Chapter 190: 191 | Tell Me Everything
I didn’t speak.
"He kept me there, Rome. Our father. In a room with no windows and a mattress on the floor and a shower that ran cold water. For three months. While they tested me. And then when they decided I was manageable, they gave me a junior position in R&D and an engagement to a man I’ve spoken to exactly eleven times."
Her hand trembled around the wine glass. Just for a second. Then she locked it down.
"I’m telling you this because he will do the same thing to you. Except your ability isn’t manageable. Whatever you are. Whatever those blood markers mean. He will not stop until he understands it. And once he understands it, he will either weaponize you or neutralize you."
The room felt smaller than it had a minute ago.
"There is no version of this where Vito D’Angelo lets his son walk around with an unclassified ability and a harem of powerful women and a growing reputation that threatens to overshadow the company." Vivian set the wine glass down hard enough to ring the crystal. "He will take everything from you. The way he takes everything from everyone. Quietly. Legally. With a smile on his face and a team of lawyers at his back."
I sat with that.
For a long time I just sat with it.
The harbor lights reflected off the ceiling. Music thumped below us. Someone in another room laughed at something.
"What’s your ability."
Vivian looked at me for a long moment. Whatever she saw in my face must have passed some internal test because her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.
"Structural reinforcement. I can increase the tensile strength and density of any material I’m in direct contact with. Skin. Bone. Metal. Concrete. Anything."
"That’s why you broke the table."
"I reinforced the legs while leaning on it. The stress differential cracked the surface. I didn’t understand what was happening." A ghost of a smile. "I thought I was losing my mind."
"And Father classified you as."
"As nothing. Officially I’m still a Null. His people never filed with the NEA. The ability is unregistered. Undocumented. Just like yours was supposed to be before you went and used gravity manipulation on live television in front of a Channel Seven helicopter."
Yeah. That had been a tactical error.
"He could have registered you. Given you a normal life."
"He could have. But a daughter with a useful ability is a tool. A daughter with a registered ability is a public asset that attracts scrutiny and requires transparency." Vivian’s fingers traced the rim of her glass. "Tools are better kept in the dark."
I understood.
In a way I wished I didn’t.
"So what do you want from me, Vivian."
She stood up. Walked to the window. The harbor spread out below her. Boats. Lights. The distant silhouette of the Coastline Academy campus on the far shore.
She looked smaller from behind. Less like a weapon. More like a girl standing alone in an expensive room trying to figure out who to trust.
"I want you to win." She turned back. "Whatever game you’re playing. Whatever you’re building with those women and that team and that reputation. I want you to beat him."
"And what do you get."
"Out." Simple. Raw. "I get out. If you take the company. If you claim the trust and the board seat and the inheritance. I get to stop being a prisoner wearing designer clothes and calling it a career."
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it.
"That’s a big ask from someone I haven’t seen in years."
"I know what you are, Rome."
Everything stopped.
"I watched the footage from your match against Traore. I watched you drain his Essentia through your palm. I watched three concentric circles glow in your eyes while you pulled his reserves dry." Vivian walked back toward me. Each step deliberate. Heels clicking on the hardwood. "Father’s lab couldn’t classify your blood markers because the classification doesn’t exist anymore. Because the last documented case died in 2106 and the NEA scrubbed the records."
She stopped two feet away. Looking down at me on the couch.
"You’re a Drain-type. The first living one in seventy years."
I didn’t confirm it. Didn’t deny it. Just held her gaze and let the silence answer.
"And I’m betting," Vivian continued, her voice dropping into something softer and more dangerous, "that the reason you keep those specific women close has nothing to do with your personality and everything to do with what you can take from them."
My blood went cold.
"Am I wrong?"
No.
She wasn’t wrong.
And the fact that she’d worked it out from surveillance footage and blood test results meant my father was probably three steps behind her with the same conclusion.
"He’s close, Rome. Whatever head start you think you have. He is close." Vivian reached down and picked up her wine glass from the table. Her fingers were steady now. "I can slow him down. I have access to the research division. I can misdirect the lab results. Feed false data into the comparison models. Buy you time."
"How much time."
"Weeks. Maybe a month if I’m careful."
"And in exchange."
"In exchange." Vivian took a sip of wine and looked at me the way someone looks at the last lifeboat on a sinking ship. "You let me in. Whatever you’re building. Whatever this is. I want to be part of it."
The room was quiet.
Below us the city kept spinning. People kept living their small normal lives. Heroes kept patrolling. Villains kept scheming. And somewhere in an office tower, our father kept pulling threads that would eventually unravel everything I’d built.
My phone buzzed again.
I pulled it out.
Mera: you’ve been in there 22 minutes. status?
I typed back.
Me: alive. complicated. need more time.
Mera: complicated how
I looked at Vivian, standing in the golden light of the Crimson Lotus with her wine glass and her blue eyes and her secrets and her desperation.
Complicated how.
Good question.
Me: ill explain when i get home. promise.
I put the phone away.
"Sit down, Vivian."
She sat.
"Start from the beginning. Tell me everything."
