Page 12 of Seeking Shadows

Have you ever loved someone enough to let them hate you if it meant keeping them safe? If it meant keeping their hands clean, their soul intact? I have.

I tried to push him away. Tried to make him disappear, to make him hate me enough to leave. I was cruel, reckless, desperate.

That night, I know I was a bitch to him. I made it look like I’d been on my father’s side this whole time. Maybe because… if he’s doing what I think he’s doing, he’s going to get himself killed. And I can’t let that happen.

I know I’ve been manipulated. Twisted into knots until I didn’t know which way was out. But that doesn’t change the fact that I let myself end up here again—back in my father’s world. So no, it’s not as simple as escaping.

If I run, Katie suffers. And if Nico finds out the truth about Zane… he will too.

I need to make him leave. Before everything explodes.

I said things I can’t take back. And yet, he’s still here, threading himself into my story, pretending to be someone he’s not for reasons I don’t understand.

I can’t unwrite what’s already been written. My father will never stop hunting me, and by extension, he’ll never stop hunting Zane. That’s just how this works.

I’ve accepted my fate. I just didn’t want to drag him down with me.

I was happy in my bubble—no, not happy. Content. Safe in a way that made sense to me. Now, my reality has caught up to me, sinking its claws in, whispering in my ear that I’ll never escape it.

That I was a fool for thinking I ever could.

I’m losing it here. My thoughts scatter like broken glass, sharp and messy, cutting into my brain with every attempt to make sense of them. Voices that don’t belong to anyone tell me things I don’t want to hear.

Shadows linger where they shouldn’t. I know they’re not real, but that doesn’t make them any less there.

I made sure to take my old phone and hide it, stuffing it into a place where even my paranoia can’t convince me someone will find it. Then Zane got me a new one. So whatever tracking software my father tries to use, whatever invisible chains he thinks he still has wrapped around me, they’ll all lead to that phone.

Not to me. Not to the one that matters.

I make sure to answer everyone's messages—especially my brother's. If I ignore him, he'll get suspicious.

I feed him vague updates about my trip with Zane—just enough to buy myself a few months before I have to face him again.

A few months before I have to lie to him again.

Fate is cruel. I just got him back, and now I have to push him away.

Seth can’t know where I really am. If he finds out, he’ll come for me, and if he comes for me, my father will see him. If my father sees him, the entire Evermore will know who his son is.

And that will ruin everything.

I can’t let that happen.

Besides, a part of me still clings to the hope that my father will leave One alone when he finds out he’s alive. That he’ll consider him untainted, still salvageable. But deep down, I know better.

My father had only one true obsession in life: One.

He started an entire war over his death, but it wasn’t out of grief. It wasn’t out of love. No, Nico Riviera doesn’t have the capacity for love. He did it because he lost his greatest potential weapon.

The perfect heir to his legacy.

He never wanted a son. He wanted a successor. A machine crafted in his image, molded by his hands.

A mind he could break and rebuild as he saw fit.

And I was the failed experiment.

The cracked version. The mistake. The thing he tried to fix until I bled, until I screamed, until I learned to keep my mouth shut because nothing ever stopped him.

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