Page 62 of Goldrage
“That’s impossible,” I say weakly, though even as the words leave my mouth, pieces begin clicking into place.Julian’s features never quite matched Lucian’s harsh angles. Valentine always seemed to know exactly how to handle my brother’s volcanic moods. There was also the protective way he watched over Julian that went beyond simple duty—a father’s instinct disguised as professional obligation.
“I wish it were.” His voice comes muffled through his fingers. “God, how I wish it were. Do you want the whole story? Because I’ve carried it alone for so fucking long that I think it might kill me if I don’t tell someone.”
I nod slowly, still reeling but needing to understand the full scope of this revelation. My analytical mind races ahead, calculating consequences and connections, but my heart…
My heart breaks for the man sitting across from me. A father who could only watch from afar as another man abused his son.
If Valentine had ever tried to speak up, Lucian would’ve killed him. Then Aurelia. Then Julian.
I’d be living in a very different world.
Valentine raises his head, and I’m shocked to see his eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears. “I’d been working for your father for barely a year when he married your mother. Quick ceremony—political alliance, nothing more. Liora was different then. She was young and scared, completely out of her depth in this world.”
He stares at something beyond the walls of this room, lost in memories. “She was taken from her family abruptly, thrust into a marriage with a man she barely knew, and surrounded by people who saw her as either a tool or a threat. She had no one. It only took a fewmonths before Lucian started showing his true nature. The first time I found her bleeding, I thought she’d had an accident.”
My stomach turns violently. I press a fist to my mouth, fighting the urge to be sick as I imagine my mother—young and frightened, before power and cruelty hardened her into the monster she is now. She was helpless and alone in Lucian’s hands.
I may disown her now, but I can recognize the victim she once was. An innocent before this world infected her veins with darkness.
“I got her medical care that night,” Valentine continues, each word dragged from some deep well of pain. “I stayed with her through the surgery to repair what Lucian had done. I started checking on her after that, just to make sure she was healing properly. I was just a guard then, not the head of security, and she was the boss’s wife. But she was so… isolated, so desperate for someone, anyone, to show her basic human kindness.”
He leans back in his chair, gaze fixed on the ceiling now as if the answers to all our sins might be written there. “We started talking during those check-ins. Really talking. About her fears, her hopes, what her life had been like before Lucian. She was brilliant—still is, despite everything—and funny in a way she never gets to be anymore. I fell in love with her mind first, then her heart, then everything else.”
Valentine’s voice cracks like a fault line giving way. “We shared our first kiss the night you were born. Just a kiss, nothing more. Your birth reminded us both that there could be good things in this dark world, thatmaybe we could find some light together. We were careful—so fucking careful—but we were also young and stupid and desperately in love.” He drags a hand down his face, leaving red marks against tan skin. “We didn’t consummate the relationship until months later. We knew the risks. We knew what Lucian would do to both of us if he found out, but we couldn’t stay away from each other. And when Liora realized she was pregnant again…” Valentine shrugs helplessly, the gesture so defeated it makes my chest ache. “We did a secret paternity test as soon as Julian was born. Confirmed what we both already suspected. He was mine, not Lucian’s.”
The magnitude of what Valentine is revealing crashes over me in waves, each one threatening to pull me under. Julian—my brother, the heir to the Consortium, the man currently wielding absolute power over our criminal empire—has no legitimate claim to any of it. He’s not Lucian’s son.
He’s not even truly a Harrow.
My mind spirals through memories, recontextualizing every moment. Julian’s desperate need for Lucian’s approval mixed with his hatred and rebellion toward the man. How quickly he became like Lucian once he took control.
Every act was built on a foundation of lies.
And Lucian may not have known consciously, but some part of him must have sensed Julian wasn’t his. It explains why he was always hardest on Julian, why he favored me.
“Does Julian know?”
Valentine shakes his head, and tears finallyspill down his weathered cheeks, carving rivers through decades of control. “How could I tell him? It was too big of a risk. If word ever got back to Lucian, he would’ve killed us—me, Liora, my daughter. And later, when Lucian was dead and Julian was taking power… how could I destroy his entire identity? Everything he believes about himself? There was never a moment when…”
“But you’ve watched him change. You watched him become darker, more unstable, and you could’ve intervened as his father. Talked some sense into him.”
“Yes, I know. It’s… This is my fault.” Valentine’s voice breaks into a sob, his composure finally shattering completely. His shoulders shake with the force of emotions too long contained. “I should’ve found a way to guide him when he was younger, to show him there was another path. And when Julian took power… I was terrified that if I pushed too hard, if I revealed the truth at the wrong moment, he would take it out on Aurelia. I couldn’t risk my daughter.” Another sob. “I’ve watched my son become everything I never wanted him to be.” The words pour out between ragged breaths. “Watched him hurt people, manipulate people, turn into a version of the man he thinks is his father. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it because I was a coward who chose safety over truth.”
I rise from my chair, my pain irrelevant compared to the agony radiating from the man before me. My hand finds his shoulder, squeezing gently—a gesture I’ve rarely offered anyone. “You’re not a coward. You were trying to protect your family. All of us.” The words taste strange in my mouth, offering comfort when my worldhas just been fundamentally altered. “But this changes everything.”
Julian is still my brother but… different. He’s not a Harrow. While I see that as a blessing, it’s going to completely shatter him.
“I know,” Valentine says. “The Consortium, Julian’s leadership, his entire claim to power… it’s all built on a lie. But it’s too late, isn’t it? There’s no undoing what this lie has done.”
I kneel beside Valentine’s chair, ignoring the sharp pain that shoots through my side like a hot poker. “We can save him. We will tell him the truth and help him understand that he doesn’t have to be what Lucian made him. He can choose to be your son instead.”
Valentine looks at me with eyes that hold a desperate hope. Tears still streak down his face, but there’s a father’s love fighting through decades of regret. “Do you really think it’s possible? After everything?”
“I have to believe it is.”
And I do. Despite everything, despite the blood on Julian’s hands and the darkness that’s consumed him, I’ve seen glimpses of my old brother in recent weeks. The uncertainty when he looks at me. The cracks in his armor. The moments when he almost seems to remember who he used to be before Lucian’s poison seeped into his veins.
Knowing that he’s not Lucian’s son actually gives me more hope.
