Chapter 211
Chapter 211
Shutters crackled through the corridor like firecrackers, camera flashes slashing pale white streaks across Quinn's retreating back.
The film crew she'd brought had quietly packed up their equipment the moment the recording played. Her assistant kept her head down and slipped away behind the crowd. No one shielded her from the cameras anymore. No one spoke a word in her defense.
Ondine was equally surrounded.
A bespectacled female reporter shoved a microphone in her face, tone aggressive: "Ms. Ondine Windsor, you already caused a scandal with those intimate photos at the recognition banquet. Now you're drugging your own sister at a racetrack. Do you have some kind of personal vendetta against her?"
A male reporter jumped in immediately: "You just said Quinn manipulated you, but the evidence shows you personally handed the cash to the employee. How do you explain that?"
Ondine shielded her face with her hands, hunched over, and squeezed through the crowd—fleeing down the corridor just as desperately as Quinn. Reporters chased after her with equipment raised, shutters and shouted questions churning together like a pot boiling over.
Security finally arrived. Several uniformed guards pushed through the crowd, took Ondine and Quinn by the arms, and escorted them toward the parking lot.
Ondine's hair had come loose during the run, falling across her shoulders, a few damp strands clinging to her sweat-slicked cheeks. She kept her head down, unable to meet anyone's eyes.
Behind her, reporters shouted after them.
"Ms. Windsor, will you be responding to this?"
"Ms. Sullivan, will you apologize to Seraphine?"
No answer. Both figures vanished at the end of the corridor.
---
Octavius stood in the lounge doorway. He never looked at them again.
He handed the folder to Ethan and said in a flat tone: "Submit all evidence simultaneously. Pursue legal accountability."
Ethan took the folder, nodded, and left.
Octavius turned and walked back into the lounge.
Seraphine was still leaning against the sofa. Most of the flush had faded from her cheeks.
She'd been drifting in and out of consciousness under the drug's influence, vaguely catching the commotion in the corridor and Octavius's voice.
The technique Alvin had taught her worked—her body metabolized substances far faster than average. The drug's effects were already receding.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Said nothing. Just curved her lips faintly.
Octavius sat down beside her, draped the jacket over her again, and didn't speak.
The footsteps in the corridor faded. The lounge went quiet, leaving only the distant rumble of engines from the next heat.
---
The door clicked shut behind Octavius, sealing out the last whisper of chaos from the corridor.
The engine roar from the far end of the speedway filtered through two doors into a muffled bass hum. This room at the end of the hallway was suddenly quiet—a small pocket of stillness cut away from the rest of the world.
Seraphine leaned against the sofa, the flush on her cheeks not entirely gone, damp strands of hair plastered to her temples with sweat.
She heard the lock catch with a soft click. Then his footsteps—steady but urgent—two, three strides to the sofa's edge.
Octavius bent down, one arm sliding beneath her knees, the other bracing her back, and lifted her from the sofa.
Her body was burning. Even through the racing suit, the unnatural heat radiated against him.
She instinctively looped her arms around his neck, pressing her scorching cheek into the hollow of his shoulder. Her voice came out thin and rough, threaded with a sliver of clarity she'd wrestled from the drug's grip: "Octavius... I'm so hot. Everything's burning."
"I know." He pulled her closer and carried her into the lounge's small attached bathroom. With one hand he pulled a clean towel from the shelf, held it under cold water until it was soaked, and wrung it half-dry.
He folded the towel, sat down, and settled her against his chest. He pressed it gently to her forehead first, wiping away the sweat. Then her temples. Then her neck.
His touch was impossibly light, impossibly slow—the same precise, careful force he'd used in the burning station when he'd cut the rope from her wrists with a tactical knife, terrified that one ounce too much would break her.
The cold water drew the heat from her skin. Seraphine's breathing gradually eased from ragged to calm, but her fingers still clutched his shirt collar, knuckles white from the grip.
"No one is ever going to do this to you again." His voice was so low it sounded like he was talking to himself.
He turned the towel over, pressing the still-cool side against the back of her neck. His fingers threaded through her loose hair and came to rest gently on the back of her head.
"Ondine. Quinn. Everyone involved. I'll handle all of it. You don't have to worry about a thing."
Seraphine didn't speak.
She buried her face in the curve of his neck, and the arms around him slowly tightened.
The wire that had been pulled taut inside her for so long finally snapped loose in this cramped little bathroom. From the recognition banquet to the clinic being shut down, from being tied up on Sycamore Lane to Echo shielding her from a broomstick in that partitioned room—she had never once lowered her guard in any storm.
But right now, in his arms, with the drug still working through her system, she had no strength left to build walls.
She tilted her face up. Her burning lips brushed lightly against his jaw.
Octavius dipped his head. The fingers cradling the back of her skull tightened slightly, and he kissed her.
The kiss was tender and lingering—an answer to that faint, hazy murmur she'd let slip. The cold towel slid from her neck and draped across the back of his hand. Neither of them reached for it.
---
Afterward, Octavius carried her back to the sofa and let her rest against his chest.
His private physician had been notified and was on the way. He laid his own jacket over her, one hand moving in slow, steady strokes along her back.
Seraphine's eyes were closed, breathing much calmer now, resting quietly against him.
---
Ondine had no memory of how she got back to Kieran's apartment.
Security had separated her from Quinn and escorted them out of the corridor. Reporters surged from every direction, flashbulbs bleaching her face white.
She shielded her face and ducked into the back seat of a cab, hearing the reporters' shouts behind her.
"Ms. Windsor, will you be responding to this?"
She didn't answer. She yanked the door shut, locking out every lens and every question.
The cab pulled away from the speedway. Outside the window, the landscape shifted from suburban emptiness to the glittering city center. She didn't say a single word the entire ride—just gripped her phone in a death hold, fingers ice cold.
When she pushed open the apartment door that evening, the living room floor lamp cast a warm amber glow.
Kieran sat on the sofa waiting for her. Two cups sat on the coffee table in front of him. The tea inside had gone completely cold.