Chapter 102
Violet's POV:
The café Ruby had chosen was deliberately anonymous—chain furniture, beige walls, the kind of place designed to fade from memory. I arrived exactly on time and found her already seated at a corner table, fingers worrying an untouched coffee cup.
She looked smaller than I remembered. Silver threads wove through her dark hair, catching the overhead lights. Her eyes held that restless quality I recognized from my own mirror—the kind that came from sleepless nights. When she spotted me, she rose so abruptly her chair scraped against the tile.
"Miss Goldcrest," she said, her voice stripped of its usual warmth. "Thank you for coming."
I slid into the seat across from her and ordered a black coffee. When the server left, I met Ruby's gaze directly and waited.
"I need to speak with you about my daughter." She swallowed hard. "About Celeste. She's young—she hasn't even finished university yet. She doesn't understand how complicated adult relationships can be. If she's done anything to offend you, I'm asking you to show some understanding."
I lifted my coffee when it arrived, letting the bitter liquid anchor me against the absurdity of this conversation. Ruby sat there with a mother's blind devotion, completely unaware that her daughter had orchestrated my unborn child's death.
"What exactly did Celeste tell you happened?" I kept my voice neutral.
Ruby's fingers tightened around her cup. "She explained that Mr. Blackwood pursued her first. Our family is ordinary, Miss Goldcrest. When someone like Daemon Blackwood shows interest, what was she supposed to do? She came to you trying to be honest, to make clear she had no intention of breaking up your marriage. Even after your divorce, she's told him she won't be with him. She knows what people would say."
If Celeste had truly decided she would never be with Daemon even after our divorce, then why had she accepted all his arrangements?
I knew exactly what Celeste was thinking, what she really wanted. But she'd hidden it from everyone so thoroughly that people like Ruby couldn't see past the innocent mask to the calculating woman underneath.
"Do you believe her?" I interrupted, setting my cup down.
"Of course I believe her." Ruby's response came without hesitation. "Celeste has been exceptional since childhood—kind, obedient, never caused us trouble. Everyone who knows her speaks of how sweet she is. This situation with you and Mr. Blackwood has destroyed her. She regrets it terribly."
I watched her face, cataloguing the genuine conviction there. In Ruby's reality, Celeste was the gentle girl who'd brought home perfect grades. The monster who'd smiled while describing my miscarriage as "cleaning up a mistake" simply didn't exist in her mother's understanding.
When my coffee was half-empty, I leaned forward. "Your daughter is more formidable than you realize, Ruby. She's played everyone—including you."
Confusion flickered across her features. "What do you mean?"
"From the very beginning, Celeste pursued Daemon, not the other way around," I spoke each word with deliberate precision. "She orchestrated situations to insert herself into his life, deliberately provoked me to cause my miscarriage, and she's wanted to be with Daemon all along. Every single thing she's told you is a lie. Am I being clear enough now?"
The color drained from Ruby's face. Her hand jerked, sending her coffee cup tipping sideways, dark liquid spreading across the white tablecloth. The barista rushed over with napkins, and we sat in tense silence while she cleaned up, Ruby's hands trembling so violently she had to grip the table edge.
Once we were alone again, she found her voice. "You're talking about serious accusations, Miss Goldcrest. My daughter still has to finish school, get married. If her reputation gets damaged by false claims, can you take responsibility for that?"
"I can take responsibility for every single word I've just said." My tone hardened. "The real question is whether Celeste can take responsibility for everything she's done."
Ruby stared at me like I'd grown a second head. I pulled out my phone with deliberate slowness, navigating to the audio files I'd compiled—recordings of Celeste's true voice. The ones where she described sabotaging my marriage with clinical detachment.
"Listen," I said simply, and pressed play.
Celeste's voice filled the space between us, crystal clear and utterly damning. Ruby's face went through a cascade of expressions—denial, confusion, dawning horror—as she heard her daughter discuss destroying my pregnancy with casual cruelty. When I finally stopped the playback, the silence felt suffocating.
"That's impossible," Ruby whispered, but the conviction had bled from her voice. "She wouldn't—"
"Your daughter's voice is distinctive enough that you'd recognize it anywhere," I cut through her protests, gathering my bag. "These recordings exist, Ruby. What I choose to do with them is my business. But don't come to me again asking for mercy she never showed me. Don't push me to do things I don't want to do."
I left cash on the table and walked out, though I could feel Ruby's devastated stare boring into my spine.
The knowledge that Ruby would go straight to Celeste should have worried me. Let Celeste know I had evidence. Let her scramble to find a way to stop me. If she could actually prevent what was coming, then I'd accept defeat.
What I hadn't anticipated was how Daemon would intervene.
When I tried reaching media contacts over the following days, I encountered walls that hadn't existed before. Blaine actually stammered excuses before hanging up. Others were more direct in their rejections.
Finally, I cornered Blaine at a coffee shop near his office. He had the grace to look uncomfortable as I slid into the seat across from him.
"I already wrote the exposé for you," he said, pulling a flash drive from his pocket. "Best work I've done in years. But Miss Goldcrest, I can't publish it. My editor made that crystal clear."
"Why?"
"Because your ex is more powerful than I gave him credit for." Blaine's laugh held no humor. "I've written dozens of pieces about Daemon Blackwood. He never lifted a finger to stop me. But this involves Celeste Morrison, and apparently that changes everything. The warning I received was very clear: publish anything about her, and my career ends everywhere. Permanently."
The implications settled over me like a wet blanket. Daemon had created a protective bubble around Celeste, leveraging every connection to ensure nothing would stress her fragile health before surgery.
"Thank you for trying," I managed, pocketing the flash drive even though it was essentially worthless.
Walking back to my car, I turned the situation over in my mind. Traditional media was closed to me. Fine. I'd bypass them entirely—post the recordings directly on social media, let them spread organically.
The plan was forming when my phone rang. Lucian's name flashed across the screen.
"Violet, thank god." His voice came through tight with urgency. "I need your help immediately."
"What happened?"
"I screwed up—said something stupid to Sienna and now she's furious. She's not answering her phone, and with the pregnancy I'm worried sick. Can you help me look for her?"
I was already calculating routes to Sienna's usual haunts when I pulled into the address Lucian had texted. I found him waiting outside with no signs of the desperate search he'd described. Just Lucian standing there looking guilty.
And behind him, leaning against a black car, stood Daemon.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
Lucian approached with his hands raised. "I'm sorry, Violet. I really am. Daemon wanted to see you, and he knew you wouldn't agree, so he asked me to—"
"To lie and manipulate me?" I finished. "Congratulations, Lucian. Sometimes Sienna's right to want to punch you."
He fled without another word. Which left me facing the man who'd just destroyed every avenue for justice.
Daemon remained motionless, watching me with an expression I couldn't parse. We stood perhaps twelve feet apart.
"You went to considerable trouble to corner me like this," I said. "So what is it you want, Daemon?"
"Celeste's condition is unstable." No preamble. "Whatever you're planning, it needs to wait until after her surgery at Northern Summit Pack. That's all I'm asking."
The confirmation still felt like a physical blow. He'd orchestrated this entire confrontation just to deliver an ultimatum about protecting Celeste's fragile health.
"Let me ask you something." I took three steps closer. "If it was Celeste who pushed me off the hospital bed, if it was her deliberate action that killed our baby, what would you do to her?"
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe calculation. "Do you have proof?"
"Answer the question first," I pressed, refusing to let him deflect. "What would you do to her?"
I had a gut feeling that even if I told Daemon everything, laid out every piece of evidence, he would still protect Celeste in the end. In my past life, he'd gone to insane extremes for her—there was nothing he wouldn't do. So why would something as "trivial" as our dead child change that?
That's why I'd never planned to expose Celeste to Daemon privately. I'd always intended to go public at their moment of triumph, when they finally got their happy ending. That would be the blow that would hurt her most.
"I've already told you," Daemon said, a thread of impatience creeping into his voice, as though I was the one being unreasonable by demanding an answer. "Everything can wait until after her surgery is complete."
I suddenly wasn't sure what mattered more to him—Celeste herself, or the heart beating inside her chest. If it was the heart he cared about, then I could only admire his devotion. Aurora must have been his true love after all.
"You have no right and no authority to stop me," I said, abandoning any thought of playing the recordings for him. It would only complicate things. "You can use your power to control the media, but you can't control me."
"I can't," Daemon agreed, his voice dropping into that cold, dangerous register I knew too well. "But after all these years, I think you should understand my personality pretty well. I'm only asking you to wait a little longer. If you can't do that, I'll use my own methods to make you wait."
"Such as?"
"Some photographs of your father." He paused, seeming to weigh whether he should continue. "You wouldn't want them getting out."
Shock hit me like ice water. I'd thought my father's situation was completely resolved. I'd wondered before if Daemon might still have copies, if the photos he'd given me were really all of them. But I'd pushed those thoughts aside as paranoia.
Turns out my paranoia had been justified. Daemon was a master strategist—he always kept leverage, always held something back that he could use later.
I'd thought when he helped me before, it meant he actually felt something for me. That he wanted things to improve between us. I'd even wavered in my resolve. What a joke that seemed now.
He could threaten me whenever he wanted, using the people I cared about as weapons.
"Daemon, you really are full of surprises." It took me a long moment to find my voice, and when I did, my eyes held nothing but disappointment as I looked at him.
What had I been hoping for? After being hurt by him again and again, how had I still not learned to protect my own heart?
Daemon looked like he wanted to say something, his brow furrowing the way it always did when he was troubled. That small crease between his eyebrows was a perfect reflection of his current mood. But I didn't know what he might say, and I didn't want to hear it.
"If you actually release those photographs, I won't hesitate to burn everything down with you," I said, my words sharp with fury and pain. "We can destroy each other if that's what you want."
"One month." Daemon exhaled softly. "I'll send her to Northern Summit Pack. After that, I'll deal with all of this, okay?"
"I don't need you to deal with anything," I said coldly. "I'll handle it myself."
I turned and walked away without looking back.
The moment I turned, tears I couldn't control spilled down my face. I felt like such a fool. How had I let myself believe that Daemon might actually have feelings for me in this life? Just because we'd slept together a few times, because he'd done a few small things for me, said some words I'd never heard from him before—and I'd forgotten all the pain from my past life.
The saying was true: the scar heals and you forget the pain. If I could, I'd slap myself right now for being so stupid.
When I reached my car and slid into the driver's seat, I allowed myself exactly thirty seconds of stillness, hands gripping the steering wheel. Then I started the engine and drove away.
For my father's sake, I couldn't proceed with my original plan. I had to shelve everything temporarily.
The one month Daemon had demanded sounded short, but for me it stretched endlessly. I was drowning in the pain of losing my child, consumed by the terrifying possibility that I might never be able to conceive again. I spent most days in quiet despair.
Sienna and the others frequently invited me out, trying to lift my spirits.
"Violet, what are you waiting for?" Sienna asked after weeks of my inaction. "Why are you dragging this out?"
But I didn't want to tell her about Daemon's threats. I was genuinely afraid the stress might harm her pregnancy.
I just took a sip of wine and smiled as though it didn't matter. "I told you before, didn't I? I'm waiting for the right moment."