Chapter 195: Anchor

CYAN

Edmond Devereaux was a man who didn’t wait sitting down.

He was dressed impeccably in a navy suit that probably cost more than the average person’s yearly mortgage, every crease a testament to a life of absolute control.

He didn’t turn when I entered. He waited until I was halfway across the room, the silence stretching until it felt like a physical weight.

“Father,” I chirped. I didn’t stop moving until I was far too close to him, invading that bubble of prime ministerial dignity.

“I love what you’ve done with the place. The ’men with guns’ aesthetic is very chic. Is this a wellness check or an assassination attempt? Because the car count suggests both, and I’d hate to dress inappropriately for my own demise.”

Edmond didn’t laugh. He didn’t flinch. He finally turned his head, his gaze sweeping over me with the clinical detachment of a man reading a report he already knew was a failure.

His eyes moved to my bandaged hand, lingering there for a fraction of a second, a cold, silent judgment, before returning to my face.

“So it’s true,” he said. His voice was flat. It was the voice that decided budgets and declared national emergencies.

“What’s true?” I asked, my smile remaining perfectly static. I tilted my head, looking at him with genuine-sounding curiosity. “That I’ve taken up knitting? It’s been a disaster, clearly.”

“I heard about the Wolfe boy,” Edmond said, ignoring my deflection. He used the word boy as if it were a synonym for vermin.

“And I heard about the little skirmish with those… street families. Small men playing dangerous games.”

He referenced the death of Alex, with a clinical brevity that made it sound like a footnote in a legislative briefing.

I felt the familiar sting of it then. He knew. He’d known for days. He’d probably had a satellite feed of me almost getting crushed to death on the road.

He’d been watching, pretending not to care, waiting for the right moment to use it as a rhetorical cudgel.

“I didn’t realize you’d added my social calendar to the intelligence briefings,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m touched, really. You’ve always had such a gift for paying attention to the things that embarrass you.”

Then, I let the flippancy drop just an inch. Not all the way, never all the way, but enough to show the jagged edge underneath.

“Since when do you concern yourself with the bright stain on your perfect image, Father? I thought I was the ghost in the attic.”

“This is about your safety,” he deflected, his tone shifting into that practiced ’concerned leader’ register.

“The people you are involved with are not merely ’embarrassing’, they are lethal. This isn’t about reputation. This is about sense.”

“Since when,” I repeated. It wasn’t a question anymore. It was a demand. I looked him dead in the eye, my smile gone.

“Since when have you cared if I was safe? Was it when you sent me to that ’academy’ in Switzerland? Or was it when you didn’t speak to me for a year because my name appeared in a gossip column next to a scandal you couldn’t bribe away?”

Edmond’s eyes moved. A micro-twitch. The only tell he ever gave. He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he did what all powerful men do when cornered: he went on the offensive.

“You have spent your entire adult life making a spectacle of yourself and calling it freedom,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous rumble.

“Don’t mistake my silence for approval. I have spent years managing the damage you leave behind. I am tired of apologizing for a son who seems determined to be a punishment.”

The words hit like a physical weight. He didn’t say I regret you, but he said it in every syllable. I was a consequence. A mistake. An ongoing liability to be managed, like a budget deficit or a border dispute.

“Do you have any idea what it costs to keep your name out of the papers?” he continued, stepping closer. “What I have sacrificed to make sure your chaos stays quiet? You are the one thing in my life I cannot control, and you treat that like a gift. It isn’t. It is a burden.”

He framed my entire existence as a debt he was tired of paying. He made it clear that getting involved in “petty wars between gangsters” was beneath the Devereaux name, and by extension, beneath any claim I had to it.

“You’ve had years of practice perfecting the look of a concerned father, Edmond,” I spat back, my voice steady but cold. “It’s a shame you never bothered with the actual content. You love the image of the Devereaux legacy, but you hate the reality of me. You’ve benefited from my silence for years. Don’t act like you’re the martyr here.”

Edmond didn’t argue. He was done with the emotional labor. He pivoted, returning to the reason for his visit.

“I came to warn you,” he said. “The people you are dealing with, specifically this Cassian Wolfe, will bring trouble to this door that I cannot make disappear. I already pulled strings to keep you from rotting in a cell after that night years ago. I have allowed you your freedom out of a sense of duty, not mercy.”

He moved to leave, walking past me toward the foyer. He stopped just beside me, but he didn’t look at me. He looked at the wall, delivering his final blow as if it were an afterthought.

“I will not allow the Devereaux name to be dragged through the mud for a petty war with criminals. If you cannot stop yourself from ruining your own life, do as you please. But drop the name first. Give it back to the family it belongs to, and then you can bleed in whatever alley you choose.”

He walked out. The front door clicked shut with a sound like a guillotine falling.

A moment later, the roar of the black cars began, fading as the fleet swept down the driveway. The villa went quiet again. The sun was still shining. The ocean was still blue. But the room felt different. It felt emptier. The kind of empty that has texture, rough and cold.

I stood exactly where he had left me. I didn’t move for a long time. I didn’t cry. I didn’t break a vase. I was very, very good at this part. I just existed in the silence, feeling the specific sensation of being seen as a problem by the one person whose gaze should have meant something else.

Reginald entered a few minutes later, his footsteps soft on the marble. He looked at me, then at the empty room. “Are you alright, sir?” he asked gently. “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter—Reggie,” I cut him off. I spun around, the cheerfulness snapping back into place so fast it was almost violent.

My smile was wide, bright, and utterly fake.

“Whether he meant it or not, the performance is over. He’s gone back to his podium, and I’m still here in this beautiful place.”

But the bad thoughts were getting loud.

It wasn’t sadness. It was a lack of gravity. I felt unmoored, skinless. My nervous system was losing its grip.

Edmond wasn’t a source of comfort, he never had been, but he was a fixed point. A hostile one, but a point nonetheless. And now? Now I was just drifting.

The thoughts started whispering. Do something. Do anything. Make the static stop. I recognized the road I was on. I’d been here before. This was the road that ended in hospital beds and “accidental” overdoses. I saw it coming like a train on a track.

I looked around the room, my eyes frantically searching for a distraction. They landed on a painting on the far wall. It was an abstract piece, mostly deep, vibrant greens.

The color made me think of Noah’s eyes.

I thought of the way he looked when he was trying to be serious but his ears were turning pink.

I thought of the way he was so thoroughly unguarded, so painfully good, that it made the world feel slightly less like a shark tank.

He was annoyingly cute and clueless, really. Like a puppy that didn’t know it was in a lion’s den.

Then I thought of Cassian.

I thought of the way Cassian looked at Noah, with a focus that was terrifyingly absolute.

Cassian chose to pay attention to him.

He didn’t look at me like that. He never had.

I’d made peace with that, mostly. But being near them was still the closest thing I had to an anchor.

The thoughts were screaming now, a choir of jagged glass. I didn’t want to find out what happened if I stayed here alone with them tonight.

“Reggie,” I said, my voice quiet as I stared at the green painting.

“Yes, sir?”

“I think I’d like to go on a little trip. I think… I should pay them a visit.”

“A wise choice, sir,” Reginald murmured.

I turned away from the window. I had a name to drop and a life to ruin, but for tonight, I just wanted to be in a room where the air didn’t taste like ash.

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