Chapter Eighty-Three: Lyanna's Ghost
The ride to the Royce mansion was a silent, vibrating tomb. He didn't let me go, not for a second. Even when the car stopped and Leo opened the door, Rowan simply shifted his hold and carried me out, up the stone steps, and into the warm, golden light of the foyer.
The contrast was dizzying. The scent of lemon polish and baking bread after the metallic tang of blood and fear. Aurora and Sophia were in the living room, their faces tight with an anxiety that told me they already knew. They'd been waiting.
Rowan didn't speak to them. He walked straight to the foot of the grand staircase, and for a moment, I thought he would carry me up to our room, to lock me away. Instead, he stopped. He looked from my tear-streaked, blood-smudged face to his mother's horrified one, to his sister's tear-filled eyes.
With a gentleness that belied the fury still humming in his frame, he set me on my feet. He kept one hand on my arm, as if I might bolt. He looked at Aurora, his voice stripped bare. "She knows. All of it."
Then he let me go. He turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadowy hall that led to his study. The finality of the click as the door closed behind him echoed through the house.
I stood there, trembling, the damning red smear on my cheek a brand. Then my legs gave out.
I didn't hit the floor. Aurora and Sophia were there in an instant, catching me, guiding me to the large sofa. They didn't ask questions. Sophia ran for a warm, wet cloth. Aurora knelt before me, her hands shaking as she began to clean the blood from my skin, her touch infinitely tender.
"I'm sorry, my darling girl," Aurora whispered, her own tears falling. "I am so, so sorry."
"You knew," I rasped, the accusation weak, broken. "You both knew. What he is. What he does. And you never told me."
Sophia sank down beside me, taking my icy hands in hers. "We knew the world he moved in," she said, her voice thick. "We knew the legacy. But telling you… it wouldn't have changed his heart for you, or yours for him. It would have just laid the burden on you sooner."
"What changed him?" I asked, the core of my confusion finally surfacing through the shock. "He wasn't always like this, was he? It was for Lyanna. The revenge. Tell me… please. What happened to Lyanna?"
Aurora and Sophia exchanged a long, sorrowful look. The ghost that had always lingered in this house, in Rowan's eyes, finally stepped into the light.
Aurora sat back on her heels, her face aging a decade in a moment. "Lyanna was… light. Like you, in a way. She saw the good. She believed in it." She took a shaky breath. "She was nineteen. She fell in love. The man was charming, kind, from a good family. Or so we all thought."
Sophia picked up the story, her voice hollow. "He was a plant. Sent by the Graces. Marcus Grace was making a move against our father's business interests. The man… he wooed her, made her believe he wanted to save her from the 'shame' of her family. He pumped her for information for months. And she, in love, gave it to him."
The pieces began to click into place with a terrible, grinding finality.
"She found out she was pregnant," Aurora continued, a tear tracing the deep line by her mouth. "She was overjoyed. She went to tell him, to build a life. That's when he told her the truth. That it was all a game. That she was a fool. That the child was a bastard born of a useful idiot."
A sob caught in my throat. I pressed my hands to my own stomach, a protective, reflexive gesture.
"She came home," Sophia whispered. "She was hysterical. She told Rowan everything. He was twenty. He was wild with protectiveness for her. He promised her he would fix it, that he would make them pay." Sophia wiped her eyes angrily. "The Graces found out she'd confessed. They couldn't risk her testifying, or the child creating a permanent link. They sent men."
The room felt airless.
"They shot her," Aurora said, the words flat, drained of emotion by years of grief. "In the garden. Rowan heard the shots. He got to her first. He held her as she… as she bled out. Her blood… it's the first blood that ever stained his hands. He made her a promise then. As she died in his arms. A promise to erase the people who did this. To become powerful enough that no one could ever hurt his family again."
It was no one but Grace. Lucas.
The anonymous caller's words, Rowan's cold fury, his singular focus on humiliating my family—it all crystallized into a nightmare of clarity. My father's politics. My brother's ambition. They weren't just cold; they were murderous.
And Rowan… he hadn't just married me for revenge on a political rival. He had married the sister of his sister's killer. The daughter of the man who gave the order.
The world swam. I bent double, retching over the side of the sofa, though there was nothing in my stomach.
He hadn't just wanted to humiliate them. He had wanted to take something precious from them, as they had taken something precious from him. He had wanted me to love him, to belong to him, to carry his child—the ultimate theft from the house of Grace.
But somewhere in that dark plan, the lines had blurred. The weapon had become the treasure. The revenge had curdled into a love so possessive it was its own kind of violence.
Now I understood the true depth of the ocean I was drowning in. It wasn't just his mafia life. It was a blood feud. A generational war. And I, and the innocent life inside me, were the most contested ground of all.