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CHAPTER TEN

AURELIA

T he pen trembles between my fingers as I press it harder against the page; I worry it might run out of ink soon from how much I’ve been using it. The diary Julian left has been the only thing keeping me sane these past few days, my only sanctuary where truth lives.

My wrists are raw from beating against the door as part of my daily routine, my throat hoarse from screaming into empty air. Which reminds me: it’s been half an hour, so I turn toward the camera and flip Julian off, hoping the asshole is watching.

Five days. Five days trapped in this mausoleum to a man who’s now just a memory.

I drag the pen across the paper, watching the ink bleed into the fibers. My mother’s words from her diary—which I hope is still safe in my room—float through my mind, haunting me with their eerie similarity to my current reality:

Another day trapped in Lucian’s room. At least the sheets are silk against my skin.

I lie here, waiting for him in anticipation and dread, wondering if tonight he’ll be gentle or cruel.

Will he come alone? I hope so because I’m still too raw and bruised to entertain a group.

Regardless, the waiting is sometimes worse than what follows.

My own entry mirrors hers with a twist:

Another day in a room that only suffocates me with grief.

The sheets still smell like Adrian, a ghost I can’t escape.

And I lie here waiting for Julian, not in fear but in fury.

When he comes through that door, I swear I’ll rip him open with my fingernails the way he’s sliced me apart with his betrayal.

The waiting builds my rage into something beautiful and deadly.

We’re bound by the same chains, my mother and I, though mine are made from different metals. She was a prisoner of circumstance and cruelty. I’m a prisoner of love twisted into hatred, of trust corrupted by manipulation.

I flip back through the pages I’ve already filled, running my fingers over the words as if they could speak back to me.

In the margins, I’ve been repeating my hit list so it’s always there at the edge of my vision.

There are five names of those who still need to pay for what they did to my mother.

Besides tearing Julian to shreds, the names have become my sole focus in this cage.

They will pay. They will all pay.

My own handwriting stares back at me, the letters sharp and jagged where my mother’s were always flowing and cursive. She took her time whereas I scratch my thoughts frantically across the page like I’m running out of seconds.

My Hit List:

Francis DeMarco

Vincent’s cousin who runs distribution for the family drug business in North Seattle now that Vincent is gone.

He watched while they drugged my mother, laughing as she struggled to stand, then held her down for the others.

“Tell her to stop fighting, she’ll enjoy it more,” he told Vincent while my mother sobbed.

She wrote about it graphically in her diary; wrote about all of their cruel words in her diary.

Olivia Marlowe

Victoria’s sister who took over managing the family’s corruption ring.

She didn’t just watch Victoria’s mother burn my mother with cigarettes; she suggested places where the scars wouldn’t show.

“Try her inner thighs,” she’d said with that cold smile.

“No one will see it there, and the men fucking her won’t care. ”

Gregory Whitman

Marcus’s brother who now oversees the family’s gambling empire. He organized “special games” where my mother was the prize, letting men take turns with her when they won. “She’s worth every penny,” he’d brag as he collected his percentage.

Sergio Castellano

Runs human trafficking for the Consortium through his shipping business. He’s the one who first “evaluated” my mother when she was brought in, deciding her worth like she was cattle. “This one will fetch a good price with those eyes,” he’d said, gripping her face so hard he left bruises.

DeSean Smith

Handles the money laundering through his chain of luxury hotels, making sure all the dirty money comes out clean.

He liked to film what happened to my mother, keeping the recordings for his “private collection.” “Smile for the camera, sweetheart,” he’d whisper while holding her chin up to face the lens.

But now, at the bottom of the list, there’s another name in letters so sharp they nearly tear through the page :

LADY HARROW

The puppet master who used us all. The woman who killed her own son and nearly succeeded in making me and Julian destroy each other. The one who stole Adrian from this world. From me. In a way, she’s even stolen Julian, maybe even from himself.

My revenge has evolved, mutated into something darker and more complex. No longer just for my mother, but for Adrian too—the man whose death left a hollowness in me I never expected to feel.

I trace his name with my fingertip. Adrian. Adrian. Adrian.

The thought of him sends an ache through my chest so profound it feels like my ribs might crack and puncture my lungs, leaving me gasping.

Being trapped in his room, surrounded by his essence—the lingering scent of his cologne on the pillows, the books he touched, the space he inhabited—has unleashed a torrent of memories I’ve kept locked away.

I close my eyes and I’m suddenly back at Canlis three summers ago—it was a restaurant I told him I’d always wanted to try.

Adrian had just returned from a business trip to Hong Kong, and I hadn’t seen him for two weeks.

He didn’t have a lot of time before flying out somewhere else, so he asked me to meet him at the restaurant.

I remember walking in and spotting him as he lounged on some burnt sienna couches by a stunning window. The moment he saw me, something flashed across his face—a softness that vanished so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. But now, with distance and clarity, I recognize what it was. Longing.

Were there more moments like that, where he longed for me?

“You changed your hair,” he’d said, his voice measured as always.

I’d had it cut a tad shorter and no one else had noticed, not even Eleanora, who always seems to have a keen eye for beauty and fashion. “Does it matter?” I said, joining him on the couches.

His fingers had twitched around his whiskey, like he wanted to reach out but caught himself. “Looks nice,” he’d said simply, then immediately waved to a server so we could be seated at our table.

I’d dismissed it at the time. But now I wonder how many other moments like that I missed, or deliberately ignored, because they didn’t fit the narrative I’d built—that Adrian was just using me for eye candy and mild entertainment.

Then there was that night we sat together on his balcony.

We’d argued earlier about something trivial.

I was sulking, watching clouds gather in the distance as they glowed orange from the sunset, when he came out with a blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders.

No words, no demands, just a gentle gesture followed by his quiet presence beside me.

We sat in silence for hours, staring at the clouds and the Seattle skyline, and it was the most peace I’d felt in years.

Of course, there are darker memories too.

The time I found him in his car, knuckles bleeding as he methodically wiped away evidence of whatever violence he’d committed for his father.

His eyes had been empty when they met mine in the mirror.

“This isn’t something you need to see,” he’d said, jamming the key in the ignition before driving away.

Shutting me out. Just one of countless moments when he erected walls between us.

Or the night of a Martinelli art auction, when some man had let his hand linger too long on my waist while he tried to move around me in the crowd.

Adrian had seen it from across the room and didn’t react.

I still wonder if the man had groped me, or even did something obscene like try to fuck me in public, if Adrian would’ve even frowned.

He was always about appearances and not making a scene and being possessive of me would’ve done that.

Everyone knows: a Harrow doesn’t give a shit about their women.

Adrian maintained that image perfectly around others, treating me like an object that was expendable.

Still, I often felt I could trust him more than Julian.

While Julian has always been a volcano, with explosive heat and unpredictable eruptions, Adrian was a mountain—steady, immovable, constant.

Julian’s love is consuming, overwhelming, leaving no air to breathe.

Adrian’s attention was... different. A patient presence.

He didn’t love me but I always knew… he was there. A hand extended in the dark.

Julian locked me in this room out of vindictive fury.

Adrian would have never trapped me like this, no matter what he believed I’d done.

He would’ve sought the truth first. Would have listened and tried to work through things rationally and objectively.

Like a judge only seeking justice and to make the true criminals pay, he would’ve given me the chance to prove my innocence.

I curl onto my side on Adrian’s bed, clutching the diary to my chest as tears sting my eyes.

The revelation crashes over me, threatening to drown me: I truly cared for Adrian.

I cared for him deeply. Perhaps I even loved him in a way I never allowed myself to acknowledge— actually loved him, not the way I flung around the term when we were arguing.

Yet now he’s gone, and I’ll never get to tell him. Never get to ask if he felt it too. If beneath his perfect Harrow heir facade, he possibly had some genuine feelings for the broken orphan girl everyone called the Golden One.

The sound of voices in the hallway yanks me from my spiral of regret. I freeze, heart pounding as my ears strain to listen. The first voice is familiar—Emeric’s unmistakable British accent, rich and resonant.

I get off the bed and move to the door, pressing my ear against it. Even through the heavy wood, I catch snippets of what Emeric is saying.

“—complete bloody madness, letting yourself get beaten… actual medical attention… patch up at The Den.”

I press my body against the cold door even harder, my pulse quickening as I catch the second voice—Julian’s, but altered somehow. Rougher. Weaker.

“... fine. Just get me to…” His words slip away, too quiet to penetrate the barrier between us.

I strain harder, practically melding with the wood, hungry for any fragment of information from the outside world. Emeric’s voice rises again, frustration making it clearer and louder.

“Three broken ribs, mate. Split eyebrow. That’ll scar, you twat. And Christ knows what internal damage from?—”

Julian interrupts, his response lost to me. My fingernails dig into my palms as I piece together the fragments. The Den: Julian’s underground fighting ring. Something happened there—something violent enough to leave him seriously injured.

“—barely conscious,” Emeric continues. “If I hadn’t…”

The rest of his words are muffled, but the implication hangs in the air like a guillotine blade.

A strange, unwelcome tightness coils in my chest as hatred and concern twist together in my gut, serpents eating each other’s tails.

I shouldn’t care. I should actually relish the thought of Julian bleeding, suffering, considering what he’s done to me.

After how easily he believed his mother’s lies, his pain should be my vindication.

Yet something in Emeric’s tone makes my skin cold and my heart thump an erratic rhythm. The way they’re talking… it wasn’t just another fight. It sounds like something worse.

Emeric’s voice is loud enough again that I can make out more of the conversation. “Don’t feel ashamed about letting it all out, mate. Just part of life. I cry over Eleanora all the time.” He laughs but I can tell there’s care behind the sound.

A small, involuntary smile tugs at my lips—Emeric’s devotion to my best friend is the most consistent thing in our twisted world.

But the smile fades as quickly as it formed.

Julian? Letting what out? Like… crying? The concept is so foreign it feels like trying to imagine a fish breathing air or the sun rising in the west.

Julian Harrow doesn’t cry. He rages. He destroys. He burns everything in his path with the inferno of his emotions. He doesn’t break down; he breaks others.

Yet Emeric’s words paint a different picture—one of a man shattered by grief and fighting at The Den as a way to try to deal with it.

I know Julian cared for his brother and they faced hell together, faced the devil known as Lucian. My anger at him has been overshadowing the fact that he’s still hurting. I know Julian, and I know losing Adrian while also becoming leader must be torture for him.

For a fractured moment, I almost pound on the door. Almost call out his name. Almost beg him to understand that we share the same loss so I can pull him into my arms and give him a safe place to relieve the weight on his shoulders. I want to carry the burden with him.

Damn it, I still love the man.

But the moment passes. The voices fade as they move down the hallway. I’m left alone again, pressing my forehead against the wood, trapped with nothing but these dangerous, softening thoughts.

Part of me wants to comfort him, to remind him of who we were before all this darkness. But that would require him to stop being so damn blind. To listen and see the truth that’s been in front of him all along.

“You gotta release her, mate,” Emeric’s voice carries back. “That’s not the way to resolve a lover’s quarrel. ”

My breath catches, suspended in my lungs like a trapped bird.

Release me? The words ignite a flicker of hope—dangerous, fragile—in my chest. I press harder against the door, fingertips white with pressure, straining to hear Julian’s response.

But there’s nothing. Only the fading footsteps and the hollow silence that follows.

I wait. One minute bleeds into five, into fifteen, into an hour. The light shifts across Adrian’s pristine carpet as afternoon surrenders to evening. No key turns in the lock. No guards come to let me out. No Julian appears with either apology or further accusation.

The hope withers, curling in on itself like burnt paper. Of course. Just another cruel reminder of my powerlessness right now. I retreat to the bed, sinking into the sheets.

God, when will this be over? I’m so exhausted, heart and soul.

For now, I can’t escape, but I can rest. Closing my eyes, I clutch the diary to my chest like a protective talisman and let the darkness pull me under.