chapter 26
Elena's POV:
"Wait—" I called instinctively, one hand reaching back in a futile gesture to stop her from doing something monumentally stupid.
But the word died in my throat as she yanked the door open.
where Sebastian stood with one hand raised as if he'd been about to knock again, his expression shifting from concern to cold assessment in the span of a heartbeat.
Vivienne didn't waste a second.
She looked up at Sebastian with those wide, tear-bright eyes that had worked so well on every family member she'd ever manipulated, her voice breaking in what I recognized as a perfectly rehearsed sob.
"I don't know what kind of person she's told you she is," she said, her voice taking on that practiced tone of concerned confidentiality, as if she were doing him a favor by revealing some terrible truth.
"But I can see exactly what she's been doing. Playing the victim, making men feel sorry for her, so they'll take care of her. It's what she's always done. You seem like a successful man—you should be careful. Girls like her know how to make themselves seem helpless and sweet when really they're just violent, vicious shrews who lash out the moment they don't get their way. Look at my face—"
She gestured to the faint red mark still visible on her cheek. "This is what she does when someone tries to have a civil conversation with her. "
Sebastian's gaze flicked to her briefly, his expression settling into something that looked almost bored, as if she were an insect that had momentarily buzzed into his field of vision before being dismissed as utterly beneath his notice.
Without a word, he stepped around her and closed the space between us.
His hand found mine, warm and solid, pulling it gently toward him as his eyes searched my face with an intensity.
"No wonder you were taking so long," he murmured, his voice carrying that particular dry quality that might have been amusement if not for the edge underneath it. "You were being bothered by a fly."
His fingers traced over my knuckles with careful attention, turning my hand this way and that in the light, examining it as though checking for damage.
"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly, his thumb brushing across my knuckles where they were still faintly pink from the impact. "Your hand. Did you hurt yourself?"
Before I could answer, Vivienne's voice cut through the moment, shrill with indignation. "Are you serious? I'm the one who got hit! "
Sebastian's gaze lifted to her, slow and deliberate, the kind of look someone might give a particularly stupid animal that had somehow wandered into their path.
"Then you deserved it," he said, his tone flat and utterly final.
He returned his attention to my hand, his thumb continuing its careful assessment. "Besides, force is reciprocal. If her knuckles are pink, your face must have provided quite a bit of resistance."
He lifted my hand to his lips, blowing gently across my knuckles with a tenderness that seemed completely at odds with the cold dismissal he'd just shown Vivienne.
Then his eyes found mine, dark and intent and carrying a question.
"Did you hit her enough?" he asked, his voice quiet and almost conversational. "If you're still angry, I can help with that."
The offer hung in the air between us, delivered with such casual sincerity that he would, without hesitation, do violence on my behalf if I simply asked for it.
I watched Vivienne's face in my peripheral vision, saw her expression shift from indignant fury to something closer to genuine alarm.
She took two stumbling steps backward, her hands coming up in an unconscious defensive gesture.
"You can't—you can't touch me," she stammered, her voice losing its earlier venom and taking on a higher, more panicked pitch. "My fiancé is Lucas Ashton. If you lay a hand on me, he won't let this go. He'll make you pay for this, both of you—"
Sebastian's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile, cold and sharp and utterly devoid of humor. He repeated the name slowly, as though tasting it, his tone making it sound almost like a joke. "Lucas Ashton."
Vivienne nodded, some of her confidence returning at the mention of her fiancé's name and the implied protection of his family's wealth and influence. "Yes. We're engaged, and he won't stand for—"
"The bastard son," Sebastian continued. " I remember now."
He paused, that not-quite-smile deepening fractionally. "Wasn't he the one who got his eye damaged in that fight outside the Club? Three, four years ago now?"
The casual recitation of details delivered in that same conversational tone seemed to shake Vivienne more than any direct threat had.
"I—yes, but what does that have to do with—" she managed, her voice wavering now, the tears that had been theatrical props earlier threatening to become genuine as fear began to override her other emotions.
"I was there," Sebastian said simply, and the words fell into the space between them with the weight of an executioner's blade. "Standing about ten feet away, actually. Nasty business, that. Thought he might lose the eye entirely for a while there."
Sebastian tilted his head slightly, that cold almost-smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. "Are you bringing him up because you want him to go blind again?" he asked, his tone conversational, almost curious.
The color drained completely from Vivienne's face.
She stood frozen for a heartbeat, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly like a fish pulled from water, before she turned and fled down the corridor, her heels clicking frantically against the marble floor in her haste to escape.
I stared at Sebastian, feeling something cold settle in my stomach as I processed what had just happened, what he'd just implied.
"His eye," I said slowly, my voice coming out quieter than I'd intended. "You blinded him?"