But this time it was my fault.
My absence making it worse.
I slammed my fist into the wall.
Concrete didn't give. Knuckles split open. Blood smeared across grey stone, bright red against dull nothing.
Didn't care.
I hit it again. And again. Until my hand was a mess of torn skin and swelling knuckles, until the pain was sharp enough to cut through the helplessness clawing at my chest.
Get back to her.
That was all that mattered.
Handle Klaus. End this threat. Get on a plane. Get back to London. Hold her. Tell her I was sorry. Tell her the silence wasn't choice, wasn't rejection, wasn't proof that what we'd done meant nothing.
Tell her she was mine and I was hers and nothing—not my psychotic dying father, not the Bratva, not death itself—was changing that.
The door finally opened.
I didn't know what day it was. Didn't know how many hours had passed. Time had lost meaning somewhere between the third headache and the tenth circuit of pacing.
Guards. Same blank faces. No words.
They dragged me back upstairs—back to the penthouse, back to Klaus waiting in his leather chair like a king on a throne made of blood and old sins.
• • •
They threw me into the heavy leather chair opposite him.
Hard enough that my vision blurred, the room tilting sideways for a second before snapping back into focus.
One guard yanked my arms behind the chair back, pinning them there with a grip like steel. Another pressed the cold barrel of a pistol to my temple—not threatening, just matter-of-fact. A reminder of how this could end.
I tasted copper and salt and rage.
And I laughed.
Low at first—just a rumble in my chest that hurt my broken ribs.
Then louder. Blood bubbling up with it, spilling over my split lip and down my chin.
"Pull the trigger, fucker," I rasped, the words thick and wet. "End it. Do it. I can feel freedom already."
Because if I was dead, what was the point?
No leverage left for Klaus to use. No son to inherit his empire. No reason to touch Alena or Lucy or Marcus or anyone I'd ever cared about.
They'd be safe.
My death would buy their freedom. And after everything—after a lifetime of believing I carried death inside me, that myfirst act in this world was killing my mother—maybe this was how it was supposed to end. Trading my life for theirs. Redemption through sacrifice.
Klaus stood slowly.
Blood thick and dry on his broken nose. His face was already swelling—cheekbone purple, eye half-closed. But he stood tall. Unbroken despite the beating I'd given him days ago. The oxygen tank rolled beside him obediently, tubes hissing softly.
He looked down at me—gun pressed to my head, guards holding me immobile, my face swelling with fresh bruises and two days of sleepless hell—and he laughed too.
