He tore through the apartment like a force of nature, upending furniture, shattering anything his eyes landed on. Each act of destructionfelt like oxygen after too long underwater, like breaking the surface when he’d been drowning his entire life.
He swept everything from the counters with a single arc of his arm, dishes and glassware shattering on the floor. A liquor bottle flying toward the window.
Thirty-three years of obedience. Thirty-three years of swallowing his hatred, of playing the dutiful son, the perfect heir. Thirty-three years of watching his father destroy everything. And for what? For the privilege of living in a cage, of killing on command, of pretending the Heart’s poison hadn’t infected him to the core?
He was dimly aware of Shadera standing in the entryway, watching his rampage with calm eyes. Her presence registered like a distant signal through the static of his rage, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t regain control. Not yet.
Greyson went for the couch next, flipping the large sectional over as another scream ripped from deep inside of him. The exertion sent a spike of agony through his injured shoulder, and Greyson stumbled, his vision blurring at the edges. He caught himself against the window, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.
His legs gave out, and he slid down the glass to the floor, chest heaving, the rage finally beginning to ebb, leaving exhaustion in its wake. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, the pain no longer possible to ignore now that the adrenaline was fading.
The apartment lay in ruins around him, a battlefield of broken possessions, a landscape of destruction that matched the devastation inside him. His ragged breathing sounded obscenely loud in the sudden quiet. Shame crept in at the seams of his awareness—shame at his loss of control, at the animal violence of his outburst, at the knowledge that Shadera had just witnessed him break.
Another weakness revealed, another vulnerability exposed.
He leaned his head back against the glass, closing his eyes as he sucked in a ragged breath. Time seemed to stretch and contract around him, reality bleeding at the edges. He was pulling away from his body. Inch by inch. Like a tide receding from shore.
A soft sound pulled him back—footsteps approaching, giving him plenty of warning.
Greyson forced himself to look at her, to acknowledge what he’d done. He expected to find contempt or satisfaction in her eyes—some vindication at seeing her captor brought low. Instead, she stood a few paces away, holding a first aid kit in her hands, her posture suggesting caution but not fear.
“Are you done?” she asked, her voice steady.
Greyson nodded.
She approached slowly, as if he were a wounded animal that might still be dangerous.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, the words emerging rough and raw. “I would never—” He stopped, killing the lie before it could form. He didn’t have to lie to her, didn’t have to pretend this was something it wasn’t. They would both hurt each other if they had to, but at least, if nothing else, they were honest about that.
A corner of her lips tilted upward and she knelt in front of him, laying the kit on the floor beside her.
“I know.
She said it so matter-of-fact, as if she understood him on some fundamental level that others missed. As if the line between his controlled public persona and this private destruction made perfect sense to her.
“I’m going to clean that wound,” she said, nodding toward his shoulder. “And before you tell me not to bother, remember that if you bleed out, I’m the one who’ll be blamed.” She retrieved antiseptic and bandages without looking up at him. “Can you move your arm well enough to pull it from the sleeve?”
Greyson nodded, complying and wincing as he undid the buttons and pulled his left arm free. The bullet had passed through the meat of his shoulder, missing bone and major arteries—a warning shot, clean and not meant to kill. His father was too precise a marksman to miss at that range if he’d wanted Greyson dead.
Shadera worked in silence, cleaning the wound with clinical detachment. Her fingers were gentle despite the efficiency of her movements, a contradiction that seemed to define her more and more with each passing day.
“I’m sorry,” Greyson said after several minutes of quiet. “That you had to see that. My father. What he really is.”
Her eyes met his, green and steady and unafraid.
“I’ve known what he is for a long time,” she said quietly, then paused. Her mouth quirked upward. “Besides, what you really should be apologizing for,little heir, is stabbing me with that fucking fork. Hurt worse than an actual blade.”
A startled laugh escaped him, cut short by the pain it caused. “Fair enough.”
They fell silent again as she worked, and something in the air between them, the energy, shifted.
Her hands stilled on his skin, lingering. He swore he imagined it when her thumb traced a soft circle over a scar and his breath hitched.
“I didn’t know,” she finally whispered, so softly he almost missed it.
Greyson looked up, finding her eyes fixed on his face, her expression stripped of its usual defenses. The emotion they held, the pain that seemed to reflect him, made his heartbeat stutter.
“Know what?” His voice was so foreign, so soft, as it left his lips. He fixated on her eyes, those beautiful fucking eyes.
