All Chapters of His Halo is a Lie: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Life after the cabin felt like balancing on glass.Every step forward with Saint was careful, deliberate. We built our days out of small moments—cooking, shopping, sitting together in quiet—and each one felt precious. But beneath them, I always felt the city pressing against us, waiting for a crack.He tried to hide it from me, but I could see it in his eyes. The hunger. The war. The constant tension in his body when we walked the streets. He said he was done, and I believed him. But I also knew that being done was not the same as being free.I wanted to believe freedom was possible. For him. For us.One morning, I woke to find him already gone from bed. My chest tightened, fear rushing through me before I even moved. I found him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee, staring at the sketch of the house.“You’re thinking about it again,” I said softly.He looked up, his expression unreadable. “Always.”I stepped closer, tracing the lines of the paper with my

Every day with Saint felt like both a victory and a test.I knew the city wasn’t done with him. I saw it in the way strangers stared, in the smirks that lingered too long, in the whispers that always seemed to carry his name. I saw it in the way his body tensed when we passed an alley, in the way his jaw clenched when young men laughed too loud. He told me he was done, and I believed him. But being done didn’t mean the world believed it too.At the cabin, I had tasted a life free from all of that. Quiet mornings. Laughter over burnt food. Evenings by the fire where his eyes were soft instead of sharp. Coming back had reminded me how fragile that peace really was.Still, I held on.Because I saw the way he chose me. Over and over, in small moments. He held my hand when the whispers rose. He kissed me when the hunger burned in his chest. He turned away when everything in him wanted to turn back. That was love. That was war. And it mattered more than anything the city thought it could de

Every man has ghosts.Some whisper. Some scream. Mine had teeth, and they never seemed to lose the taste for me.The more Maya and I drove out of the city, searching for houses, the more the city clawed at my back. It was like blood in the water. I could feel it every time we came home. Graffiti stretched across walls in jagged red strokes, my name painted like an open wound. “Saint.” “King.” Crowns above the letters, crooked and defiant.At the market, I caught the stares. Young men who looked at me with challenge in their eyes. Older men who watched with something sharper than respect. Fear. Recognition. Memory. The city remembered me, even when I told myself I had buried that man.I hated how easy it was to feel the pull. The way my fists still clenched, the way my heart still sped when someone spoke my name too loud. It was like a rhythm I hadn’t forgotten, an old song waiting for me to step back into it.But every time I looked at her, I remembered why I walked away.Maya.She wa

The city didn’t like to be ignored.I knew that. I had built it that way. You didn’t survive by turning your back on whispers; you survived by answering them before they grew teeth. But now I was testing its patience. Every day I walked past the graffiti without reacting, every day I turned away from the smirks and the whispers, the city’s hunger grew.And when hunger grew too loud, it started to bite.The first bite came in the form of a newspaper.Lucio dropped it on my counter one evening, the headline screaming in block letters:VIOLENCE AT THE DOCKS. THREE DEAD. SAINT’S NAME SPRAY-PAINTED IN BLOOD.My jaw tightened. The photograph showed a warehouse, windows shattered, bodies being wheeled out under sheets. And scrawled across the wall in red paint was my name.You see?” Lucio said, his voice sharp. “You can walk away all you want, but they’ll drag your name through the dirt until it’s nothing but blood again. People already believe you’re back. They believe you ordered this.”“I

There’s only so long you can walk away before the world decides to chase.The city was chasing me now.The graffiti wasn’t fading; it was multiplying. Every street corner we passed, every wall I looked at, I saw my name staring back at me. Saint. King. Crown. Some letters dripped like blood, some jagged like knives. It was everywhere.And worse than the paint were the eyes.People believed what they wanted to believe, and right now, they wanted me back. The old men looked at me like I was already returned, like I had never left. The young ones stared like they wanted to test me, challenge me, wear my name as a trophy when they tried to bring me down.Maya told me not to answer them. She told me silence was stronger than fire. But silence felt like suffocation when every instinct in me screamed to burn.The paper hadn’t left my head either. Three dead at the docks. My name painted above them. Not mine, but close enough to sting. Close enough to feel like a hand dragging me backward int