Page 282 of Legacy
The weight of my mother's death slightly lifts off my shoulders.
But for once, I don’t know if I feel like a king…
or a goddamn orphan.
Chapter 47
Adriana Scarlet
The estate is beautiful in a way that almost feels tragic.
Too grand. Too still.
Like a crown that’s been gathering dust on a forgotten throne.
Angelo laces his fingers through mine as we walk through it, room by room, memory by memory.
I know why he’s doing this.
Not to impress me.
Not even to show me where he came from.
He’s doing it to keep from falling apart.
So I let him.
We step through gilded archways and hallways too wide for warmth, until he opens a set of tall doors and gestures me inside.
The ballroom.
I stop breathing for a second.
The chandeliers shimmer like frozen constellations, suspended from a ceiling painted with clouds and gold-leafed flourishes.
The floor glows beneath us, polished wood with inlaid swirls that ripple like water when the light hits it just right.
It’s… breathtaking.
I’ve never cared for excess. I’ve seen the way it rots people from the inside out.
But this? This is art.
“My mother loved this room,” Angelo says, his voice soft with something I don’t recognize, maybe reverence. “She always said it felt like music even when there wasn’t any.”
I turn in a slow circle, my fingers brushing over the air like I could catch the echo of it.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
He nods once. “Santo and Vasilisa got married in the garden. They used this room for the reception.”
I smile. “Must have been beautiful.”
He watches me for a second,reallywatches—and I feel it like a warm hand pressing gently over my heart.
Then he takes mine again and leads me onward.
We cut through the kitchen, and there, by the old archway near the pantry, he pauses.
