Page 81 of Blood Heir

I crack one eye open, narrowing my gaze. “Hey, what’s that tone?”

“You can’t live without him,” she blurts. “Neither can he. He can’t live without you.”

I roll my eyes and sit up slightly, water dripping off my shoulders. “And yet he was going to betray me. You all were going to betray me.”

She turns her face away, biting her lip. “I’m a piece of shit. You should know that by now. You should’ve gone through with killing me that day.”

I lean forward, letting the water drip off my fingers as I glare at her. “I should have, shouldn’t I?” My voice cuts sharp, cold. “I still can.”

She sniffs and wipes her nose with the sleeve of her sweater, shrinking into herself. For a moment, she looks so small.

I inhale deeply, the anger in my chest giving way to something heavier. “You did save me from Monte and Gustavo,” I admit, my voice softer now. “So I owe you for that. You could’ve let them give me those pills.”

“I’m not a monster.” Her voice trembles. “Maybe I am. I just…I just wanted someone to love me.”

My chest tightens at that. My voice comes out like a sigh, raw and fragile. “Me too.”

The silence stretches again, but this time it feels different. Softer. Sadder.

Without thinking, I hum. A tune from when we were kids. The one Brother Stefano used to hum when the grownups left us alone in the old chapel.

Emilia’s head lifts slightly. She recognizes it. And after a shaky breath, she hums along.

For the first time in a long while, we’re not enemies. Not friends, either. But something fragile in between.

The humming lulls me. Our voices blend softly like an old melody stitched into the bones of my childhood. But as the tune drifts from my lips, something breaks loose in my head.

The images slice in—sharp, brutal.

I see it.

I’m back there.

The night before the rooftop.

After Vittoria spit the truth into my face—the truth that I’m Serevin’s stepsister, born from a meaningless night his father had with a woman who didn’t even want me. A pawn sold off to my adoptive father, raised like a chess piece in some sick family game. My stomach twists as I relive it, the bitterness rising thick in my throat.

I remember storming out of that suffocating meeting room, my pulse racing, my hands shaking. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

Emilia. Serevin. Vittoria. All of them.

The betrayal burned like acid under my skin.

I had grabbed my diary. My only confession. My last bit of sanity. I sat at my vanity table, clutching the pen so tightly it nearly snapped. My handwriting was wild, desperate, as Ipoured everything onto the pages. The filth. The lies. The blood that ran through me.

I knew. I knew even then that something was coming for me. That I might not make it out of this house with my mind intact.

I wrote every detail.

And when the words dried up, I hid the diary in that compartment, pushing it far back like stuffing a secret into the mouth of hell. The little key—my final safeguard—I tucked it away in the drawer. The only insurance I had left.

I thought I could finally let myself cry, let the grief tear through me. But as I collapsed into my bed, my eyes puffy and raw, I heard voices.

Laughter.

Soft, intimate.

I crept out of my room, bare feet silent on the cold marble. The voices led me toward the east wing hall.

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