“You’re not going to go get her, are you?” Vittoria asks. “Santiago will be expecting you to. He’ll want a fight.”
“I know,” I say. I draw in a breath and hold it until my chest burns. “But I’m not going after her.”
Vittoria’s brows lift. “Since when do you let anything you want walk away?”
I don’t answer right away. My gaze drifts to the elevator door which Elliot had disappeared behind.
“She wasn’t happy,” I say at last, my voice flat. “Not with me. I took her choice away when I turned her. I?—”
“So what? You’ve made mistakes.” Vittoria looks at me. “Besides, she loves being a vampire. It’s obvious. You did her a favor.”
But I shake my head. “If there’s even a chance she can find peace without my shadow over her, then I don’t want to interfere.”
She scoffs. “You’re just going to let this destroy you? You love her. Even I know that.”
I glance at her. “Life will go on. As it always does.”
Vittoria watches me like she knows I’m lying—to her, to myself—but she doesn’t argue. Instead, she says quietly, “For what it’s worth, this might be the cruelest thing you’ve ever done to yourself.”
She’s probably right. But if letting Monty go is the only way she might find happiness, then I’ll bear it.
Because the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes.
As much as I hate to admit it, I was never capable of loving her the way she deserved to be loved.
Chapter
Fifteen
Elliot
Sanguine occupies a glass-and-steel office building on the far edge of the city, all sharp lines and empty space. It looks important from the outside. From the inside, it feels unfinished. Like something pretending to be power.
There are no busy floors humming with purpose. No vampire and human employed army moving at Lucian’s command. Just a handful of people, spread thin, eyes flicking toward me and then away again, like they’re not sure what I am yet—or if I’ll last.
I shower in a bathroom that smells faintly of bleach and nothing else. No perfume. No warmth. I scrub until the water runs cold, until my skin aches and the blood beneath it feels too loud. When I’m done, Santiago has left clean clothes folded on the counter. Simple. Black. Practical.
I change slowly, carefully, as though if I move too fast I’ll splinter. At this point after everything that happened with Lucian and Kayla, I’m being held together by fraying threads.
By the time I step back into the main office area, my ruined dress is gone. My reflection in the mirror is calmer. Colder. More composed than I feel.
It should feel like freedom.
Instead, my chest hurts in a way that refuses to ease.
Lucian’s face won’t leave me. The way he looked at me—shocked, wounded, furious, all tangled together. The way he said my name, like it meant something sacred. Like it belonged to him.
And Kayla…
Kayla.
The image of her on that bed flashes behind my eyes again. Alive, but not the way she was supposed to be.
I press my fingers into my palms, grounding myself in the quiet hum of the building. I want to believe Lucian didn’t know. But I don’t know if I can. He’s lied to me so many times before. And if he has lied about Kayla, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him for keeping this from me.
I sink to the edge of one of Sanguine’s sparse chairs, the leather cold beneath my thighs. Lucian didn’t cage me with locks or chains. He did it with proximity. With answers that almost came, with truths that hovered just out of reach. With the illusion that I was choosing him freely while the world narrowed around us.
My heart twists painfully at the memory of walking away from him. At how much it took not to look back. At how badly I wanted him to follow me.
