Page 57 of Blood Heir

I lower myself to my knees before her.

“You see everything, don't you?” I whisper, my voice cracking.

The weight of memory crashes down again. Like it always does.

She had been a maid.

A poor, nameless maid, working in my adoptive father’s mansion. She had no titles, no protection, only her beauty—and that beauty became her curse. My father—Gaspare Accardi’s brother, the man who took me as his heir—became obsessed with her. Possessed her. Controlled her.

But it wasn't he who fathered me. It was his second-in-command. His most trusted right hand. His shadow.

My true father.

Their affair had been brief, desperate—a rebellion that was never meant to be discovered. But it was. My adoptive father found out. And in his rage, his jealousy, he killed my real father with his own hands and forced my mother to carry me to term. She gave birth in chains. I was born into chains.

She raised me in the shadows of that house, in whispered lullabies and stolen moments of tenderness when no one was watching. But there were never many of those.

He tortured her.

For years.

He broke her bones when no one was looking. Starved her. Kept her isolated, weak, degraded. And made me watch. I was a child when I first saw him beat her for breathing too loudly. I was a child when I first saw blood run from her mouth like a quiet stream. And still she smiled at me. Still, she whispered: “You will not become him, Serevin. You will be better.”

She only made it ten years.

When she died, he handed me this glass box of her ashes as if it were a gift. His words ring in my head, still razor sharp even after all these years: “You’re a man now. You belong to me.”

I stare into the dim light, watching the flame flicker against the glass, reflecting her face back at me from the paintings that surround me. And I see Fioretta there too. The way she looked at me tonight when I grabbed her hand. The fire behind her eyes, the strength in her voice, the fury in her bones.

I lean closer to the ashes, resting my forehead against the glass like I’ve done so many nights before.

“I’ll kill them for hurting her.” My voice shakes.

The words are not a threat. They’re a vow.

I close my eyes, feeling the rage boiling under my skin, seeping into my blood. Monte. Gustavo. My aunt. Each one of them touched what was mine. And I will bury them for it.

Night blankets the house as I step out of the shrine room, leaving my mother’s silent presence behind me. The door shuts softly behind me, but her memory follows, humming in my skull like distant thunder.

The hallway stretches ahead. Dim lights cast long, thin shadows along the marble. Each step feels heavier than the last.The rage I keep locked beneath my ribs vibrates, simmering, but I keep it down—for now.

I reach her door. Her wing.

I don’t knock. The handle turns easily under my palm, and I push the door open. The soft creak of the hinges fills the silence as I step inside. The light from the hallway spills across her, illuminating the delicate shape of her body tangled beneath the sheets.

She’s asleep.

Her face is softer like this—her lips slightly parted, brows relaxed, arms tucked in near her chest. She looks young. Innocent. Like none of the world’s ugliness has ever touched her. It almost makes me sick, knowing the lies that hover beneath that face. Or maybe it makes me weak. I sit beside her on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake her too fast.

But her lashes flutter open.

Her voice is raw, tired, but sharp enough to stab. “Is there no privacy in this house?”

I allow a breath to escape before answering. “How do you feel?”

Her expression tightens. “What do you care?”

“I can call the doctor.”

---