I shook.
Couldn't stop it. My whole body trembling—rage and fear and helplessness mixing into something toxic that crawled under my skin like insects.
Two days locked in that cell, and she'd been alone the whole time. Waiting. Bleeding. Thinking I'd abandoned her after finally having her.
And now Klaus had cameras on her. Watching her cry. Watching her break.
Klaus leaned in close, blood still dripping from his chin onto the glass table between us.
"Oh, come on," he said, his tone almost reasonable. Fatherly, even. "I asked you to kill a despicable man. A shitty pedophile who hurts children and steals from people far more dangerous than him. Why say no? Would you prefer if he was noble? Innocent? Is that what it takes to make you refuse?"
He laughed again—coughed blood into his hand, wiped it casually on his ruined shirt.
"So what is it, son? Yes or no?"
He reached up with one bloodstained hand and touched one of the faded eight-pointed stars on his collarbone. The ink was old, blurred at the edges, but still clear enough to read if you knew the code.
"Because one way or another," he said softly, "I will pass these to you. You'll earn them in blood—his or theirs. Your choice."
The gun pressed harder against my temple. Cold metal biting into swollen skin.
I looked at the screen.
At Alena sitting alone in that kitchen, surrounded by broken things, waiting for me.
At Lucy inside her home, happy and engaged and unaware that a camera was watching her every move.
At Marcus pouring wine, smiling, alive.
Safe. For now.
I closed my eyes.
Saw my mother's face—pale and cold and dead, her hand still clutching that note. You killed me by being born.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I'd been carrying death inside me all along. Maybe this was always who I was meant to be—Klaus's son, marked from birth, destined to inherit his stars whether I wanted them or not.
One pedophile's life.
In exchange for everyone I loved staying safe.
It wasn't even a choice. Not really.
I wasn't saying yes because I was afraid to die. Death would be easier. Cleaner.
I was saying yes because I couldn't survive hurting her.
Couldn't survive her waking up every day thinking I'd used her and left. Couldn't survive the ghosts carving her up while I was dead and useless. Couldn't survive a world where she existed and I wasn't there to protect her from everything—including my own fucked-up bloodline.
"Yes," I said, the word tasting like ash and copper and damnation.
Klaus smiled.
Blood stained his teeth red, but the smile was genuine. Proud, even.
"Good boy," he said.
