Page 37 of Goldrage (The Chrysophilist Trilogy #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

JULIAN

T he ballroom at Sergio Castellano’s estate is filled with sweaty bodies in designer clothes. Seattle’s most lethal elite, but their voices blur into meaningless static around me. I stand near the towering windows overlooking the city below, the familiar taste of whiskey on my tongue.

Feels like I’m barely here though.

For three sleepless nights I’ve been watching my life flash before my eyes like I’m dying.

My control has unraveled thread by thread.

Every muscle in my body feels coiled too tight, ready to snap.

Each conversation with my mother has become a dance around landmines, her familiar touch and gentle words now carrying subtext that makes my ribcage feel too small for my lungs.

The past keeps bleeding into the present, uninvited and unwelcome. I keep getting fragments of random conversations from years ago.

“My darling boy,” she’d whisper, her fingers cool against my skin as they swept through my hair. “Adrian doesn’t have to fight as hard as you do. He’s the heir, the chosen one. But you… you have to earn everything. You have to be better, stronger, more ruthless. That’s the burden of being second.”

Again and again she’d whisper shit like that. Different words, same subtext.

As a kid, those words felt like comfort. Like someone finally understood how suffocated I felt every time Adrian walked into a room and easily commanded the attention I had to bleed for. Mother’s comfort had been the only light in the darkness of our family’s expectations.

Now those same memories bring the darkness back.

I drain the rest of my whiskey, savoring the burn.

Each word she spoke echoes differently now, edged with implications that make my hands shake.

The way she’d hold me close while subtly driving the knife deeper between Adrian and me.

Her gentle suggestions that my brother saw me as competition, not family.

The careful way she’d nurture my resentment while appearing to offer support.

But even as doubt gnaws at my insides, I grip onto the one truth that keeps me sane.

Even if she manipulated me—and Christ, I’m not ready to accept that yet—it doesn’t mean she tried to murder Adrian.

Mothers protect their children. They sacrifice for them.

The alternative, that everything I’ve built my understanding of love on is a lie, would end me.

Maybe she’s always favored me because I defended her against Lucian’s wrath. Maybe she doesn’t like Adrian because he never stood up for her the way I did. That doesn’t make her a killer. It makes her human. Parents play favorites, even if they lie and say they don’t.

“Julian.”

Lotterio Passero’s oily voice drips over me and I sigh.

I turn to find the man approaching with that sickening smile he thinks passes for charm.

He’s shorter than me by half a foot, with graying temples and eyes that are beady little dots.

The Passero family handles waste management for the Consortium—the kind of waste that breathes.

They’re small-time operators always looking for an angle to enter the big leagues.

His navy suit is expensive but fits wrong, and the gold watch on his wrist says new money. Everything about him reeks of ambition.

“You seem distracted tonight,” he says, stopping next to me. “Business troubles?”

I laugh but there’s no humor. I know exactly what this is—Passero fishing for information, hoping to discover some trouble between the main families so his people can swoop in. His motives are transparent, and tonight I don’t have the patience for it.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I reply, my voice carrying just enough edge to make him reconsider pushing further.

But Passero, like most bottom-feeders, mistakes my restraint for weakness. He launches into some bullshit rant about shipping routes and territory disputes.

Asshat.

My attention shifts to the guards moving equipment into the ballroom’s center.

They’re setting up my surprise for tonight’s gathering.

It’s been too long since I’ve been to The Den, too long since I’ve felt the pure, uncomplicated satisfaction of controlled violence.

The confusion and betrayal churning in my chest needs an outlet, and I can think of only one way to remind everyone why the Harrow name will always command respect.

The fighting ring they’re building will serve two purposes: entertainment for our guests and release for me. Tonight, I’ll channel every twisted emotion clawing at my insides into something productive. Something that will leave no doubt about who holds power in this world.

An hour later, chandeliers cast shadows over a makeshift ring in the room’s center, surrounded by chairs where Consortium members sit. Their champagne glasses are forgotten as they lean forward, drawn by the promise of violence like moths to a flame.

This is what we really are—not society’s elite, but wolves in expensive clothing, fed by blood and fear.

I stand inside the ring near the edge, looking at the two men I’ve been pulverizing for a good fifteen minutes, my pulse finally steady for the first time in weeks. The anticipation crackling through the room feeds something dark and hungry in my chest. This is control. This is power.

The two men are kneeling in the center. They’re low-level dealers who’d been bleeding our shipments dry, thinking they were clever enough to steal from the Consortium.

Their expensive suits hang in tatters from their trembling frames.

Their eyes have that certain kind of horror you get from understanding your death is no longer a distant possibility but an approaching certainty.

I circle them as I grin. My chest is bare and slicked with sweat and their blood. The fight—if it could be called that—had been pathetically one-sided. Two against one should’ve been interesting, some kind of a challenge, but these parasites had been as weak in combat as they were in character.

My knuckles throb, though, with a satisfaction that cuts through weeks of doubts. This is simple. This makes sense. Violence has a clarity that family politics lacks—a purity that soothes the jagged edges of my fraying sanity.

“Theft,” I say, my voice carrying easily through the silent ballroom, “is a disease. It spreads if left untreated, corrupting everything it touches.”

I glance at someone moving near the exit. Olivia stands pressed against the far wall, close enough to witness but strategically positioned for escape. Her face has gone pale, and when our eyes meet for a heartbeat, she immediately looks away.

Seems she knows her place now.

The sight of her submission sends a dark thrill through my veins. Even she knows better than to challenge me tonight. Even she recognizes the danger.

I reach into my pocket and pull out a pearl-handled knife, a gift from my mother years ago, its blade razor sharp. The chandelier light catches the steel as I turn it in my hands, examining the craftsmanship .

I continue my speech. “The question is… how do we make sure the disease doesn’t spread? How do we make an example?”

One of the dealers cracks, as they always do.

His sob comes out high and raw, the sound a violation in the hush of the ballroom.

“P-please, Mr. Harrow. I’ll—I’ll pay it back.

Every cent,” he babbles, hands clasped as if I’m the fucking pope instead of his executioner.

The words leak from his split lips, bubbles of red caught in his teeth.

The crowd watches. The Consortium thrives on these little morality plays.

I kneel so we’re eye to eye and grip his chin. “You think this is about the money?” I ask almost gently. I watch the realization dawn—there’s nothing left to bargain—then I press my knife to his throat and split the skin open.

The blood spray hits my cheek and speckles the ring’s mat. He collapses and presses his hands to his gushing throat. I hold him, making sure he looks directly at me as the light leaves his eyes.

One down. One to go.

The second dealer has already pissed himself. I can smell it all over him. He doesn’t beg, only sobs quietly. I can feel every gaze in the room on me: some full of horror, some hungry for more. Still doesn’t feel like enough; I could kill all night and never fill the ache inside me.

I clean my blade on the dead man’s tattered jacket and rise, bare feet leaving bloody halos as I pace the ring. The audience leans forward, eagerly waiting for what comes next .

I take my time with the second thief.

The tip of my blade finds the soft space above his kidney.

Not lethal, not yet, but enough to make him shriek.

The sound of it, his animal panic, soothes something raw in my skull.

I twist and withdraw, then go again, this time the underside of his arm, the thin skin of the bicep.

Blood leaks out in neat, sharp beads and runs down his sleeve.

The fight comes back to him and he screams, trying to crawl away but slips on blood. It smears on his face. I follow him to the edge of the ring, then grab the back of his neck and force his cheek into the mat.

“Look at them,” I tell him, forcing his gaze up so he can see the assembled Consortium.

“Look at what you tried to steal from. Look at who you thought you could betray.” I press his face harder so the blood gets in his eye.

“Nobody remembers the names of thieves. Only the names of the men who kill them.”

He grunts, tries to curse me, but I drive the knife between his ribs, aiming for pain, for mess. I want him to last. I want them all to see what I’m capable of.

The last bits of life finally leave him, and when he stops twitching, I wipe the blade on his back and step over the two bodies. I straighten, chest heaving, blood painting me like abstract art.

I level my gaze at the room, daring anyone to speak.

I want to snarl, to spit, to shatter the mask of civility the Consortium wears over its rotting teeth, but I keep it clean and dry.

“Anyone who thinks the Harrows are vulnerable simply due to recent… changes, think again. Our house is strong. And our patience for betrayal is me asured in seconds.” I let the words hang. Then I smile and take my leave.

When I step over the ropes, someone hands me a towel. I don’t look at who. The fabric’s already pink with blood by the time I reach the edge of the crowd. Olivia is gone.

I don’t blame her. I’d run from me too, if I could.

People part like I’m radioactive. I catch the glances: Approval. Fear. Curiosity. Hunger. I let their eyes crawl over me. I want them to see the monster. Better they fear me than anything else.

Then I notice a woman sitting in a chair, glass of white wine in her hand, black dress clinging to every curve. She gives me a flirty smile, and for the first time in too long, my dick stirs.

Her gaze flicks down my body, lingering on the mess I’ve made of myself, and back up to my face with a little tilt of her head, like she’s impressed, but not intimidated.

I like that. I like her.

I move close enough to see that her lipstick’s the exact shade of dried blood.

“Enjoy the show?” I ask.

She puts her wine down. “The violence is predictable,” she says. “But you… you do it beautifully.”

“Want to help me clean up?”

She stands and links her arm through mine. “I would love to, Mr. Harrow.”