Chapter 73: Don’t Be Láte To The Party
ADRIEN’S POV
The air in France smells exactly like a lie. A nauseatingly familiar one. It smells like home.
It feels fresh and sweet, mixed with the scent of flowers and old stone buildings. But underneath all that sweetness, it tastes like ash.
Only one week has passed since the grand courtyard of the Vassilis estate turned into a house of death.
Only one week since Orion broke a billionaire’s neck right in the middle of our former classmates. Yet, here we are. The world did not stop spinning.
These rich people simply bought new clothes, hired a different catering company, and moved their twisted show across the border.
Instead of using the private Vassilis family grounds, the Matriarchs of the family chose the Dubois family church courtyard. That bitch must have done this on purpose.
It’s a massive, spooky building made of dark gray stone, with sharp towers pointing up into the low clouds like angry teeth. Green ivy grows all over the old walls. The stone path under my shoes is bumpy, worn down by hundreds of years of people walking here to pray—or to pretend to pray.
Every single step I take feels like dragging my heavy feet through wet cement. The quiet countryside is way too loud. The only noises are the distant sounds of crows flying overhead and the perfectly matched footsteps of the men walking all around me.
To my right is Orion. He walks with a slow, calm grace, like a wild animal that knows no one can touch him. His expensive dark gray suit fits his broad shoulders perfectly. He does not look like a man who spent his last trip to a church plotting crimes.
He looks like he owns the very ground beneath his feet. A few steps behind us, Niko and Alexis follow. Niko stands completely straight and stiff, his amber eyes looking around the area with cold, sharp focus. Alexis walks half a step behind him, looking like a quiet shadow trapped in a monster’s trap.
My chest grows tight as the path turns, showing the curved entrance to the big courtyard.
I know this place. I don’t know what to feel about this place.
The thought hits me like a hard punch to the gut, stealing all the air right out of my lungs. I freeze up for a split second. Then, Orion’s heavy hand presses against the lower part of my back. It is a solid, unmoving pressure that forces me to keep walking forward.
I know this church.
A sudden wave of dizziness washes over me. It drags my mind backward through time, tearing open doors in my head that I have spent more than ten years trying to lock up and hide away.
I was just a little kid the last time I stood on these stones. I was six or seven years old. I remember wearing a stiff, uncomfortable suit that scratched my neck. I remember holding my mother’s pale, weak hand while my father walked a few steps ahead of us, excited to talk to the other rich families.
He was always excited to be in the presence of any other families but his.
"Keep moving, duckling," Orion’s deep voice whispers right next to my ear. The low tone of his voice brings me back to the present moment. "Unless you are planning to stop and pray. Though I really doubt whatever God lives in this place is listening to either of us."
I don’t answer him. I can’t. My throat feels way too tight, choked up with the sudden, dusty memories of my old life.
I can still picture the way the sunlight used to shine through the colorful stained-glass windows of the church, casting bright red and blue circles all over the cold floor. I remember coming here when my life was still normal, before the terrible sickness took over everything.
And then, I remember the bad parts. I can’t ever forget them.
My mind jumps forward. The memories skip past the good years and land straight into the nightmare. I remember coming home from school to our old house, which was located just a few miles north of this church.
The house had become so quiet back then. All the life was gone from it. It smelled constantly like medicine and old, fading flowers. I used to walk on my tiptoes down the hallway to my mother’s bedroom, completely terrified of what I might see when I opened the door.
Every single time, she would be sitting right by the window. The leukemia was eating her alive from the inside out. It made her cheeks look hollow and thin. It turned her skin into pale, see-through paper.
But she would always look up at me and give me a soft, sad, peaceful smile. She would be holding her old, black leather Bible, rubbing her thumb along the worn edges of the pages.
"It is just a short test, Adrien," she would whisper, her voice sounding thin and weak. "The Lord gives things, and the Lord takes things away. We just have to be patient."
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to rip that book out of her weak hands and throw it straight into a fire. What kind of God would let a good woman like her rot away while the rest of the world kept laughing and having fun?
While my father kept laughing.
The memory turns foul and ugly as my father’s face appears in my mind. As my mother’s illness got worse and worse, he completely stopped staying in that quiet house.
He started coming home less and less. He always gave fake, empty excuses about business meetings, shipping problems, and family duties. The truth was, he could not stand to look at her. He could not stand to see death destroying the perfect, beautiful image of his upper-class family.
Then came the specific night the world completely ended for me.
I was ten years old. It was a Tuesday night, and the outside air felt thick and heavy, right before a big storm. I was sitting on the edge of her bed, reading a book out loud to her, when she suddenly started to choke.
A terrible coughing fit shook her small, fragile body. And then, the horror started. Dark, thick blood began pouring out of her nose. It leaked out of her ears, staining the clean white sheets and pooling right on top of the Bible she kept on her nightstand.
I completely lost my mind in panic. I can still feel the freezing terror of that exact moment. My hands shook so hard as I grabbed the house phone, dialing my father’s private number over and over again. When he finally picked up, my voice was a messy, crying disaster.
"Dad, please! You have to come home right now! Mom is bleeding, she won’t stop bleeding, please come home!"
He did not show up until hours later. By then, the ambulance had already taken her dead body away. The house was dead quiet, and I was sitting all by myself on the kitchen floor, covered in my own mother’s blood.
When the front door finally clicked open, my father walked inside. He did not look sad or broken. He just looked a little messy. His tie was loose, and his shirt collar was a bit wrinkled.
And as he walked right past me, completely ignoring my tears, a specific smell followed him into the room.
It was not the metallic smell of blood, and it was not the clean smell of a hospital. It was a heavy, strong, sweet perfume—a rich mix of dark orchid flowers and rare spices. It was a scent that, years later, would make my stomach turn into a block of pure ice the exact moment I was introduced to Lady Alice.
That conniving, heartless bitch.
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