Page 93 of Shadow Waltz
Luka was quiet for a long moment, and I could see him wrestling with something that went beyond simple strategy. “I'm angry that you felt you couldn't trust me with the information. I'm angry that our relationship has been so focused on control that you didn't feel comfortable coming to me as a partner.”
The admission hit harder than any accusation could have, because it revealed exactly how far we’d both traveled from where we’d started. This wasn’t the man who’d bought me at auction, who’d collared me and assigned me a bodyguard. This was someone willing to look in the mirror and see the rot beneath the gold, to acknowledge that power without trust was just another form of weakness.
A hush fell between us, thick with everything unspoken. Luka’s hand lingered at my ribs, thumb catching on an old scar that curved beneath my heart. He hesitated, and I watched the struggle cross his face—a flicker of something almost soft, almost careful.
He traced the line, gentler than I deserved. “I never asked,” he murmured. “But I’ve seen them—scars older than anything I put there. How did you get this one?”
I almost laughed. It came out brittle. “That one? My father. He liked his whiskey and hated being reminded that the world owed him nothing. I tried to protect my mom once. He made sure I remembered not to get in the way. Afterward, my mother bandaged me up and said it would be better if we all forgot.”
The words hung in the air, sour with old grief.
“She died not long after,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “OD’d in the bathroom. I found her.” I pressed my palm to Luka’s, steadying myself with the heat of him. “They called it an accident. I called it escape.”
Luka’s eyes shuttered. “And your father?”
“Gone. I was ten. Shuffled into foster care. Every year, a new bed. A new lie. Some homes were okay. Others—” I shrugged, as if my body didn’t still carry the echoes of strange hands, cold basements, voices that promised love and delivered only hunger. “You learn to survive. You get good at reading people. You get good at hiding.”
His hand squeezed mine, silent understanding.
“But Cass—” My throat tightened at the name. “Cass was different. They were the only person who ever looked at me and saw… me. They called us the ‘two lost kids’ in the group home, but we weren’t lost. We were just waiting for a chance. Cass believed in escape. Cass believed in hope. We made a plan—Portland, Seattle, anywhere but here.”
I closed my eyes, letting the memory take me.
“We saved for months. Cass was already sick. I thought I could get them somewhere safe, where they could breathe easy. We had eighty-three dollars and a bag of clothes. The night we ran, it was raining. Subway platform, midnight. I remember Cass coughing, blood on their hand, the way their fingers shook. But they smiled at me, anyway. Said, ‘Maybe this time we’ll be free.’”
My voice went thin, almost childlike. “Then the men came. Expensive suits, too polite, too clean for our world. They offered help. I believed them. Cass was so tired, I—God, I let them take us. I should have fought harder. But I didn’t.”
I felt Luka’s breath catch, felt his shame and guilt knotting between us. He knew what came next, even if the faces were different.
“They separated us. I didn’t see Cass again. Not after that night. They took me to the auction house. I was seventeen. I thought I could scream loud enough for someone to come. I was wrong. I learned quick: if you want to survive, you keep your head down. You stop hoping. You let them break you, just enough so they don’t kill you.”
A tremor ran through Luka. His eyes were fixed on the place where his hand covered my scar.
I looked at him, raw and exposed. “Your auction house. It was yours, wasn’t it?”
He nodded, shame carved into every line of his body. “Yes. Mine. My legacy.” His voice shook, but he didn’t look away. “I wasn’t a child, Ash. I was twenty. My family threatened me—made it clear that either I ran the business, or I was disposable. I told myself I was protecting the people I cared about. I told myself I could make things better from the inside. But it was all my choice. Every expansion, every protocol, every cut made to keep the machine running—mine.”
He stared at the wall, as if he could see the ghosts crowding the darkness.
“I built that empire for fifteen years,” Luka said softly, the words leaden. “I made deals with monsters. I let myself become one. Every lot sold, every life broken—I’m responsible. It wasn’t fate. It was me.”
I wanted to hate him. God, I wanted to. But looking at him now, I saw only a man weighed down by the bodies beneath his feet, by the choices he could never undo. A man who’d spent his life fighting monsters and waking up to find himself turning into one.
“You didn’t put the knife in my father’s hand,” I said. “You didn’t push my mother to the edge. You didn’t make Cass sick. But you made the world I was sold into.”
Luka bowed his head, voice ragged. “I can’t fix that. I wish I could. But I won’t lie to you, Ash. I could have stopped it. Maybe not at first, but later. I could have burned it all down. I didn’t. I was afraid.”
I sat up, letting my scars show, letting the weight of them speak. “You know the worst part? For a long time, I wanted someone to pay. For Cass, for all of it. I dreamed of killing the man who ran the auction house. Now… I don’t know. I see you, Luka, and I see all the ways you’re broken too. I see a man trying, failing, trying again.”
He reached out, tentative. “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”
I shook my head. “Good. I don’t have any to give. But I can promise this: I’ll never let what happened to me, to Cass, happen again. And I won’t let you bear it alone.”
He let out a shaky laugh, wiping his eyes. “You’re dangerous, Ash.”
“Only to men like the one you used to be.”
We sat together in the dark, scars and secrets bared, and for the first time, I didn’t feel hollowed out by my story. I felt seen. Known.