Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Queen’s Gambit

The morning air was too still.

The kind of stillness that comes just before everything shatters.

I stood in the marble-floored atrium of Blackwood Estate, barefoot, robe wrapped tight around me, staring at the grand clock that ticked too slowly. The seconds dripped like venom. I knew the hour. I knew what was coming.

Lucien stepped in from the hallway. His shirt was black, open at the throat. His cuffs undone. His eyes already bruised by a war he hadn’t yet fought.

“He’s making a move,” I said before he could speak.

He nodded. “The Armitage Bank called. Three of our shell corporations were transferred under new ownership. Eryx is bleeding us out, piece by piece.”

“And we’re bleeding quietly,” I murmured.

“No,” Lucien said, voice like smoke. “We’re gathering fire.”

He stepped closer, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Are you ready to play your move?”

I looked up at him, the man I married not for love but for war, and somehow ended up craving both from. “Checkmate only matters when it ends the game.”

His lips curved, soft and dangerous.

“Then let’s end it.”

We didn’t wait for Eryx to strike.

We called a meeting of the Blackwood Board. The elders. The traitors. The old money that had pretended to be neutral.

It was held in the east wing conference room. Long glass table. Leather chairs. Everyone dressed like they were attending a funeral. Maybe they were.

Lucien stood at the head of the table.

I stood beside him.

Eryx entered last.

Dressed in charcoal. His tie blood-red. A smirk carved into marble.

He took the seat directly across from Lucien.

Didn’t say a word.

I started.

“We are here because the Blackwood legacy is at risk.”

A murmur. A ripple.

“From within.”

Eyes shifted. Tension coiled.

I pressed play on my phone.

Lucien’s mother’s voice filled the silence. Soft. Terrified.

“He’s grooming them both. But one of them still has a soul…”

Eryx’s jaw tightened.

The board stirred like stirred ashes.

I walked forward. “You’ve all known Reagan’s hunger. But did you know he destroyed his wife to raise a weapon? That he split his heirs and set them at each other’s throats?”

I paused.

“Did you know that the real threat is the one pretending he wants to rebuild this house… when really, he just wants to crown himself king over its ashes?”

I turned the phone off. Let the silence bloom like poison.

Then Lucien stepped forward.

“He won’t stop. Eryx was made for conquest. Not loyalty. Not legacy. You follow him, and you follow a man raised by ghosts.”

Eryx leaned back in his chair.

He was calm. Too calm.

Until he stood.

“I expected more theatrics,” he said, looking directly at me.

“You want theatrics?” I asked.

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the second cassette.

This one had Reagan’s voice.

Slurred. Laughing.

“The crown will fall where I place it. And if one son dies for the other to rise? So be it.”

I let the silence feast on those words.

Then I crushed the tape in my fist and threw it into the fireplace.

The fire roared.

After the meeting, the board began to splinter.

Half stayed loyal to Lucien.

Half waited in fear.

Eryx vanished before I could follow him.

Lucien didn’t speak for hours.

He just stared into the flames like he could read the future there.

That night, I found him in the garden.

He was sitting on the stone bench beneath the black rose arch. His tie was undone, his hands bloody from punching a wall I hadn’t seen.

I sat beside him.

Said nothing.

Then: “You didn’t ask me how I got the tapes.”

He turned, shadows under his eyes. “I figured if you wanted to tell me, you would.”

I studied his face.

His silence.

His restraint.

“No more secrets,” I said. “If we’re going to win this war, we fight side by side. You don’t shield me from the blood. And I won’t shield you from the burn.”

Lucien stared at me like I’d just set the sky on fire.

He touched my face. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No,” I said softly. “You don’t.”

And then I kissed him.

We didn’t make love that night.

We took each other.

Ripped silk. Hands in hair. Teeth against skin. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet.

It was survival.

A carving of want into skin.

A promise written in breath and bruises.

The next morning, the estate’s security system glitched.

And three men broke into the east hall.

Lucien was already on the move.

I followed, barefoot again, heart thunder-drumming.

We reached the corridor just as two of the intruders turned toward me.

They wore suits. Masks. But their posture betrayed their purpose.

Lucien pulled me behind him and drew the gun from his jacket.

But the third man—the one at the center—pulled off his mask.

Eryx.

Again.

He smiled, slow and sharp.

“I wanted to see how quickly you’d respond,” he said.

Lucien raised the gun. “You’ll get your answer in lead.”

“No,” I said, stepping forward.

“Ivy—” Lucien hissed.

But I held up my hand.

Eryx studied me.

The curve of my hips under the robe. The storm in my eyes.

He didn’t see a girl anymore.

He saw a queen.

And maybe that’s why he hesitated.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said.

“You should be,” he answered.

“I was,” I confessed. “But now I know your secret.”

He tilted his head. “And what’s that?”

“You were born to fight,” I said. “But I was born to survive.”

I stepped closer, until I was inches from him.

“I am what this house has always feared,” I whispered. “A woman with nothing left to lose.”

Then I stabbed him.

Not with a knife.

With words.

“You’re just Reagan’s echo. I’m his reckoning.”

He didn’t flinch.

He just smiled.

Then he turned and walked away with his men.

No blood spilled.

Not yet.

But a promise had been made.

After he left, Lucien pressed me against the wall and kissed me like he couldn’t breathe without it.

“I’ll kill him,” he said into my neck.

“No,” I whispered. “We’ll do it together.”

And I meant it.