Chapter 98: Big Brother 2
VIVIANNE
"You will take that to your son. You will show him what is inside, and you will make sure he understands the terms clearly. If he wants the rest of her to stay attached, he will agree to the Texier marriage and conduct himself accordingly."
Nausea twisted through me as I stared at the package. I could not bring myself to open it.
When he saw that I was holding back on checking it. He made the move himself.
He opened the package, and something rolled in my direction. I hated that I looked, because the second I did, I immediately retched. It was an eye. A human eye that was very much still fresh and wet with blood. I turned away and vomited onto the carpet.
"When did you become like this?" The words came out without force when I recovered. I was too tired for force. "When did this become something you were capable of? Is it because of her? I cannot believe some stupid girl was enough to make you this way."
He laughed. It was a genuine, unperformed sound, which made it considerably worse than something manufactured.
"I was always capable of it." He moved away from the fire. "You just chose not to see it. That is a different problem." He straightened his jacket. "She was not the reason I became this way. If anything, she was the thing that finally cleared my vision. All those years of pretending that playing by their rules would get us somewhere." His voice took on a quality I had heard before when he was talking about things he had convinced himself were righteous. "We were a Gamma family in a world that sorted people by blood. I saw what could be available to us, and I decided to take it. I did what had to be done. I got a Gamma woman married to an Alpha. I single-handedly broke the cycle of a pureblood line. I put our family in the history books, and when your stupid twin decided to fuck that up, I thought better, and I pulled you out of the gutter of what you were going to be and put you, an Omega, in power in a house that should have been inaccessible to your class entirely." He looked at me steadily. "You should be ten toes behind me for that. Instead, you spend your time finding new ways to resist me like I am the problem."
"You slash a girl’s throat in my bedroom and tell me I am the problem."
"I remove obstacles." His voice did not change. "That is what I do. It is what I have always done, and every comfortable thing in your life is the result of it."
"All you do is ruin lives that aren’t yours." I insisted.
Lucian let out another laugh. "You say that like you’re a saint." I averted my gaze. The answer was clear. I wasn’t. None of us were.
"I am not a saint. But I am no monster."
He tilted his head like I had said the most hilarious thing in the world. "You did not resist me with the Archambault situation. Not once. Not when it mattered. I always wondered about that."
Cold crept into my hands.
"Was it because you were afraid of what would happen to you?" he continued. "Or was it something else?"
"I..."
"Rules for thee but not for me." The words dripped contempt. "The hypocrisy is almost impressive, sister."
"I did it for Margaux." The words came out flat and certain. "I did not care what happened to me. But if the investigation had gone further, if they had tested the children, they would have found out she was mine. She would have gone down with both of us."
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, sister," he said.
He turned back to the fire and reached in with the poker. When he pulled it out, the end was red-hot, and the brand pressed into the metal was a shape I recognized. The initials of the Alliance Against Rank, seared into iron in the deliberate, practiced way of someone who had prepared this in advance.
My throat tightened, breath catching.
"You cannot be serious."
"Deadly." He walked to Amara’s body with the brand still glowing, and I turned away. I heard the sound. I did not need to see it. "A rogue deserves death," he said, with the same conversational tone he used for everything. "And the prejudice that runs through this pack will never stop long enough for them to question how fresh any of this is. They will see what they expect to see."
I stood facing the wall, my hands pressed flat against the stone, the warmth of the fireplace reaching the side of my face.
"Look at me, Vivianne."
I turned.
He had dropped the brand at a corner as he waited for it to cool.
Now, he stood in the center of the room with Amara at his feet and the flames behind him, and the light arranged itself around him in the particular way that made the human eye see someone differently. It turned ordinary men into silhouettes and silhouettes into something older and more final.
"I own you," he said. "That is not cruelty. It is just the truth. Everything you are and everything you have exists because I built it, and I can take it down just as easily." He held my gaze without blinking. "Never make a move against me again. Not for Bastien’s whore. Not for anyone." He picked up the eye from the floor, wrapped it up, and set it on my dresser. "Make sure he gets the message after dinner."
He then went to my dresser, grabbed a cloth, took the brand in it, walked to the door, opened it, and left.
The latch caught behind him with a soft, ordinary click.
I stood in the silence he left, staring at Amara on my floor, the blood reaching farther than I imagined, her eyes still open and fixed on the spot where I failed her.
I had not saved her.
I reached down and closed her eyes with two fingers, and I stayed crouched there for a long moment with my hand resting against her face, which was still warm.
The package sat on my dresser.
I did not open it.
I could not open it yet.
I took the stupid thing and hid it in a drawer, and then took a deep, long breath.
I had to wait for some time before I called for help and lied that I had been attacked by a rogue.