Chapter 212

Chapter 212

Kieran saw Ondine walk in and was about to ask how she was doing when she threw herself at him.

She buried her face in his chest, both hands fisting the fabric of his shirt at his back, her shoulders shaking violently. Tears soaked silently into the collar of his shirt.

She didn't wail. She didn't lose control. She just curled into him like a child the whole world had abandoned.

"Kieran... I didn't mean to. I really didn't mean to." Her voice was raw and broken, every word scraped from the depths of her throat.

"It was Quinn. It was all her idea. She told me that if we could take Seraphine down, the Windsor family would be mine. That no one would ever fight me for it again.

I lost my mind for a moment. I really didn't know she'd put that stuff in the tea. She told me it would just make Seraphine feel sick — embarrass her a little, that's all."

"I was so stupid. I never should have done that to Seraphine... Kieran, it's all my fault. Please don't abandon me, okay?"

Kieran looked down at her.

Her hair was a tangled mess across her shoulders. Her makeup had long since smeared. Her eyes were swollen and red, as if she'd been crying for hours. She looked exactly the way she had that day at the hillside villa — huddled on the couch in a threadbare old sweater with loose seams, waiting for him to come home.

His brow furrowed. A storm of emotions churned in his chest — anger, but not at Ondine.

At Quinn.

That woman had actually dared to manipulate his sister. Tricked her into doing something like this.

The contempt he'd felt toward Seraphine at the racetrack was now buried beneath something far more powerful.

Heartache.

His Ondine had never been the kind of person who could hurt someone. She was just so terrified of losing everything that she'd let herself be used.

"I believe you." He reached out and pressed her head into the curve of his shoulder, his fingers threading through her tangled hair with a gentle touch — the same way he used to rub the back of her head when she was little and would crawl onto his lap crying after a fall.

"You didn't mean it. I know. Stay away from people like Quinn from now on. Come to me first about everything. As long as I'm here, no one gets to hurt you."

Ondine pressed her face into his chest, both hands clutching his shirt so tightly her nails dug through the fabric into her own palms. Her shoulders were still trembling.

She hadn't been abandoned.

On the entire drive back from the racetrack, her greatest fear hadn't been the trending headlines or the public outrage. It was that she'd open this door and find Kieran looking at her with the same eyes as Caspian.

But he didn't. He was still the same Kieran who would stroke her hair and say, "Don't be scared, Ondi. I'm here."

---

Caspian saw the trending story from his office.

He had just wrapped up an overseas video conference. The sky outside had already darkened. The coffee cup on his desk was empty. The ashtray was littered with cigarette butts.

He leaned back in his chair and picked up his phone, scrolling idly through social media. Several hashtags were pinned side by side at the top of the trending page.

#QuinnDruggedSeraphine #OndineConspiresWithOutsiderAgainstSeraphine #OctaviusPresentsFullEvidence

His finger hovered over the screen for a beat, then tapped the first one.

It was a video recorded in full by an on-site reporter.

The footage started from the moment Ondine led the charge through the lounge door, then cut to Octavius standing in the doorway, his gaze ice-cold as he surveyed everyone at the entrance.

Then came the moment he held up his phone — surveillance screenshots from the cafe meeting, a signed statement from the tea server, bank transfer records, and that damning audio recording played for everyone to hear.

Ondine's panicked, ashen face as reporters swarmed her. Quinn's theatrical performance of shifting blame — "I was used" — only to have every lie shattered by the evidence in his hand.

And finally, the two of them turning on each other, clawing at one another in the hallway for all to see. Every second captured in crystal-clear detail.

The video had already shattered view-count records. The comments section was a unanimous wall of fury aimed at Ondine and Quinn.

Caspian watched the entire video from start to finish.

His knuckles were white around the phone. The cigarette he'd lit barely two minutes ago had already been ground out in the ashtray without him realizing.

He set the phone down, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

The evidence file slammed onto the desk in the study.

The silent profile of Seraphine's face at the edge of the crowd when he'd ordered the big screen shut off during the welcome banquet.

The surveillance footage pulled from the stairwell — Ondine falling on her own, then crying that Seraphine had pushed her.

He had pulled that footage. He had seen the truth. But he'd only tucked the evidence into a drawer and said nothing.

Later, he'd confined her to the hillside villa. Called it punishment. But really, he was shielding her — from more serious legal consequences, from Octavius and Seraphine's pursuit of justice.

Now he sat in this office, the next trending video auto-playing on the phone screen before him.

Every last shred of plausible deniability had been destroyed.

It wasn't Xiomara framing her. It wasn't Quinn masterminding everything. It wasn't anyone coercing her.

She had sought Quinn out herself to form an alliance. She had bribed the tea server herself. She had led a pack of reporters to Seraphine's door herself.

Every step bore her signature. Every transaction traced back to her account. Every word was preserved in full by surveillance cameras and audio recordings.

From beginning to end, no one had been using her — she was one of the masterminds.

He opened his eyes. His gaze drifted to the family photo on the corner of his desk.

It was taken many years ago. Ondine stood between him and Kieran, her hair in two lopsided braids, grinning wide enough to show her two slightly crooked front teeth.

Back then, he'd believed this little sister was the most innocent child in the world. She needed him to protect her, to spoil her, to step in front of her whenever she made a mistake.

He had shielded her for twenty years. Covered for her more times than he could count. And she had become a person capable of drugging her own sister.

Everything Seraphine had endured since returning to the Windsor family — he, as her older brother, had never truly stood on her side. Not once.

When Ondine and Gavin teamed up to set Seraphine up at the welcome banquet, he was the one who ordered the screen shut off. But after that, he did nothing.

When Seraphine's clinic was poisoned and sealed with violation notices, he knew she was being framed. But he never looked into it.

When she was kidnapped and spent a month in the hospital with a fractured leg, he didn't even know which room she was in.

When Ondine and Quinn drugged her at the racetrack — if Octavius hadn't intercepted that employee in time, the consequences would have been unthinkable.

Every time she was targeted. Every time she was hurt. She bore it alone.

She had never cried in front of him. Never asked for his help. Never once played the "I'm your real sister" card to demand anything from him.

Even when Valencia called him out at the dinner table for not caring about Seraphine, it was Seraphine who gave him an out — saying, "Thanks for your concern, Caspian." He hadn't fulfilled a single day of his duty as her older brother, and she had never blamed him.

Caspian pulled the last cigarette from the pack and lit it, drawing in a long, deep drag.

Smoke curled slowly upward in the dim office. The city lights beyond the window scattered like faint stars across the glass.

He was thinking — what if, from the very beginning, he had never used "Ondi's still young" as an excuse.

What if the first time Ondine falsely accused Seraphine, he had made her face the consequences.

What if, after the welcome banquet, instead of locking her away in the hillside villa to protect her, he had handled it by the book — maybe none of what followed would have happened.

Seraphine wouldn't have been kidnapped. Wouldn't have been drugged at the racetrack. Wouldn't have been set up by Ondine again and again.

It was his indulgence that gave Ondine the nerve to keep doing harm.

He crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray.