Page 48

I’m still catching my breath as we leave the study. Silas stays close behind, like a shadow. My legs and ass ache in the best way, my skin is flushed from sex and power, and I’m wearing that reckless smile I save for moments like these, when I feel not just seen but owned in the best goddamn way.

I tell him I’m hungry, because I am. I’m ravished in every sense.

He leans against the wall, a lazy grin playing at the corners of his mouth like he’s picturing what we just did on that carpet. “I'll tell the chef to make your favorite pasta,” he says, his voice still thick with something deeper than satisfaction.

I arch a brow, smirking. “But first, we find the perfect wine.”

So we head down into the cellar—our private, opulent dungeon carved beneath the estate. It smells like old oak and buried secrets down there. He’s already halfway down the stone steps when I notice him pause. He’s frozen in front of a shelf stacked with dusty vintages, his jaw tense and eyes wide.

I follow his gaze.

He’s staring at a bottle from my mother’s private reserve. The label is faded but unmistakable.

I reach for it slowly. “This one.”

Silas doesn’t move, doesn’t look at me.

“You don’t want a drink?” I ask, frowning. Something’s off. He was perfectly fine ten minutes ago. More than fine, actually.

He exhales, almost too softly to hear, before murmuring, “I haven’t earned it.”

My hand freezes on the bottle.

He’s upset. I can feel it radiating off him in waves. But it’s a different kind of heat than before.

He looks at me, his eyes darker than the cellar shadows. Then, quietly, like peeling skin off an old wound, he says, “There’s something you should know… Things are changing between us, and the last thing I want is for you to find out from someone else.”

I nod once, slowly.

He takes a breath. Then, “I was there the night your mother died.”

At first, I laugh. Just a short, sharp breath like a reflex because the words don’t land right. Because they can’t be true. But then, I see his face. And everything freezes.

I’m paralyzed by disbelief. His voice is steady, almost too steady. Like it’s the only way he can stop it from shattering entirely.

Then, he tells me everything. Every last gutting detail.

I don’t say a word or interrupt because, honestly, I don’t trust myself to.

I sit there on the floor with Silas next to me because there isn’t anywhere else to sit.

My mind’s numb, barely taking in the details of how he and Noah were assigned to my mother during her last diplomatic trip through France, how she smiled like porcelain and moved like sorrow wrapped in drapes, and how she called him “the ghost with sad eyes” and warned him, “If I ever vanish, remember it wasn’t weakness. It was war.”

He talks about the night she disappeared from the Crillon, how the dress she was meant to wear to the gala hung untouched, a Dior ghost waiting in hiding, and how she was supposed to smile for the cameras and shake hands with monsters.

How she never walked down the grand staircase, never got into the car, and never made it to the gala, and how, two days later, they found her body in the Seine, floating beneath Pont de l'Alma.

There were no wounds, no foul play, and no signs. Just a ghost of who she was.

The coroner said it was cancer. Quietly worsening. A tragic accident.

But Silas knew better.

I feel my body give slightly as I lean against the cool wine rack and breathe in deeply.

Cancer. That’s what they told me too. That’s what I believed.

And now… now I don’t know what the fuck to believe anymore.

Silas’s hands tighten at his sides like he’s holding himself together by a thread. “I failed her,” he mutters, his voice cracking. “She needed help, and I followed protocol like a goddamn soldier instead of protecting her like I should have.”

My head spins.

Why wouldn’t he have told me before? Why now? Because we just fucked? Because we’re getting too close?

And then something worse hits me. My father.

I stare at the bottle of wine still in my hand, my mother’s favorite. The same label she used to toast the holidays, the same one she told me not to open unless it really mattered.

He erased her. That thought slices through me like a blade.

He erased her the way he’s trying to erase me now because all he has ever cared about is power.

All he has ever wanted is to be feared, and it is hard to be feared by people when people are too busy pitying you.

So he got rid of her. Maybe he wants the same for me as well because I’m tainting his image with my existence.

I move forward slowly, like I’m afraid I might shatter on the stone floor. My hand touches Silas’s chest, curling against his shirt and grounding myself in reality.

“You didn’t fail her, Silas,” I whisper, each word dragged from the deepest parts of me.

His eyes meet mine, wide and disbelieving.

“My father locked her away before anyone could save her. She was already drowning by the time you got there.”

My voice breaks… and fuck. I let it. For once, I let it. Tears prick my eyes, but I won’t let them fall. I won’t give him that. Or maybe I just can’t. “You’ve kept me breathing,” I murmur. “And that’s more than anyone else ever did.”

His jaw clenches, and he closes his eyes, like those words cut deeper than the truth he just confessed. “I swore I’d never let someone slip through again,” he says in a low voice, a vow wrapped in regret.

I cup his cheek, my thumb brushing across his day-old stubble. “Then don’t let me.”

The bottle in my other hand tips slightly, forgotten. The cellar swells with isolation, with the echoes of the woman who brought us both here in some cruel twist of fate.

But I don’t move. Because for once, I’m not running or hiding.And neither is he.

Tonight, in this cellar full of shadows and sins, there are only two of us.

I climb into Silas’s lap, straddling him on the old wine cellar chaise. The worn leather groans beneath us, the only sound in the room besides the rustling of our breaths.

My forehead presses to his, the chill from the wine racks behind us ghosting along my back.

Bottles gleam behind him like polished headstones, old vintages, unspoken years, and too many memories.

“Let’s burn it down,” I whisper, my voice steady with something fierce. “All of it.”

His answer is a vow, low and resolute, “With you.”

He brushes a hand along my back, slow and thoughtful. We stay like that for a few minutes, just the two of us.

Then, he sighs, like he’s already regretting the words forming on his tongue. “You should talk to Zara. She’s desperate.”

I lift my head from his chest, blinking. “Since when did you become her emotional support wolf?”

He gives me a dry look. “Since she cornered me and said if I didn’t say something, she’d hack my contacts list and send nudes to Elijah.”

I snort, half-laughing. “Tempting. But still weird. You two sharing coffee and trauma now?”

He groans. “Please… just talk to her. She misses you. And you know… you’re terrifying when you’re mad. Even I need backup.”

I roll my eyes, but my smile stays. “Fine. But I expect a dramatic retelling of this new friendship. With charts.”

He leans in like he’s about to kiss me again, almost. But then he stops just short, his eyes locked on mine, warm and burning.

We just hold on to the moment. A promise forged in shared destruction.