Chapter 363: Disposable Cunt
The private hospital room where Monique lay was almost grotesquely luxurious compared to the standard corridors the staff walked through—a wide bed with immaculate white sheets, fresh flowers already arranged in a vase by the service, a wall screen silently broadcasting the day’s news.
Even by Spires standards, this was no joke.
Hector sat in the armchair next to the bed, one leg crossed over the other, his suit as impeccable as usual, with absolutely no trace of compassion visible on his face.
"I can see you’re in bad shape," he said, "but let’s talk about what actually matters. The plan. What exactly happened that night?"
Monique, lying in the bed with a bandage still visible on her temple, felt a cold rage rise in her throat—not new; she had known it forever, that particular frustration of having to answer to this man who never really saw her, only what she could report back to him.
"Harlan betrayed us," she said, her voice still a little hoarse. "He teamed up with Nash, he attacked me—"
"I already know that," Hector cut in, irritated. "What I want to know is where we stand with Blaze. Did he actually recover something compromising, or was Harlan bluffing when he finally confessed under pressure?"
Monique closed her eyes for a moment, holding back a trembling breath.
"Sir," she said, her voice lower. "I was just kidnapped. Tied up. Beaten."
"I already know that too," he said, without the slightest change in tone, as if he were simply checking off a box that had already been handled. "And now I’m asking you what happened with Blaze. Did he take something compromising, yes or no?"
She clenched her teeth, fury burning under her skin with no outlet. He was the boss. She couldn’t just scream, demand that he acknowledge what she had just been through, without risking looking weak in front of him—exactly what she had spent her life avoiding.
"What I’m trying to say," she insisted, every word requiring a great effort to leave her throat, "is that what happened to me maybe deserves a minimum of—"
"Monique." His voice hardened a notch, sharp. "I thought you were more professional than this. We are in the middle of a war and I do not have time for this. Can you answer me yes or no?"
She remained silent, jaw locked, refusing to give in completely, still searching for an angle to force him to at least acknowledge, even for a second, what she had endured.
It was in that tense silence that someone knocked on the door.
Hector didn’t even turn around.
"Busy," Hector said curtly.
Knock knock.
"I said busy," he repeated, his voice rising a notch, annoyed by the insistence.
Knock knock knock.
"Seriously," he spat, half-rising from his chair, "are you deaf or—"
The door opened anyway.
Hector froze, mouth still half-open on his unfinished sentence.
"This is not possible," he began, half-standing, voice rising, "are you people insane, I said I was—"
He stopped dead, the breath literally cut from his throat.
Victoria stood in the doorway, a long black coat cinched at the waist, a dark dress that followed every line of her body with an elegance so familiar to him, her hair pulled up in a chignon that left her face clear, her sapphire eyes sweeping the room with boredom, as if the entire place didn’t even deserve her attention. A bouquet of white asphodels rested in the crook of her arm—the variety traditionally associated with the dead, with regrets, with everything that remains withered even in full bloom.
Hector remained completely petrified, one hand still half-raised in the gesture he had been making a moment earlier, his entire body frozen as if time had stopped around him.
He had never imagined it this way. For years he had built this image in his head: their reunion, when it finally came, would be the final act of a story he had been patiently writing since adolescence—the one where he would finally break her, bring her to her knees, possess her completely, his half-sister become his property after years of flight and resistance. She was his muse, his oldest fantasy, the deepest obsession that had fed every one of his decisions since they were children, and he had not seen her, not once, in person, in years.
He had imagined her a thousand different ways. Pleading. Frustrated. Finally submissive.
Not like this. Not here, walking in unannounced into a hospital room, with that new, glacial self-assurance that had absolutely nothing to do with the girl he had kept frozen in his memory all these years.
It felt like a bad omen. As if his own story had just suddenly tipped toward an ending he had never written, one he had never even considered.
"Victoria," he finally managed to articulate, his voice trembling slightly despite all his efforts to regain some semblance of calm. "What... what a surprise."
"Really?" She walked into the room without granting him another glance, heading straight for Monique’s bed, her heels clicking on the tiles. "Because I don’t find you particularly surprising. Same place, same little power game over someone who just went through hell."
Monique, lying there, felt her stomach turn as she watched Victoria approach. This was, literally, the last person in the world she would have wanted to see her in this state. Death would have been easier to swallow than the humiliation of being seen weak by the woman she despised most.
"...What the hell are you doing here?" Monique murmured.
"I came for a funeral," Victoria said.
A thin smile stretched her lips as she slowly placed the flowers on the nightstand. In the sharp light of the room, she was magnetic—infinitely more magnificent and alive than the image Hector obsessively watched on his screens.
The shock of seeing her in the flesh hit him full force, instantly silencing him.
"Asphodels. Do you know their symbolism, darling?"
Monique said nothing, her gaze murderous, fingers clenched on the sheets.
"It’s the flower you place on graves," Victoria continued in a smooth, almost caressing voice. "To mark a regret. A loss." She slid a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, a fluid gesture that underlined the perfect curve of her neck. She offered Monique a smile loaded with pity.
"I found it so appropriate. For the death of Madame De la Bite."
"Die, you filthy whore," Monique spat, foaming with rage.
"Not yet," Victoria replied.
With a movement of insolent sensuality, she settled into the free armchair, crossing her long golden legs. The rustle of her fabric and her haughty perfume filled the space, finishing the work of paralyzing Hector. He was overwhelmed, caught in total psychological chaos; seeing this elusive woman dominate the room in the flesh shattered every one of his defenses.
Hector tried to speak, his throat dry.
"Victoria, if you only came to—"
"I’m not talking to you," she cut him off without even deigning to turn her head, her eyes locked on Monique’s. "Go sit back in your corner, pretend you exist, while I deliver the funeral oration for the horse’s dick."
Hector was left speechless. Years of preparing this moment in his head, mentally rehearsing every possible scenario of their reunion, and here she was treating him like a poorly placed piece of furniture, something you walk around without even thinking about it. He remained standing, frozen, unable to find a reply sharp enough to match this total, casual contempt. His own authority—the one he exercised without effort over the rest of his empire—was completely disintegrating in this small hospital room.
"So," Victoria continued, leaning slightly toward Monique, "Harlan."
Monique half-sat up, ready to lunge despite her weakness.
"Don’t say his name."
"Of all the rats in the Underground," Victoria said, a discreet laugh at the back of her throat, "it really had to be him. That little nothing Hector himself treated like a lackey. He’s the one who..."
"Shut your mouth!" Monique screamed. "I’ll gouge your eyes out if you keep going!"
"You know," Victoria continued, unperturbed by the outbursts of rage, "I’ve heard it’s common. That kind of twisted bond that forms between a victim and her abuser. A gutter attachment." She tilted her head, divine and cruel. "Want me to arrange a visiting-room meeting? So the two of you can cry together over your mediocrity?"
Monique tried to get up, her body trembling with hatred.
"Get out of here before I slit your throat."
"Maybe another time," Victoria dismissed with Olympian calm.
Hector, face pale, crossed his arms to hide the trembling in his hands. The dissonance between the Victoria on his screens and this triumphant goddess left him drained of all authority. He attempted a desperate surge.
"Victoria, this kind of talk is intolerable here..."
"Still here, are you?" she said, pivoting slowly, her gaze sliding over him like a grease stain. "I had almost forgotten you were present."
The indifference struck him in the heart. The great Hector was nothing more than furniture, an extra. He felt the blood rise to his temples, but Victoria’s magnetism held him prisoner, unable to formulate the slightest retort.
"You know, Monique," Victoria resumed, royally ignoring Hector’s psychological corpse, "I’m not alone anymore. I have someone behind me. A shadow of death that has already started trampling every insect in its path. Harlan, the bad blood in my team..." She let a silence settle, her gaze sliding slowly toward Hector.
"And that shadow is coming for you," she said, her voice still soft, almost tender in its cruelty. "Soon."
Hector said nothing, but something in his silence clearly betrayed that he had no ready reply, nothing to oppose to this statement delivered with absolute confidence. It would probably have been easier if he had studied a script in advance.
"Which brings me to you, my dear," Victoria concluded, fixing Monique again. "Because I wonder how someone can still crawl for a man who didn’t even take two seconds to ask if you were in pain."
"Get out..." Monique hissed, tears of rage in her eyes.
"Has he even looked at you once since I’ve been here?" Victoria asked, a half-smile. "No. He’s looking at me. Because he couldn’t care less about a disposable pawn."
Monique threw a furious glance at Hector and saw, with horror, that she was right: he was hypnotized, submitted to the big screen of reality.
"It’s funny," Victoria continued, "how we choose our anchors in life. You could choose anyone. But you stay attached to a man who sees you as a tool to be repaired so it can go back to work." She let a slow smile appear. "Think about it. Really. Before the ship sinks completely."
Monique remained silent, jaw locked, her gaze fixed on a vague point beyond Victoria, something fragile and dangerous slowly cracking behind her eyes.
Victoria finally stood, smoothing her skirt with a gesture that underlined the curve of her lower back.
"Well. The flowers are here, the truths too. I’ll leave you to your agony."
She walked toward the exit, stopping just close enough to Hector for him to feel the heat of her skin and her perfume of victory. She looked him up and down, savoring his paralysis.
"See you soon, horse-head," she breathed. "Try not to kill yourself. I can’t wait to see how badly you will fall."
She put her hand on the handle, then turned one last time, as if a late thought had just crossed her mind.
"Oh, by the way, Monique," she said, an innocent smile far too pointed to be sincere. "I read a book the other day. Do you know what your name means in French?"
"YOU BITCH!" Monique screamed, grabbing her pillow and hurling it with all her strength toward the door.
Victoria closed the door just in time; the pillow slammed against it with a dull thud.
The silence that followed in the room was long and tense.
Hector took a few steps toward the door, as if he were going to follow her, catch her in the corridor, say something, anything, as long as it erased that last image of her looking at him like a poorly placed piece of furniture. Or maybe he just wanted to see her again to confirm how much more beautiful she was in real life.
His hand almost settled on the handle before he froze, motionless, his gaze lost in the wood of the door, unable to move further, unable even to remember what he might have wanted to say to her anyway.
He remained like that for a long moment, silent, something in him looping over that phrase—"I had almost forgotten"—like a splinter driven too deep to be pulled out with a single gesture.
It was the weight of a gaze on his back that finally brought him back to reality.
He turned slowly and found Monique staring at him from her bed, eyes shining with a cold rage, her jaw clenched.
He cleared his throat, forcing a semblance of composure as best he could, sitting back down in the armchair with a stiffness that betrayed far more than he would have wanted.
"Monique," he said, his voice trying to regain its usual authority without fully succeeding. "I want to know what they have on us. What exactly happened out there?"
Monique didn’t answer right away. Her gaze stayed fixed on him, the silent rage continuing to boil under the surface, every word of Victoria’s replaying on a loop in her head.
She looked at this man, sitting there, still obsessed with a woman who had just humiliated him in front of her without even looking at him twice, and who still hadn’t found a single second to ask her how *she* was.
Something closed definitively inside her at that exact moment, a decision crystallizing without her really needing to think about it.
She smiled, a wide, perfectly calibrated smile, her eyes widening slightly with a forced and terrifying innocence.
"Nothing," she said. "Nothing at all. Harlan had nothing compromising on him. The drive he took was empty. A diversion, nothing more. We lost nothing."