Chapter 52 Chapter Fifty Two
Severed Ties
Dimitri's POV~
The air in Vakette’s boardroom was putrid and decay-heavy, the glossy mahogany table now scored and covered with report drafts that charted its corporate death. Fear seems to read my expression because it takes my arm and steers us over to a window with a commanding view of the Medicopathic offices in ruin.
I stood at the window, my collar crumpled in on itself and my suit jackets additive to a position I had barely clung to calling myself something as absurd as a co-CEO, and I looked out over the skyline of Seryne like I could stare the ruin away. Waylen Anderson, Natasha’s father, hovered behind me, his tailored coat a contrast to the room’s decay, his voice a whip cracking the silence. “You bled my company, Galden!” he bellowed, pounding the table with his fist, and the pages scattered. “Bankruptcy knocking and you standing there like a fool! Vakette is on you—you’d better have one hell of a reason why I shouldn’t fire you right now!”
I felt tightness balled in my chest, anger rising, but shame kept pooling in my throat. Natasha had inherited Vakette--she’d been my power pass, something Waylen had settled with a cold handshake, three years ago. Now, it was ashes, and his scorn smoldered. “I’ve fought for Vakette, Waylen,” I said, my voice hard, facing him. “They sucked us dry, Natasha’s plots — her leaks against Valenticia might have drained us dry. I’m saving what I can, restructuring deals, begging investors.” The ring of his laughter was like a blade, sharp and cold. “Salvaging? You’re a parasite, Dmitri, feeding off my legacy! You married into this and you’re destroying it. Fix it or you’re out family or no family.” The word family was the knife’s twist, my marriage to Natasha was a chain I’d forged that now strangled me. I nodded, each movement suffused with simmering rage, his arrogance only adding to a desperation I couldn’t rid of.
The rain had made the cobblestones slick, and neon signs loomed overhead, flickering like dying stars as I crept into a Seryne alley. Gregor, Valenticia’s cousin, had been kept waiting beneath the shelter of a rusted lane, trench coat faintly sodden, smirk hungry in the gloom.
My stomach turned—encountering him was a betrayal, and Vakette’s fall had driven me, its inheritance the only thing chaining me to the power. “Dmitri,” he said with a silky voice, coming closer, his breath breaking in the cold. "Galden will offer you a loan to save Vakette. Only if you leak out a fake Clawford patent theft— with Valenticia’s name on it. She falls, you rise.” His eyes flashed with naked ambition, and my heart raced and split at the memory of Valenticia’s last speech at the summit, her voice echoing: We’ll rise, unbowed.
“You want me to kill her,” I said, low and angry as I stepped into his space. “She is family, Gregor, your cousin!” He laughed, sharp, and without mercy. “Family? She took your place, Dmitri, and mine. Vakette’s down —— we don’t have a deal, and you’ll be ash.” My hands balled into fists, her. “I’ll do it,” I muttered, desperation determining my fate, betrayal weight I’d carry ever after. Gregor’s nod was small, his hand swatting my shoulder away the way a master would, to a dog, and I walked off, myself becoming wetter as the rain beat me, guilt as a companion, cool and distant.
Back in Vakette’s office, the fluorescent lights hummed, lending a sickly pallor to Natasha’s rage. She must have overheard my deal with Gregor, her high heels sounded like gunshots on the wood floor when she slammed through the door, her eyes blazing with betrayal. “You’re trading me for her!” she yelled, slapping me, the hot sting firing my rage, her handprint a burn on my cheek. “You spineless traitor! You would sell me out to save Vakette, for Valenticia?” Her voice broke, raw with pain, and her accusation burrowed deep — she couldn’t forgive the fracture in our marriage, where she dimly knew my love for Valenticia had lived.
“Enough, Natasha!” The temper of my screaming, my voice bouncing off the rock walls, made me even shock myself as I yelled grabbing her wrist. “Your vendetta — your doctored slips, your leaked videos — cost me! I’m saving what’s left, for us!” Her eyes flashed wide, wounded, but she tore herself away, spitting. “You love her, don’t you? You always have, you sad idiot!” My silence was damning, confirming her most terrible fear, and the second slap cut deeper than we would wound heal. She stormed out, and the faint odor of her perfume hung in the air like a ghost, our vows broken, my heart torn in every way between obligation to Vakette, and want of Valenticia I couldn't repress.
Guilt led me, pounding in my temples, and that night I sneaked into a Galden warehouse, its darkened crates stinking of oil and conspiracy. I needed evidence of Gregor’s Lovtan operation, an opportunity to reverse my treachery, to warn Valenticia before it was too late. Rusted shelves flew by as I swept my flashlight, heart pounding, breath shallow in the musty air. One old but sturdy-looking padlock on a locked steel case caught my eye. I raised the lid with a crowbar, the bowed rusty metal groaning and stopped—a vial of liquid clear, labeled Serum V, its surface glinting, with a note: Valenticia, 1999, memory wipe. My breath faltered and the words were a blow—Gregor wiped out her past? That amnesia she’d had as a child, a hole in her past I’d never thought to wonder about, was his crime, a secret related to her parents’ crash? My heart was pounding, as guilt suddenly washed over me in waves.
I stashed the vial, its bitter glass dense, cold in my pocket to remember, hoping to alert Valenticia, my sole redemption: had I not taken that light as the strength I could never be?
I could feel Gregor’s text buzzing as I walked out, the wind of it impossibly cold: Leak the patent or Vakette’s ashes. I didn’t listen, and I drove home through Seryne’s neon blur with the city’s pulse laughing at the beat of my own inside me. There was oppressive silence in my apartment, Natasha’s absence of a space.
I collapsed onto the couch, the TV flickering, a breaking news alert reading: “Valenticia Clawford glows at Seryne gala, luminous alongside Stefan Myles, her New Dream partnership ascendant.” The anchor’s voice took on a reverent tone, and there was footage of her, in a silver gown so perfect that even I could appreciate its beauty, her smile a beacon, her hand in Stefan’s, their love a knife in my chest. Her composure, her strength laughed at my ruin, Vakette’s fall a specter I could not flee.
I held the vial so tight in my hand its weight was like a lifeline -- torn between Gregor’s betrayal and the salvation I did not deserve, my feelings for Valenticia a dangerous spark that waited only to set aflame all that I had lost.