Page 62 of Goldflame

They close in, strong arms gripping me from both sides, but I don’t make it easy. I kick and thrash against their hold, my laughter turning wild and unhinged. It’s the sound of a woman with nothing left to lose.

The crowd parts as they drag me away, shocked whispers trailing in my wake.

CHAPTER TWENTY

JULIAN

She’s laughing.

Her entire body is heaving, those delicate shoulders shaking with such force I’m amazed they don’t snap. The guards grip her arms as she thrashes between them like some feral animal.

That fucking laugh—high and unhinged. It’s the sound of a woman who’s lost her goddamn mind.

As much as that laugh unnerves me, it’s her eyes that chill my blood: vacant green pools that see everything and nothing all at once.

“Let me go,” she snarls through laughter that doesn’t stop, not even to breathe. “I wasn’t finished with the party!”

I follow a few paces behind as the guards drag her down the hallway. My chest feels like it’s splitting open, cracking along a fault line. She killed Lucas right under my fucking nose.

“You should’ve seen his face,” she calls back to me,twisting her neck to catch my gaze. “Surprised to the very end. Just like Adrian.”

My step falters, and for a moment I can’t breathe past the rage and grief clawing up my throat.

There it is. A confession. Finally.

She’s guilty.

My mind has been plagued with doubts these past weeks—that strange man with the feather at the Harvest festival, Lucas failing to attend my first meeting, Aurelia’s unwavering insistence that my mother is orchestrating everything. I even tried to act like my brother and investigate what I could.

But this... this erases every uncertainty. And I should’ve listened to my gut all along.

The woman before me is a killer. An actress. A manipulator.

And she’s enjoying this.

I thought my heart couldn’t break more than it already did but some part of it was still holding together.

Now, it fully shatters.

The love of my life killed my brother.

How the fuck do I handle that?

Aurelia continues to laugh but I’ve heard enough. “Shut her up,” I growl at the guards. One of them clamps a hand over her mouth, but her laughter continues, muffled and grotesque behind his palm.

We reach Adrian’s room—her prison cell—and I stand back as they shove her inside. She stumbles, catching herself on the dresser before whirling around, that deranged smile still plastered across her face.

I meet her gaze, searching for any glimpse of the woman I thought I knew. The girl who wrapped a hair tie around my wrist when we were kids. The woman who tasted like honey when I kissed her. The person I’ve been obsessed with for as long as I can remember.

She’s gone. This maniacal, deranged stranger has taken her place.

“Lock it,” I say. “Triple the guard. No one enters or leaves without my direct order.”

As the door slams shut, her laughter follows me down the hallway, burrowing into my skull like a parasite. I pass by the room with the dead man. The men from security are already cleaning up, professional and discreet as they wrap Lucas’s body in black plastic. My eyes drift to his face—or what’s visible of it—before they cover him completely. His eyes bulge, face frozen in shock, a silk tie still wrapped around his throat.

Christ. She didn’t just kill him. She strangled him with his own fucking tie.

The room swims, and I touch the wall to steady myself. Lucy. His wife. Someone will have to tell her.

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