Chapter 190 The meeting

Chapter 190 The meeting
Elara’s POV, 

Dante returned the next day.

Under any other circumstance, I would’ve been relieved. Dante returning always meant movement. It meant plans were finally becoming real instead of endless speculation. It meant we were one step closer to ending this nightmare.

It also meant there was finally something else to think about besides Levi and Lucien. Besides the terrifying realization that I had somehow managed to fall in love with a man whose past I could no longer understand.

Maybe that’s why today, it only made me want to cry.

Everything was happening too fast.

Where was time? Where were all those empty days I kept promising myself I had left? 

I lay there for several minutes, staring blankly at the ceiling, wondering how life could shatter overnight while the sun still had the audacity to rise like nothing had happened.

In less than a week, everything would change.

Every single thing.

By the time I forced myself downstairs for breakfast, I wasn’t even sure I was walking anymore. It felt like someone else was borrowing my body while my mind remained trapped inside the library with Viktor’s laptop still open in front of me, showing me the photographs, Levi’s smile, the headline, and Lucien standing over him.

I reached the end of the hallway and placed a hand against the wall, willing myself not to collapse.

Breathe.

Just breathe.

“Elara?”

I turned.

The second I saw Noemi, every wall I’d spent the morning building simply crumbled. 

“Noemi…”

The word came out as nothing more than a broken whisper before I crossed the hallway in three hurried steps and buried myself in her arms. 

Everything cracked. 

“Oh, Noemi…” She caught me immediately, holding me without asking questions. “It hurts.” The words tumbled out between uneven breaths. “It hurts so much.”

My fingers fisted the back of her sweater.

“I–I can’t do it.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t... but I have to.” The confession came out as little more than a whisper. “Levi…” My breathing hitched. “Levi is his brother.”

The words still felt impossible.

“He killed his own brother, and my first love.” My voice cracked completely. “Oh God…I don’t understand anything anymore. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who I love. I don’t know anything, Noemi.”

She didn’t interrupt or tell me everything would be okay. She didn’t ask questions.

She simply wrapped both arms around me and held me together while I quietly came apart inside them.

~~

The meeting arrived in a blur.

By the time I entered the strategy room, everyone was already there, and conversation stopped the moment I walked in.

Dante stood beside the projection board in another immaculate black suit, looking as though he'd walked straight out of an expensive magazine. Kallian sat slouched in his chair with his headset hanging around his neck, absently spinning a pen between his fingers. Viktor looked up first and smiled that infuriatingly calm smile of his.

Nikolai acknowledged me with a short nod.

Lucien refused to look at me.

Something inside my chest folded in on itself, and the silence lingered long enough for everyone to notice it.

I quietly took my seat, choosing the chair furthest from him despite every part of me wanting to close the distance between us.

“Let’s…” Dante cleared his throat, glancing around the room. “...let’s begin.”

They started discussing logistics almost immediately.

Routes.

Vehicles.

Entry points.

Communication channels.

I heard every word without processing any of them. Their voices blended into meaningless noise until Dante suddenly stopped speaking, and two familiar folders landed on the blueprint spread across the table.

My heartbeat stumbled.

“I’ve already opened both,” Dante admitted quietly. “Lucien handed them to me earlier so I could start drafting the operation. But before we go any further... I think everyone deserves to see what’s inside.”

His gaze shifted between Lucien and me, and neither of us moved. Finally, almost mechanically, I reached for the folder Lucien had recovered.

At the exact moment… Lucien picked up mine.

For the first time since yesterday, our eyes met.

God, it hurt.

There wasn’t anger or accusation between us. Only sadness.

A devastating, unbearable sadness that made it feel like everyone else had disappeared, leaving just the two of us sitting across from each other, separated by lies neither of us knew how to untangle anymore.

Silently, I opened his file.

Silently, he opened mine.

I already knew what he was about to read, and the room became impossibly quiet. Even Kallian stopped fidgeting.

Mine detailed Matteo’s planned meeting with Varen, Milo and Luxe, the scientists, and the supposed location of the missing Virelli heir.

Information I should never have known existed.

Across the table, Lucien’s breathing caught, and his fingers tightened around the pages before he abruptly shut the folder.

Like simply refusing to read it could somehow erase the fact that I’d known all along.

I also shut his file gently, without looking up. His file answered the question I’d been asking for weeks.

About the warehouse Operation.

Primary Objective:

Terminate Lucien Kórvac.

Secondary Objective:

Delay discovery of the safe.

I stopped reading.

Of course.

Of course that was why he’d been trying so desperately to get me out of that warehouse.

Not just because he didn’t trust me, but he knew he was walking into his own execution.

And the safe.

It wasn’t with Matteo.

He’d intended to keep that from me, to send me chasing ghosts while he recovered it himself, even after we’d supposedly agreed to work together.

Now he’s aware I had known about the heir, his father’s wish, and the woman he had supposedly been destined to marry.

And now I’m aware he hid the fact that the safe was never with Matteo. 

Neither of us spoke because neither of us knew how.

When I finally looked up again, our eyes collided for barely a second before we both looked away almost immediately.

Then...

Lucien laughed. Not really, just one broken breath wrapped in something that sounded vaguely amused. He dragged a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair.

Somewhere beside me, I heard Kallian inhale sharply, and even Dante shifted his weight.

“...God.” Lucien rubbed his forehead. “I feel stupid.”

Despite everything, a small smile found my lips.

“So do I.” I shrugged one shoulder. “...That was really smart of you, though.”

His head lifted, and a genuine smile appeared. It just never reached his eyes.

“...That’s the first time you’ve called me smart.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

The joke landed, then immediately died, because we both understood what I’d accidentally implied.

He couldn’t. Not anymore. Not if I was really going through with this. Our smiles disappeared almost together.

Lucien cleared his throat.

“...So.” He looked toward Dante. “What’s the plan?”