CHAPTER 28
Lucien
She stormed out of my office, heels clacking against the marble, echoing like gunshots in the silence I had built. Every nerve in my body ached to pull her back, to hold her, to tell her that her grief, her rage, her fire, all of it, belonged to me.
I didn’t move at first. I let her leave. Let her think she had some control over the chaos she felt inside. Let her believe her anger could stand against me.
But I knew. I had always known. Her rage was a flame I had lit the night her father died, a flame that would burn bright until she either bent to it or burned herself out.
I paced slowly, hands brushing the edge of the desk, eyes on the door she had vanished through. The room still smelled of her faint perfume mixed with the tension of our fight, the heat of her kiss, the lingering scent of fear I had tasted on her lips.
Ronan appeared silently in the doorway. His expression was neutral, but I knew he had felt the tension, the storm that had erupted between us. He didn’t speak, didn’t move forward. He had learned not to intervene when I was tangled in her world.
“She will calm,” I said finally, voice low, almost to myself. “Eventually. She always does. She doesn’t yet realize that the world is fire, and I am the only one who can control it for her.”
Ronan inclined his head, silent acknowledgment. He knew there was no reasoning with the obsession I carried. She was mine in ways that terrified even him.
I turned back to the city outside the window. Marseille glimmered beneath the rain, a city of shadows and opportunity, but it could burn in seconds if I decided it should, and I would. For her.