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CHAPTER THREE

JULIAN

I can’t stop pacing.

Two hours ago, my brother died.

My bare feet sink into the plush carpet with each step, wearing a path between the mahogany dresser and the floor-to-ceiling windows of my mother’s bedroom. The scent of her Chanel perfume hangs in the air, normally comforting but it’s only making me sneeze tonight.

She sits perched on the edge of her bed, a frail silhouette against the backdrop of Seattle’s skyline. The city lights through the gauzy curtains cast strange shadows on her face, making her appear both ethereal and haunted, while her black hair falls in disheveled short waves.

“Julian.” Her voice is soft, almost a whisper. “You’ll wear down the carpet.”

I grunt in response, running my hands through my hair, flicking away loose strands. Like I care about the carpet .

Two hours. It’s been two hours since my brother was shot. About an hour and a half since the disobedient guards took him somewhere. Valentine won’t tell me where, only says he’s “preparing him” for the funeral.

That fucker is really testing my last nerve.

I glance down at my shaking hands. Before they took Adrian away I almost… Christ. My hands still remember the feel of Aurelia’s throat beneath them, and the way her pulse raced against my palms. The terror in those green eyes I used to lose myself in.

“You took him from me.”

But now that the shock has settled and I’ve had time for reality to set in, I keep thinking: Did she? Did she really shoot him?

The thought stops me mid-stride. Something doesn’t add up.

Aurelia wanted revenge for her mother—I get that.

I even helped her with it. But neither Adrian nor I had anything to do with what happened at those parties.

Aurelia is a few years younger than us, so we would’ve been toddlers when her mother died.

Then we all grew up together, the three of us against everything.

No—she wouldn’t have shot Adrian as part of her revenge plan.

Unless…

My jaw clenches as another possibility surfaces. “Maybe Adrian confronted her,” I mumble to myself.

My mother catches my words and glances at me, pulling her exhausted gaze from the window. “What, dear?”

I clear my throat and talk louder. “Aurelia. Why did she do it? You think Adrian confronted her? ”

“About what?”

I shake my head. My mother doesn’t know that Aurelia killed DeMarco, Whitman, and Victoria. Telling her won’t change anything, so I say, “I don’t know. He was always Dad’s perfect soldier. Maybe he threatened to share some dirty secret and she panicked.”

“Perhaps.” Mom’s fingers twist in the silk of her nightgown and her gaze returns to the window. “Your brother was always… dutiful.”

Her eyes are distant, staring out at the city like she’s seeing something else entirely. The bandages beneath her nightgown stretch across her stomach—a reminder of how close I came to losing her too.

But it’s strange… I swear she smirked for a second.

Who smirks like that when talking about their dead son? A chill creeps up my spine as a forbidden thought hits me. What if Aurelia was telling the truth?

I remember how her eyes burned with conviction. How she looked at my mother with pure hatred, like she knew something I didn’t. The desperation in her voice when she told me my mother killed Adrian.

But that’s insane. Why would my mother kill her own son? The same woman who endured years of abuse to protect us? It doesn’t make sense.

I shake my head, forcing the insane thoughts away. My grief must be messing with me. Mother loved Adrian. She’d never…

I look away—must be seeing things.

Aurelia killed my brother. That’s a fact.

And it’d be easier to accept if she did it out of self-preservation, if he came at her forcefully to expose her crimes to the Inferno Consortium.

But even that theory doesn’t sit right in my gut.

Adrian was calculating, precise. He worked in the shadows, never one for direct confrontation.

That was my role—the hot-headed younger brother who bruised his knuckles and broke bones while Adrian pulled strings from dark corners. He’s always great at that.

I bite my tongue. Was. Past tense. He was great at that. I’ll have to use past tense now when I think about him. Adrian was calculating. Adrian was my brother.

My fingers curl into fists, fingernails trying to draw blood from my palms, and I start pacing paths in the carpet again.

“I should’ve seen this coming.” My voice sounds foreign to my own ears. “I should’ve known she couldn’t be trusted.”

“Stop.” Mom’s tone turns sharp. “Don’t blame yourself for her actions. She made her choice.”

But what if I pushed her to it? The thought gnaws at me like a starving rat. All those times I held back information, trying to protect her while also maintaining control. Did I drive her to this? Make her feel like she couldn’t trust me ? So she lashed out and?—

“Julian.” Mom’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “You need to focus. The Consortium can’t afford weakness right now. Do you understand? You’re the only heir left.”

I stop pacing, my legs suddenly feeling ready to buckle. The only heir left.

Everything I’ve spent years running from now faces me like an inevitability.

With Lucian and Adrian gone, there’s no escape.

Someone has to take control of the Inferno Consortium—all its territories, its operations, its countless people and business partners.

If I don’t step up, someone else will. Someone like Valentine, who’s already showing his true colors.

“Your father,” Mom continues, rising from the bed and wincing slightly.

“He was cruel, yes. But he understood power. He knew how to take it, how to keep it.” Her fingers brush my cheek.

“Now it’s your turn. If you don’t take control.

..” Her voice breaks. “What will happen to me? To our family name?”

I close my eyes, letting her words sink into my bones. She’s right. Of course she’s right.

“Think of the men who will try to take the Inferno Consortium, and me, and tarnish our family name,” she continues. “Will the Harrows be remembered as cowards? Do you want that?”

I storm to the bar cart in the corner, crystal decanters catching the city lights. I pour a full glass and then swallow it whole. The bourbon burns as it slides down my throat, but I like it. Anything to dull the edges of this nightmare.

As I consider another glass so I can get black-out drunk, the amber liquid glints, and suddenly I’m thrown back to another night, almost a year ago.

I was at The Den after hours, my underground fight club that was supposed to be my escape from all this family business bullshit.

Adrian had shown up unexpectedly—he never came there. Said it was beneath him.

But that night was different. Something seemed to be on his mind, though he never told me what. He just watched my fight and then lingered after.

The ring was empty, the crowds long gone.

Only the faint scent of sweat and blood hung in the air, mixing with leather and steel.

Adrian sat across from me at the bar, his pressed suit completely out of place next to my bare, bruised chest and wrapped hands.

He was always the picture of control, even there.

“You did well tonight,” he said, swirling whiskey in his glass. The dim overhead lights caught the liquid, making it glow like molten gold. “He’d never say it, but I know Lucian thinks your strength is an asset.”

I scoffed, knocking back my drink. “I don’t give a fuck what that bastard thinks.”

“If only I had that luxury.” There was something different in his voice. Something… strained. Exhausted.

“What do you care?” I poured us both another round. “You’ll be in charge soon. You can take all the luxuries you want.”

He stayed silent, staring at the bartop.

I swallowed my drink in one gulp. As the whiskey burned my throat, I forced a laugh and said, “I’ll kill him as soon as you’re in power.” My brother had always been uptight and obedient to Lucian, so I made my statement sound like a joke. But everyone knows jokes are only the truth in disguise.

I expected a stern look. A lecture about family loyalty or some bullshit about maintaining appearances. Instead, Adrian’s lips curved at the corners into what I swore was satisfaction. His blue eyes—same as mine, same as our father’s—held a sheen I’d never noticed before.

“Is that so?” He took a slow sip, considering. “And how would you do it?”

I hadn’t been prepared for that question, and it hung between us like smoke.

For a moment, I saw something shift in the way he carried himself.

A crack in his role as the perfect son. His whole demeanor changed—subtle, but there.

The way his shoulders relaxed slightly, how his fingers loosened their perpetual death grip on his whiskey glass.

But that was impossible. Adrian was Lucian’s faithful soldier. He dated Aurelia just to keep her safe from our father’s attention, always the noble protector, and he never once indicated he wanted the old man gone.

Did he?

“A bullet between the eyes,” I finally said.

My brother grunted, finished his drink, then left.

At the time, I dismissed the entire exchange as a hallucination from getting punched in the head too many times.

Now, staring into my drink in my mother’s bedroom, that memory haunts me. What secrets did my brother have? Had he been the best actor of us all?

I suppose it’s useless to think about now. He’s…

Fuck, I can’t even think it.

It doesn’t feel like he’s gone, only that he’s in his room or off completing some mission for Lucian. Fucking some whore. That he’s somewhere in the world. Alive.

But I know that’s a delusion—my own desperate need.

He’s dead. I saw his lifeless body myself.

I down more alcohol, hoping it will kick in soon so I can black out.

“You must be ruthless,” my mother is saying. I think she’s been talking this entire time, but I’ve been spacing out. I glance at her just as she says, “Like you’re fath?— ”

“Don’t fucking say it!” I shout at her.

She doesn’t flinch and, fuck, it makes me feel like him for a second. The bastard was always yelling at her. Hitting her. She’s become skilled at not reacting, at not giving him more reasons to abuse her.

I set my glass down with an exhale. “I’m… sorry. I’m sorry I raised my voice. But I’m not like him.”

Her warm arms wrap around me as she cradles my head to her shoulder. “I know, dear. I know.”

“I’ll never fucking be like him.”

“Shhh.”

I sag against her, welcoming the soft embrace as the first buzzing sensation from the bourbon works its way through my limbs. Lucian… I’ll get revenge for his death. Not because I gave two shits about the bastard—I want revenge on the person who took away my kill.

I needed to kill Lucian and some dick from Victoria’s family stole that from me. Left me with an empty need I can never fill. Lucian’s killer also needs to die for the principle of the matter—no one kills a Harrow and gets away with it.

Not Lucian’s killer. Not Aurelia.

I’ll get the truth from her, by any means necessary. Maybe Adrian’s death really was an accident. And if it wasn’t well… I’ll deal with that later.

I sway, my mother keeping me balanced. The alcohol has a strong grip on me now, my senses numbing. Mom guides me to the bed and we both sit.

“Adrian’s coronation was supposed to happen on the twentieth,” she says softly, letting me position myself on the bed so I can lay my head in her lap.

She strokes my hair. “Now that he’s gone, you must lead what’s left of our family.

What’s left of the family business. Get revenge for your dear, misguided brother. ”

Everything is slowing, the edge of my eyesight turning to fuzz as the damn thoughts in my head finally stop circling me like vultures. The room spins a little and it’s comforting.

I can barely hold onto thoughts about the coronation, the one Adrian will never attend. Two weeks from now, my brother was supposed to officially take over, ending years of Lucian’s maniacal control. The day we’d all been waiting for.

“The coronation,” I mutter.

I had completely forgotten about it. Between Aurelia’s games and all this bloodshed, it slipped my mind. So… I’ll be the one standing there, accepting responsibility I never wanted. The power I spent my entire life running from.

I still don’t want it, but what choice do I have?

I’m trapped.

My mother’s fingers brush through my hair, her touch surprisingly gentle for a woman who just lost a son. “You’ll take your brother’s place, of course,” she says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “The Consortium needs stability. It needs a Harrow.”

I’m numb, just for this moment, to all the weight trying to crush me—Adrian’s death, Aurelia’s betrayal, my impending role as leader to a bunch of fucking scum. Tomorrow, when the alcohol has bled from my system, I’m sure my lungs will be fighting for air that suddenly seems too thin.

“I never wanted this,” I say.

“None of us get what we want, Julian.” My mother’s voice hardens just a fraction. “Your father didn’t want a knife in his chest. Your brother didn’t want a bullet. And I didn’t want to lose a son.” She cups my face, forcing me to look at her. “But we adapt. We survive. And then we rise above.”

Something in her eyes makes me pause. Is that satisfaction?

No—it must be relief that she still has one son. My mother always supported Adrian’s rise to the top, even though I know she felt hurt that he never stood up for her the way I always have.

“What do you want?” she asks, her voice softening again. “Tell me. What do you really want right now?”

The answer comes immediately, burning through the haze of alcohol and grief. “Revenge.” The word tastes right on my tongue. “Everyone who hurt our family… I want them all to suffer.”

Mom’s lips curve in a slight smile. “Then get your revenge, dear. Take everything that’s rightfully yours. I’ll be right here with you.”

I close my eyes, sinking into the fuzzy, spinning world. I can’t run anymore. I can’t escape what I am, what I was born to be.

A Harrow doesn’t run.