Chapter Twenty-One: Ashes in His Mouth

The silence after a threat is worse than the threat itself.

It seeps in. Sits with you. Soaks into your skin like poison-laced perfume.

I didn’t sleep that night.

I curled up in Lucien’s office with the velvet blanket around my shoulders, the revolver still resting in my lap, my fingers locked around its grip like a lifeline.

Somewhere in this mansion, a ghost in human skin had spoken my name.

Called me heir.

Mocked my blood.

And disappeared.

By morning, the sun spilled through the high windows like golden betrayal. Everything looked the same, but nothing felt safe. Every creak, every rustle behind a door, made my heart skip.

Lucien found me before eight.

His tie was crooked. Eyes red. His darkness had frayed.

He crouched beside me. “Ivy.”

I didn’t move.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked, voice tight.

“I didn’t want you to lie to me again.”

He inhaled sharply. “You think I knew?”

“I think you know more than you’ve told me. And someone just walked into our bedroom and left a whisper in my ear like a curse.”

He stood and ran a hand through his hair. “Security swears no one got in.”

“Then tell me how a man I’ve never met knows about my necklace. My bloodline. My mother. And your father’s sins.”

Lucien’s shoulders stiffened. “He’s not a man. He’s a blade that my family thought they buried.”

I rose to my feet. “Reagan Blackwood.”

His gaze cut to mine.

“What happened between you?”

He looked away.

“I deserve the truth, Lucien.”

A long silence.

Then he whispered, “He was supposed to be dead.”

We locked ourselves in the archive wing. Floor-to-ceiling files, old ledgers, security footage, deed contracts, and war maps disguised as merger documents.

Lucien pulled out a file marked 1997 – Blackwood Internal Affairs.

Inside were two photographs. One of a man with Lucien’s cheekbones and the smirk of a serpent. And one of a car. Or what was left of it.

“He drove off the cliff,” Lucien said. “Or at least that’s what they said. There was blood. Shards of his watch. My father called it an accident. But I never believed it.”

“Why?”

“Because Reagan never did anything by accident. He faked his own death to disappear. And now, he’s back.”

I touched the photo. “Why now?”

Lucien’s voice dropped. “Because of you. Because you’re the threat he never accounted for.”

That night, Lucien and I sat by the fireplace in the master suite. No music. No wine. Just firelight dancing across his face and the storm in his eyes.

“I used to think you were the coldest man I’d ever met,” I murmured.

“And now?”

“Now I think you’re trying not to drown in the ashes of your family.”

He stared into the flames. “My father was the king of fire. My mother—the queen of silence. I learned to wear ice just to survive them.”

I slid closer. “And Reagan?”

“He was the blade in my ribs. Charming. Brilliant. Rotten to the core. He wanted everything my father promised me. He wanted her too.”

“Her?”

“My mother.”

I froze.

Lucien didn’t look at me. “He was obsessed with her. Used to write her letters. Poems. Until my father found out. Beat him half to death. After that, everything in the house bled. And then Reagan vanished.”

A silence stretched between us.

Then he turned to me, slow and raw. “He’s going to come for you.”

“Let him.”

He caught my wrist. “No, Ivy. You don’t understand. He doesn’t want your money. Or your name. He wants your destruction. And he will find the weakest point in your armor—and strike there.”

“I don’t have armor,” I whispered.

Lucien’s gaze dropped to my lips. “Then let me be it.”

The kiss came slowly. Not fire, not ice—but something in between. Steady. Heavy. Like a surrender written in touch instead of words.

His hand slid to my neck. My body leaned in. And I let the kiss deepen until I tasted grief, need, rage—and something that might’ve been love.

Or something crueler.

The next morning, the painting arrived.

No return address. No courier trail.

Just a square-wrapped frame resting at the foot of the grand staircase.

Lucien stood over it while his security circled the room with guns half-drawn.

He peeled the paper back slowly.

And then he froze.

I stepped beside him.

It was a portrait.

Of me.

Painted in oil. Dressed in red silk. My eyes weeping gold tears.

And beneath it, written in blood-red paint:

“She wears your sins like jewels. Shall I carve her into legacy?” —R.B.”

I clutched the staircase rail.

Lucien’s knuckles whitened around the frame. “He wants us to know he’s close. That he’s watching.”

“I want to know what he means,” I whispered. “About sins. About jewels. About—”

I stopped.

My heart stuttered.

The necklace.

The one Lucien gave me. The one my mother had worn.

I ripped it off and turned it in my hands.

And there—at the back—so faint I nearly missed it:

R.B.

Engraved into the clasp.

Lucien swore violently. “It’s his.”

My stomach turned. “Then that means—”

“That he gave it to her.”

Lucien staggered back. “And I gave it to you.”

The fire behind his eyes cracked.

“You were never supposed to wear his legacy.”

I dropped the necklace like it burned.

And in that instant, something between us cracked.

I didn’t see him the rest of the day.

Lucien locked himself in the north wing, surrounded by lawyers, strategists, and war-planners disguised as executives.

And I wandered the halls like a ghost in my own life.

Reagan Blackwood wasn’t just threatening us.

He was telling a story.

Piece by piece.

And I was the final chapter.

That night, I dreamed of fire.

Of a blade against my skin.

Of Lucien screaming my name across a ballroom made of broken glass.

I woke in a sweat.

The portrait of me had been moved.

It now hung at the end of our bedroom hallway.

Lucien swore no one had touched it.

But I knew.

Because the eyes in the painting had changed.

They were now his.