Page 190 of Without a Trace
This place was a fucking cathedral of power. And somehow it was mine.
Or it should’ve been.
I swallowed hard, forcing the emotion down. I didn’t grow up here. I wasn’t raised behind these gates, wrapped in silks or trained to inherit anything. I grew up in a too-small house with a mother who never once said the word “legacy.” She’d told me my father was dead. Dead and gone and not worth asking about.
But here I was twenty-two-years old. Alive. Betrayed.
And apparently, so was he.
Brielle parked near the steps, her nails drumming once against the wheel. “Try not to scream,” she muttered, her tone sharp but distant.
“I’m not the one who lied about a fucking funeral,” I said, my voice low and shaking.
She didn’t flinch. “Get out.”
The moment my boots hit the stone, the world tilted. Like the ground beneath me knew who I was, even if I didn’t. Even if I’d spent my whole life pretending I was just… ordinary.
I wasn’t.
Not here.
I followed Brielle up the steps, my fingers twitching at my sides. The doors opened before we even knocked, two men in black stepping aside without a word. One gave a shallow nod. One bowed.
I stepped inside.
The ceilings stretched like cathedrals, lit by dim golden chandeliers. Black and crimson carpets bled down the staircases. Paintings lined the walls—portraits of people with eyes like mine. Cold green. Almost cruel.
My skin prickled. I wanted to run, to punch the walls, to collapse all at once.
“Where is he?”
Brielle turned toward a hallway lined with shadows. “Waiting.”
I nodded once, but didn’t move. Not yet.
Because everything inside me was screaming.
He was alive.
My mother lied.
And the boys—the boys I left without a word—still didn’t know why.
And worst of all?
I wasn’t sure I did either.
Trace
She was gone.
The villa was too quiet. Her dress still on the floor, her glass half-full on the table. But the storm of her was missing. That wild, aching presence I felt in every goddamn room—even when she wasn’t in it.
I stood there for too long, staring at the closed door like it might open again. Like maybe she’d come walking back in with that fire in her eyes and some smartass comment about me needing to calm down.
But it stayed shut.
And I stayed fucked.
