Page 215 of Inevitable Endings
Because I’ve seen this man with blood on his hands and ghosts in his eyes. I’ve seen him gut a legacy and make it bleed. I’ve seen the monster, held him when he cried.
And he’s offering me not just his love, but the ruins of who he was. The broken crown. The ash-drenched name. The hollowed-out parts he never thought anyone would touch and not flinch.
And I want it.
All of it.
I reach up and touch his face—just a light press of my fingertips to his jaw. He leans into it like he’s starving.
“I don’t need clean,” I whisper. “I don’t need easy. I need you.”
He exhales like he’s just been forgiven for something no one else even saw.
His forehead rests against mine.
“I don’t know how to be soft,” he murmurs.
“Good,” I whisper back. “I don’t want soft. I want honest.”
He kisses me; not rushed, not devouring.
Just real.
Warm. Steady.
Behind us, I can hear the others laughing. Karpov is cracking another dry insult. Ada is teasing Dominik. Sawyer is saying something smug. It’s chaos, in a way. Loud. Disjointed.
I’m not alone anymore, the thought hits me.
Not the way I used to be. Not the kind of alone that makes the walls echo and the dark feel like it’s pressing in. Not the kind of alone where silence becomes a cage and love feels like a foreign language whispered too far away to learn.
No.
I have something now.
I have them.
This chaos, this misfit orchestra of violence and loyalty and scars, we’re not perfect. We’re stitched together with pain and stitched back together with loyalty.
But it’s life.
Mylife.
And I realize, I’m not a ghost anymore.
Chapter 78
Where Family Failed,
Forgiveness Began
Isabella
I walk through the door of somewhere I swore I’d never return to; my childhood home.
The past breathes here.
It seeps from the yellowing wallpaper, the creaking floorboards, the faint smell of floor polish and something sweeter, fainter, like old perfume and ghosted memories. I used to stare at this hallway for hours as a child, afraid to move, afraid of what was waiting in the next room. Every corner still remembers me. Every frame on the wall holds a lie.
