Page 129 of Blackwood

@LucaWasHere

Smart move Izzy, letting the brute go.

You always break the ones who know.

Told the painter truths he couldn’t take.

Now look at him… ready to break.

You should’ve stayed quiet and sweet,

But you just had to bleed at their feet.

Now the fighter’s unraveling, the artist’s gone cold.

How long ‘til they drop what they cannot hold?

You think they’ll love the girl with knives?

The one who cuts through all their lives?

You showed your rot, your blood, your scar.

And now they know exactly what you are.

Chapter 41

CADE

Mine and Lex’s Apartment

581 Days Since Zeke’s Death

The glow from the city leaks in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, smearing streaks of gold and cobalt across the polished floors. The skyline is a jagged silhouette—steel and glass stretching like brushstrokes across a canvas I never seem to finish.

We’re thirty-one floors up in one of Daniel’s buildings. It’s all sharp angles and quiet power. The open-concept apartment has high ceilings, brutalist bones, and the kind of view most people would sell their soul for.

We moved in a few months ago, sick of splitting time between Wexley and Redspire, tired of living out of bags and pretending either place really felt like home.

This one does. Or at least it used to. Now it’s just… quiet. So damn quiet. I roll onto my side again, staring at the red digital numbers on the bedside clock. 2:15 a.m.

Where is he?

I check my phone again.

LEX:I’ll be home soon.

That was over an hour ago. I stare at the ceiling.

What the hell have I done?

I pull up her contact, thumb hovering, heart aching. I want to call her, but what would I even say? Sorry I flinched when you said you loved me? Sorry I looked at you like you were someone I didn’t recognize?

I always knew Lex had darkness and I chose him anyway. But Bella? She was supposed to be like me. Light. Soft. Safe. Not someone who could look me in the eye and confess the kind of things that’ll keep me up at night.

That’s the part that hurts the most, because even now, even after all of it. I still love her. I just need some time.

I squeeze the phone tighter, heart hammering.