized your own children. That isn’t safety, it’s domination. It’s abuse.”
“Call it what you please. I could have killed you and Leo like this—” He snaps his fingers. “Consider yourselves fortunate. I already offered you a swift death.”
“Burning alive is a swift death?” I counter.
Joaquin’s mouth curls, amused in that condescending way of his. “Burning was mercy compared to what comes next.”
I’ll never understand how someone becomes this vile.
“Why?” I demand. “What’s the point of all this? Why do you kill innocent people?”
“Rose hid you from the truth. She sheltered you from what the gifted truly are. This world is inherently dangerous. People with abilities believe they deserve freedom. Freedom breeds chaos. It invites anarchy.”
He lifts his chin, eyes gleaming with conviction. “They are animals. Control is a necessity. They need a hand strong enough to keep them in line. I offer them a choice. Stand with me, or fall beneath me. What is a man of power if he does not grant choice?” He pauses. “That hand is mine.”
“Murdering anyone who won’t obey you is order?”
“You speak of order, yet you understand none of it, child.”
His foul, corrosive force slams into my mind like acid sizzling through my cranium. The pain is vicious enough to rip a sound from my throat, something between a gag and a scream.
Reality buckles. All that’s left is my own screaming and a tunnel of darkness swallowing me, yanking me through space and time.
I’m standing on an unfamiliar lawn. The grass is perfectly trimmed, impossibly green. The air is cool and clean, with clear blue skies, sunlight, and a gentle breeze brushing my skin.
“Where are we?” I gasp, feeling like I’m drowning in poison.
“In your mind,” he answers calmly. “Watch and learn.”
His presence is nothing like Kylo’s. Joaquin feels like frostbite and fire at once, a cold burn that blisters through my thoughts.
I don’t feel whole, more like a faint outline of myself. He stands beside me, hands clasped behind his back, watching the scene unfold like he’s unveiling a masterpiece.
“My father, Dominic, was murdered shortly after my eighteenth birthday. He was a telepath and empath, deeply respected by everyone who knew him. He loved my mother, Gianna, fiercely.”
A handsome man appears on the grass. Joaquin is a spitting image of him—slacks, sleeves rolled, the top buttons of his shirt undone.
“That’s Dominic,” Joaquin says.
Next to him, a beautiful woman materializes. They’re laughing, kissing, wrapped in the kind of effortless intimacy most people dream of. Their faces gleam with a happiness so genuine it hurts to look at.
Her short white curls are perfectly set, her bright eyes kind. She wears a white dress cinched at the waist, red heels to match, and a pair of pearl earrings.
“That dazzling woman is my mother,” Joaquin adds. “Let me tell you a story. Maybe then you’ll understand the sacrifices I’ve made to bring harmony to our world.”
“Dominic’s twin brother, Andre, was jealous of the love my parents shared. He’d been secretly in love with Gianna for years. Andre was an advanced vision seeker—one of the rare few who could do more than see the future. His envy eventually consumed him.”
Andre’s head jerks from side to side in erratic snaps. Around him, a constellation of electric-white sparks erupts—tiny orbs peeling away from his body, drifting outward in a slow, shimmering current, pulsing in sync with the blinding glow of his eyes.
I’ve never witnessed anything like it.
“He didn’t care about the consequences of tampering with fate. He was greedy. Self-serving. And because of that, my mother died,” Joaquin says, his voice a whisper of poison threading through the scene.
“Andre spent years sabotaging my parents’ relationship. He failed every time, until his obsession consumed him. He sought to kill my father, but fate twisted cruelly, and she died instead.”
I watch, paralyzed, as Gianna takes her final breath. The scene darkens, changing to the image of her grave. Then everything shifts again. I look at a hollow, grief-stricken Dominic dragging a young, hard-eyed Joaquin out of a classroom.
“After losing my mother, Dominic was driven by revenge. One morning, he pulled me out of school to help him find Andre. When we tracked him down, we delivered justice the only way Dominic believed it could be served.”
Andre’s death is brutal, swift, and absolute. I wince, watching the finality of the act.
“I was fourteen. Andre was my first kill.”
The images shift again. Years of barbaric training pass in rapid succession. Dominic’s voice echoes around me, unwavering: “Our world needs rules. Structure. Remember this, my boy.”
“After Andre,” Joaquin continues, “Dominic swore nothing like that would happen again. He sought to protect families from the disorder gifted people could unleash. That was when the idea of the Aether Hunters was born.”
Scenes rush by—Dominic molding him, punishing weakness with violence, shaping him into the cruel man I know today.
“For the next four years, Dominic trained me relentlessly, passing down everything he knew. He believed order was the only path to survival. But before he could turn his vision into reality, he was murdered.”
Joaquin shows me the final memory.
Dominic is asleep, unaware, his breathing peaceful. A woman stands at his bedside, her silhouette outlined in the dark. She strikes, driving a knife into his chest, right through the heart.
Her face is a mask of broken fury. Her short black hair frames her sharp features, falling above her chin. I watch, horrified, as she siphons the remaining energy from his dying body and then vaults out the window into the night.
“Lina, Andre’s ex-girlfriend, fled. My father was gone. I, however, made certain she paid for what she’d done.”
The helplessness and failure Joaquin once knew now feel like my own.
The scene ruptures, and darkness surrounds me.
Deep and endless.
Puddles ripple under my feet, offering only a faint white glow beneath Joaquin’s silhouette, enough to make out his features.
He grins triumphantly, as if he didn’t drag me through the most horrific moments of his life.
“Now do you understand why there must be structure in this world? Without it, people act on their wild instincts. They kill without restraint. After that night, I vowed to follow in my father’s footsteps. I would hunt anyone with power and destroy those who oppose us.”
“Tragedy doesn’t excuse what you chose to become.”
He slaps me. My teeth click together. “Foolish girl. Of course you don’t understand.” He smiles. “No matter. That little history lesson was only a distraction.”
“From what?”
“I knew you’d eat up every bit of my past because of your bleeding heart, as Rose did. Why do you think she never left? While I was showing you a montage of my poor, pathetic upbringing, I was skimming through your thoughts and memories, needing to see for myself if what Draven uncovered was true.”
“If what is true?”
“You are the secret weapon I’ve been missing. My powerful siphon, born with telepathy and empathy. Together, we could wield power this world has never seen.”
“I’d never join you. I’d rather die.”
He squeezes my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. He clicks his tongue. “You’re like your mother. Your stubbornness will only prolong your suffering.”
I stare into his eyes, trying to find a single trace of the man my mother once deemed worthy of her heart.
“She knew what kind of man I was. She was a lost soul clinging to comfort instead of truth.”
“I think you compelled her.”
“I don’t have to use my power to make a woman hunger for me. They find their way to my bed quite willingly.”
He releases my cheeks and grips my neck instead.
“I met Rose soon after my father was murdered,” he says smoothly.
“Meeting her did halt my original plan to fulfill my father’s wishes and commence the Aether Hunters—for a time.
I fell in love with her quickly, and she became pregnant with Draven only months later.
Having a family slowed my efforts, but I never stopped watching the world around me.
It was still full of death, disorder, and weakness.
Once Draven was of age, I resumed my father’s work. ”
“You’re no different from Andre. You’re weaponizing your power to serve your own ends and leaving a wake of innocent dead to prove it.”
“Ignorant child!” he bellows, slashing his arm through the air.
Dominic projected his pain onto Joaquin, turning him into the man he is today. But pain doesn’t excuse what Joaquin has done. It doesn’t turn brutality into protection.
It only keeps the cycle alive.
I’ve stood up to him my whole life and paid the price for it.
Back then, I was powerless.
I’m not anymore.
I shove his chest and kick him in the shins. I turn and run, desperate for an escape. Everything is dark, and I’m sprinting into nothing, but it’s still better than being near him.
I need to evict him from my mind.
His laugh echoes through the void. “Once I’m in, there’s no escaping me.”
I slip and fall, like something grabbed my ankle and dragged me down. I hit the puddle face-first. My chest seizes, my lungs convulsing as water floods them. I thrash and thrash, but I’m trapped.
“You are mine to break. Why do you think Julian felt so entitled to your body? I gave him the permission you refused.”
My stomach lurches. Horror claws its way up my throat, choking me worse than the water.