53

53

VIVIENNE

Now here he was. Lucian. Sitting across from me in the leather chair, like a storm barely contained. His eyes avoided mine at first, fixed instead on the glass of whiskey in his hand.

“I haven’t exactly been honest with you,” he said finally.

The words were like stones dropped into still water.

I leaned back, forcing my face into something calm though my chest tightened. “That’s new,” I said flatly. “You admitting it.”

His jaw flexed, but he didn’t rise to the bait. He just set the glass down, unfinished, and leaned forward.

“You remember that morning,” he began slowly, “when I walked out of breakfast without a word.”

Oh, I remembered. Too well. That was about a month ago.

The memory burned hot even now—me sitting there at the long table, wanting for him to discuss about moving my people into the mansion.

And instead he had stood and walked away like I hadn’t spoken at all. Like I wasn’t even there.

I’d been furious. That fury had twisted deeper when he came back hours later, drunk. I let him into the hallway, into his room and then by accident—God help me—I’d let him kiss me.

The memory flared across my cheeks now, and I cursed myself for the blush rising there. He noticed. Of course he noticed. His eyes flicked to my face, and for a second, something crossed his face before he went back to normal

“That morning,” he said, “was the same day I got the call.”

I stilled. “What call?”

He looked at me now, and for the first time in weeks, there was no fury, no iron mask. Just exhaustion. “mt mother had been taken.”

The room tilted. My hand gripped the arm of the chair to calm myself.

Taken. His mother—God, no wonder he had been a wreck.

I opened my mouth, closed it again. The image of Elena screaming, clutching me, calling me hija—it was still raw in my head. I swallowed hard. “You never said a word,” I whispered.

“How could I?” His laugh was bitter. “I didn’t even know where she was. Only that she was gone. And that someone wanted me to play their game if I ever wanted to see her alive.”

His gaze dropped to his hands. “The voice was mechanical. Croaky. Like it scraped against the inside of my skull. Every time it spoke, I wanted to tear something apart.”

I shivered. “What did it say?”

He met my eyes again. “It gave me riddles. And the answer… led to the Calavera foundry.”

The name hit me like ice water. My breath caught.

The foundry.

I knew the place—everyone in our world did. Once, it had been the Calaveras’ beating heart, the empire that had churned steel into fortune, smoke into power. Their flag had flown high above those gates, a warning to anyone who dared cross them.

And then it had all collapsed. Not slowly, not gracefully—sudden, brutal. Deals gone wrong. Blood running through the streets. The Calaveras had fallen, and in their fall they’d dragged the rest of us into the fire. My family —The Morettis. The Riveras. the DeMarcos.

That war had carved graves we still walked over.

I whispered, almost to myself, “Why the foundry?”

Lucian’s expression shifted. He leaned back, but his eyes stayed fixed on me.

“Because,” he said at last, “years ago, I knew their heir. Before the explosion that killed him.”

I blinked. “You… knew him?”

He nodded once.“We weren’t enemies then. We weren’t allies, either. But he and I… we were close. Closer than I’d ever admit back then. The foundry was ours. Our hideout.”

His hand curled into a fist on his knee. “And that voice—the croaky rasp—it wasn’t random. It was similar to hisvoice.”

The air in my lungs froze.

“You think—” I started, but my throat closed around the words. “That he’s alive?”

Lucian didn’t answer right away. He just looked at me with that raw, sleepless eyes“Alive or not, whoever’s behind it chose the foundry for a reason. They knew I’d understand.”

I thought of Elena, shrieking in terror, fighting the guards with all her fragile strength. The syringe plunging into her neck. Lucian’s face—stone, then shattered hurt. My stomach twisted.

“And the riddles?” I asked.

“They haven’t stopped,” he said. His voice was low, almost reluctant. “That banquet where you almost died—poison slipped into your glass—that was them too. Another riddle, another warning I couldn’t solve in time.”

My skin crawled. For weeks I’d told myself I was reckless, careless, guilty for letting myself get so close to death in that banquet hall. But now—now the blame twisted elsewhere.

“It was the same person,” I whispered.

He nodded.

I rubbed my temples, mind racing. A puzzle taking shape. “Then that first mission—the Rivera convoy.”

His eyes sharpened.

I forced the words out, piecing it together as I spoke. “We thought we’d hit them hard. Take their cash before it bought them half the officials in this city. But half of it—half—was counterfeit. Worthless. We lost men for paper. Someone set us up.”

His silence was answer enough.

I had carried guilt for that night, for the intel I’d vouched for. But it hadn’t been me. The voice. The riddles. The manipulation.

My hands shook. “All this time I thought it was my fault. That I’d fed you the wrong lead. But it wasn’t. They wanted us to bleed for nothing.”

Lucian’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t argue. His silence was worse than anger—it meant agreement.

I swallowed. “They must have known. They must have known you’d snap after that failure instead of stopping to think. They wanted you chasing shadows.”

I looked up, meeting his eyes. “They also predicted the warehouse. The medicine.”

“You burned it down,” I said quietly. “We originally thought it was Rivera stockpiles. But it wasn’t. It was medicine the neighborhoods depended on. And when the news spread…”

“Outrage,” he muttered bitterly. “They called me a monster.”

“Because someone wanted them to,” I said. My chest ached. “It wasn’t Rivera. It was the same voice, pulling strings.”

I could see it unraveling now. All the times we thought we’d been striking smart, striking back. All the times the blood had felt worth it. We had been pieces on someone else’s board.

“Marisol,” I whispered.

Lucian’s head snapped up.

“The night she was taken,” I said. “We both thought it was Rivera’s doing. But it wasn’t, was it?”

His silence was long“No,” he said finally. “It wasn’t.”

My skin prickled cold.

He exhaled sharply, like it pained him to speak. “The attack on the mansion a few nights ago—that was Rivera. But Vito and Davide dug deeper. Too many things don’t add up. Too many trails leading nowhere.”

The study felt colder.

I leaned forward, “Lucian… it isn’t just Rivera. Someone else is moving the pieces. Someone who knows us too well. Knows how to make us destroy ourselves.”

His eyes met mine then, fire and hurt and fear all tangled together. And for the first time in w
eeks, maybe months, we weren’t enemies sitting across a line in the sand.

We were two people staring into the same darkness.