Chapter 97
Violet's POV:
I had barely stepped out of the Uber when my phone buzzed with a text from Lily: Confirmed—Celeste is returning to Lupine Sovereign University the day after tomorrow. That girl really is unkillable. Gotta admire the resilience!
I tapped out a quick reply: Got it. Thanks.
The entrance to Wild Oak stood before me, all reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs designed to project rustic charm. I pushed through the heavy door and made my way toward the private room Iris had reserved. But when I slid open the partition, I stopped short. The table wasn't set for two or even three—it was packed with at least a dozen people crowded around dishes, the air thick with conversation.
I recognized Daemon immediately, his dark head bent toward something Felix was saying, and beside him sat Lucian and a very pregnant Sienna. There were several other faces I didn't know.
"Violet?!" Sienna was on her feet before I could process what was happening, waddling toward me with surprising speed for someone in her third trimester. She caught my elbow and steered me back into the hallway, sliding the door shut behind us with a soft click. "What are you doing here? I knew Daemon would be at this dinner—that's exactly why I didn't invite you!"
"Iris invited me," I said, my voice flat with confusion and the first stirrings of irritation. "Is this her party?"
"Hell no!" Sienna's expression twisted into something between disbelief and disgust. "Daemon invited her to dinner. She brought a few friends, he brought Lucian and Felix, and Lucian dragged me along." She shook her head, lowering her voice to something conspiratorial and sharp. "That girl has a thing for Daemon, I can tell just by looking at her. Why would she invite you if she's trying to make a move? Is she deliberately stirring up drama?"
Before I could answer, the door slid open again and Iris herself emerged. "Violet, I'm so sorry. I really didn't want to put you in this position, but Daemon specifically said I should work on building a relationship with my father's friend's daughter. He suggested I invite you to dinner tonight." She paused. "Do you think he's trying to... you know... rekindle things?"
"Don't you dare talk nonsense!" Sienna snapped, her protective instincts flaring instantly.
But Iris had already pivoted, her attention shifting to Sienna. "You're Sienna, right?" Without waiting for confirmation, she leaned in with sudden enthusiasm. "What shade is that lipstick? It looks amazing on you."
Sienna's indignation evaporated like steam, replaced by the eager animation she always brought to discussions of cosmetics. "Oh, it's the Fenty Icon Velvet Liquid Lipstick in 'The MVP,' totally pregnancy-safe because it's formulated without parabens or..."
When the lipstick discussion finally wound down, Iris circled back to the original topic with the persistence of someone who genuinely couldn't let things go. "Anyway, about Daemon—I overheard Celeste calling him earlier. She's definitely planning to show up here tonight, even though she's supposed to still be in the hospital. How does someone with a supposedly critical heart condition have that much energy to run around everywhere?"
"Her life force is abnormally strong," I said, my tone dry enough to cut glass. "You two should go back inside. I'm not staying for this dinner."
Sienna nodded immediately. "Yeah, you're better off avoiding this whole mess."
"Absolutely," Iris agreed with surprising firmness. "I wouldn't want to watch Daemon have dinner with his ex either."
I lifted my hand in a brief wave as Sienna disappeared back into the private room with Iris, then turned toward the elevator bank.
The elevator descended with mechanical indifference, and I stepped into the lobby just as the restaurant's main entrance swung open to admit two new arrivals. Celeste Morrison entered first, moving slowly but without the wheelchair this time, her delicate hand wrapped around Linda's arm for support.
The moment she spotted me, she stopped, her baby-blue gaze locking onto mine.
"Daemon is still waiting for us," Linda said, her voice pitched just loud enough to ensure I heard.
I didn't acknowledge them, didn't break stride as I moved toward the exit.
"Miss Goldcrest!" Celeste's voice rang out across the lobby.
I stopped, not because I wanted to but because years of social conditioning made ignoring a direct address feel impossibly rude. I turned slowly as Celeste pulled free from Linda's grip and took several unsteady steps toward me.
"There's something I need to talk to you about," she said, her words emerging soft and earnest, her eyes wide with an emotion I couldn't quite name. "Please. Just for a moment."
"No," I said simply. "There's nothing for us to discuss. Unless you'd like to talk about how you pushed me out of that hospital bed? We could have a very interesting conversation about assault and intentional infliction of harm."
The color drained from Celeste's face. "Miss Goldcrest, I didn't push you. You fell on your own—I wasn't even near the bed!"
The sheer audacity of the lie was almost admirable in its commitment. I lifted my hand as though to reach for her, and both she and Linda reacted instantly—Linda lunged forward to steady Celeste while Celeste herself jerked backward, her pupils dilating with genuine fear.
I let my hand drop, offering them both a smile that held no warmth whatsoever. "Careful there. I wasn't doing anything—you just lost your balance. I was only trying to help steady you."
The mockery landed exactly as intended. Celeste's face contorted with understanding and humiliation.
Linda opened her mouth to launch into what was undoubtedly going to be a self-righteous tirade about my cruelty, but Celeste cut her off with a raised hand. "Linda, it's fine. I'm okay." She turned those wounded eyes back to me, her voice dropping to something more intimate. "I really do need to talk to you privately. Just five minutes."
"Celeste, what if she hurts you?" Linda's concern was genuine. "Your body can't handle any more stress right now. You need to protect yourself and protect that..."
She stopped herself just short of saying "heart."
Celeste shook her head. "I'll be fine, Linda. Miss Goldcrest wouldn't really hurt me."
I laughed, the sound sharp and humorless in the quiet lobby. "Don't be so sure about that. My suggestion? Get the hell out of my sight before I decide to test that theory."
"Celeste, we're leaving." Linda's hand closed around Celeste's arm again, her grip possessive and protective. "You don't owe her any explanations. Let's go find Daemon."
"Linda, please!" The irritation that flashed across Celeste's face was brief but unmistakable.
Linda stepped back reluctantly, her eyes never leaving me as though I might suddenly transform into something violent and feral.
Celeste turned back to me. "Miss Goldcrest, did Daemon give you some kind of agreement? About redistributing assets?"
The question caught me off guard despite myself. Here she was, supposedly still recovering from a life-threatening medical crisis, and yet she was tracking Daemon's financial decisions with the precision of a forensic accountant. The dedication was almost impressive.
She pressed on, her voice dropping lower, threaded through with something that might have been genuine frustration or well-rehearsed righteousness. "I think people need to know their limits. You understand how massive his assets are, don't you? If he's giving you a third of everything, how can you accept that with a clear conscience? Doesn't it bother you at all?"
"Why wouldn't I be able to accept it?" I let my voice carry the full weight of my contempt. "You think I'm like you? Someone who wouldn't know what to do with a million dollars if it fell into her lap?" I paused, watching her face flush with poorly concealed rage. "And just to correct your intel, Celeste—it's not a third. It's half of his registered assets plus ten percent of Blackwood Dynamics' shares."
The impact was immediate and visceral. Celeste's expression cycled through shock, disbelief, and finally something that looked dangerously close to naked envy.
"That's impossible," she breathed, the words escaping before she could stop them. "I heard the lawyer tell him that..." She cut herself off, realizing too late that she'd just admitted to deliberately spying on a confidential legal discussion.
"Celeste." I let her name sit in the air between us for a moment, watching her squirm. "What exactly gives you the right to question what I'm entitled to? You think you deserve Daemon's money more than I do? You think you've earned it somehow?" I straightened to my full height, using the three-inch advantage I had over her to look down with deliberate condescension. "Tell me—what do you have to offer besides being younger than me? What's your great contribution here?"
I'd been too gentle with her before, I realized—too willing to see her as some innocent ingenue who'd been swept up in Daemon's manipulations. But the girl standing in front of me was no victim. She was a chess player who'd studied the board carefully, who'd leveraged every advantage she possessed with cold-blooded efficiency.
"You..." Celeste's composure finally shattered completely, her face flushing with impotent rage, but no words followed. She stood there opening and closing her mouth like a fish drowning in air, unable to formulate a response that wouldn't reveal exactly how calculating she'd been all along.
I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
"The person Daemon loves is me!" The declaration burst from her lips like a drowning woman's gasp for air, desperate and graceless and completely devoid of the strategic thinking she'd shown moments before.
"Then good luck with that," I said, my voice flat with boredom. "We'll see if he actually marries you." I let the words hang there for a beat before delivering the killing blow. "Tell me something, Celeste—do you really not know about Aurora Winters? Or are you just pretending not to know because it's more convenient that way? Because Linda is her sister and that makes this whole situation deeply fucked up, or because accepting that you're walking around with a dead girl's heart in your chest is too uncomfortable to acknowledge?"
Her eyes went wide with something that looked like genuine panic, her carefully constructed narrative crumbling under the weight of truths she'd worked so hard to avoid.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Celeste whispered, but the denial was so transparently false that it barely qualified as a lie. "I don't know anyone named Aurora."
"Oh, don't panic," I said, my tone almost gentle now, the cruelty of false comfort. "You should be grateful, actually. Grateful that your parents gave you a face that looks like Aurora's. Grateful that you happened to receive her heart in that transplant lottery. Because without those two coincidences?" I leaned in slightly, making sure she heard every word. "Daemon wouldn't have looked at you twice. Linda wouldn't treat you like her precious little sister. You'd just be another pretty college girl struggling to pay tuition. Understand?"
I didn't wait for her response.
But she wasn't done with her performance. Her hand flew to her chest, fingers clutching at the fabric over her heart as her breathing suddenly turned rapid and shallow. She swayed on her feet, her face contorting into an expression of pain.
I took a deliberate step backward as Linda came rushing over with a cry of alarm.
"What did you do to her?!" Linda's voice was shrill with panic as she wrapped her arms around Celeste's wavering form.
The restaurant's main entrance burst open and Daemon materialized. His blood-red eyes took in the scene—Celeste collapsed against Linda, me standing several feet away with my arms crossed.
He crossed the distance in three long strides, reaching her just as her knees buckled. She fell into his arms with practiced grace.
"Daemon," she gasped, her voice thin and thready. "Who... who is Aurora..."
The question—perfectly timed, devastatingly effective—was the last thing she managed before her eyes rolled back and her body went limp in his arms.
Even unconscious, Celeste managed to play her final card. By asking about Aurora in front of Daemon, she'd positioned herself as the victim of my cruelty. When she woke up, she could claim ignorance, could play the wounded innocent who'd been blindsided by terrible revelations.
I had to admit, it was expertly done.
Daemon's gaze cut to me, his eyes holding something that might have been disappointment or exhaustion. Then he was moving, carrying Celeste toward the exit with Linda scrambling after them.
Sienna and the others emerged from the private dining room just as the elevator doors were sliding open, their faces registering various degrees of confusion and concern.
"Where's Daemon?" Felix asked, looking around.
Iris's expression had shifted from confusion to something approaching genuine anger, her carefully applied makeup doing nothing to hide the flush creeping up her neck. "He invited me to dinner and then just takes a phone call and disappears? Who does that? That's incredibly rude!"
I kept my voice neutral, factual. "Celeste collapsed. He took her to the hospital."
It was Linda who'd called him, I was certain—alerting him that Celeste and I were in the same space, triggering whatever protective instincts he'd developed around his walking memorial to Aurora Winters.
"She collapsed?!" Felix was already moving. "We should go check on them."
Lucian's arm tightened around Sienna's shoulders, his expression settling into something deliberately unconcerned. "I'm staying with my wife and kid. Celeste's problems aren't my business."
The shift in his language—from defending her to explicitly distancing himself—didn't escape Felix's notice. He paused mid-stride, turning back to study Lucian with an expression that suggested he was rapidly recalculating his understanding of his friend's loyalties.
Sienna looked immensely satisfied with this response, reaching up to pinch Lucian's cheek with obvious affection.
"Well, this sucks," Iris announced to no one in particular, her frustration finally breaking through her polished exterior. She turned to Sienna and me with an expression of genuine regret. "We should still eat, right? I've got friends waiting upstairs."
"I'm heading home," I said.
"Same," Sienna agreed quickly. "Next time, dinner's on me—I promise it'll actually happen."
Felix had already vanished into the night, and Iris disappeared back toward the elevator, leaving just me, Sienna, and Lucian standing in the lobby.