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Chapter 135 - Guilt

Author: Dchenemi
last update publish date: 2026-04-28 19:35:57

ELLIE

The ceiling is wrong.

That's the first thing I register before anything else — before the dull throb at my temple, before the brightness of the room, before the fact that I'm in a bed that isn't mine wearing clothes I don't remember putting on. The ceiling is too high, pale plaster with a thin crack running toward the window, and the window is throwing morning light at an angle that matches no room I've woken up in for the past six months.

I sit up too fast and the room tilts violently an
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  • The Black Rose   Chapter 136 - I Had You Too

    ELLIESomewhere around the end of the second week, it starts feeling almost like before.Not fully, none of us are pretending it's fully anything, but there are mornings where I come downstairs and Silas is already in Noir's face about whatever meaningless thing he's decided to care about today, and Lorenzo is at the table with a book, and the coffee is already made, and I stand in the doorway and my chest does this small, quiet thing where it loosens. Just a little. Just enough to breathe differently.We fall back into each other the way you find your footing after a bad fall. Carefully first, testing each step, and then less carefully, and then not at all. Silas engineers reasons to be in whatever room I'm in, which is so transparent it should be annoying and isn't. Noir's hands find my waist when he passes me in the kitchen...this two-second press of warmth that goes as quickly as it comes... and I've stopped pretending it doesn't do things to my pulse. Lorenzo reads beside me in t

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 135 - Guilt

    ELLIEThe ceiling is wrong.That's the first thing I register before anything else — before the dull throb at my temple, before the brightness of the room, before the fact that I'm in a bed that isn't mine wearing clothes I don't remember putting on. The ceiling is too high, pale plaster with a thin crack running toward the window, and the window is throwing morning light at an angle that matches no room I've woken up in for the past six months.I sit up too fast and the room tilts violently and my hand flies out to grip the edge of the mattress. That's when I feel the pull at the inside of my elbow.I look down.IV line. Taped to the crook of my arm, running up to a drip stand beside the bed.My heart slams up into my throat so hard I feel it in my teeth.I swing my legs over the side, plant my feet on the floor, stand — the room sways and I grab the drip stand and drag it with me to the door and yank it open, and the two men standing in the hallway spin around fast, hands going to t

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 134 - Honor

    SILAS"Put the gun down, Mr Giuseppe, and I'll make sure Eliana walks out of here alive."I've heard a lot of bullshit in my life. I grew up in a place that manufactured it. But Vittorio Castellano says it with the kind of calm that makes your skin prickle — not because you believe him, but because he believes himself, and that's so much worse.Lorenzo doesn't move. The gun doesn't move. I know his jaw, I know every version of what that jaw does, and right now it says he's not deciding anything. He's waiting. Buying seconds."You have my word," Vittorio adds.Noir's laugh is barely a sound. More like an exhale with an edge on it. "I'd much rather just kill you both and be done with it."He means it. I feel it from across the corridor, that flat certainty of his. His eyes have been moving between Vittorio and Elijah and back again since they walked through that door, and I've fought beside Noir enough times to know what that particular stillness means. He's already decided. He's just w

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 133 - I Have A Proposition

    LORENZOThe estate is too quiet.I notice it the moment we clear the perimeter wall — not the absence of sound exactly, because there's wind through the hedges and the distant push and pull of the sea somewhere beyond the grounds. It's the absence of the right sounds. No patrol at the east corner. No movement through the upper windows. The silence of a building that has been emptied deliberately, by someone who knew we were coming and wanted us to come.I hold up a fist. Silas and Noir stop behind me without a word.We crouch in the shadow of the hedge line and I scan the grounds — the path to the service entrance, the camera mounted at the corner of the east wing that should be sweeping and isn't, the faint light in the ground floor window that has no business being on at this hour."It's wrong," Silas says, very quietly, beside my ear."I know.""Could be a skeleton crew. Vittorio's at the warehouse, his people followed.""Or," Noir says from my other side, his voice flat, "he's not

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 132 - For Now

    ELLIE"First of all, I want out."Adrian drops it into the middle of the table like a stone, and the silence that follows has weight to it. He has his elbows on his knees, coffee cradled between both hands, eyes on the floor between his feet."Out," I repeat."Gone." He looks up, and his eyes are steady in a way I haven't seen from him before — no calculation in them, no angle working underneath. "New name, new country, new everything. I'm done with this world. I've been done for a long time." He sighs, and for the first time since I met him, I hear the true exhaustion in his voice. "I just want to be free of it."He's been my father's right hand man since he was twelve, been in this ice since he was born and sold to Vittorio before he even stopped breastfeeding. He doesn't know anything but this. I thought he would've wanted the power for himself, once Vittorio was brought down but I guess I don't know him as much as I thimk I did.I look at him for a long moment. At the bruise deep

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 131 - How Heavy You Are

    ELLIEI count the eggs without meaning to. Four, five, six... enough. My hands move on autopilot, cracking them one by one into the bowl, and my brain is somewhere else entirely, running the same sequence it's been running since I landed on this island.Vittorio must've woken up hours ago, depending on how much of the wine he actually got down. When he does, the first thing he'll do is send someone to my room. When that someone returns empty-handed he'll lock down the estate and start making calls — the airport first, then every contact he has across Europe. He'll assume I panicked and bolted, which works in my favor. A panicked girl is a predictable girl, and predictable girls make predictable mistakes. He'll look for mistakes. I won't give him any.Elijah is the variable I can't account for yet and that bothers me more than anything else on this list. He got into that party through a blindspot I built, which means he's been watching me work for longer than I realized. How much does

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 88 - Blamed For Anything Else

    The silence that descended after my revelation felt suffocating, pressing down on my chest until I couldn't draw a full breath. It wrapped around my throat like invisible hands, squeezing tighter with each passing second as three pairs of eyes remained fixed on me with expressions I couldn't bear t

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-04-01

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 85 - Anger With No Where To Go

    NOIRThe space between us felt charged, electric, like the air before a lightning strike. Every muscle in my body coiled tight, ready to spring, ready to tear him apart. But I held myself in check, breathing through the rage that threatened to consume me whole.Elijah just stood there, bathed in Gr

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  • The Black Rose   Chapter 89 - Leather Jacket

    His fingers around my wrist sent heat racing up my arm, spreading through my chest until I could barely breathe. I stood frozen, caught between wanting to pull away and wanting to—what? Stay? Let him draw me back?"Let go," I whispered, not turning to face him."No." His voice was quiet but firm, t

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-04-01

  • The Black Rose   Chapter 86 - Suspicion

    ELLIEThe waiting was the worst part.Noir had been gone for three days—three impossibly long days where every minute stretched into an eternity and every sound made my heart jump into my throat. I'd barely slept, couldn't eat more than a few bites at a time, and spent most of my time staring out w

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-04-01
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