The embers in the hearth gave one last sullen pop, sending a faint shower of sparks upward like dying stars.
Gran Rosalinda's words still hung in the air between us, thick as smoke—her web of weeks-long schemes, the quiet betrayals with Eskar, the letters, the reeve, and the slow poison of doubt she had been feeding Chelsea night after night.
She sat there like a queen who had already pronounced sentence, that small, cold smile playing at the corners of her mouth, her eyes gleaming with the satisfaction of a woman who believed she had finally cornered the rat in her house.
I stared at her for a long, heavy beat.
The blood roared in my ears, a mix of rage and something far darker, far more twisted.
Fear? No, not quite.
It was the thrill of the hunt turned inward, the deviant hunger that had always lived in me rising sharp and hot. She thought she knew me. She thought she could unravel everything with clever words and patient plotting. But she had made one mistake tonight.
She had named it all out loud. And in naming it, she had made it real.
Made her part of it.
I rose slowly from the low stool, unfolding my body until I towered over her seated form. The firelight caught the hard line of my jaw, the faint stubble, the way my shoulders filled the space between us. My shadow stretched long across her lap, swallowing the folds of her dark gown. She didn't flinch. Of course, she didn't.
But I saw the minute tightening at the corners of her eyes, the way her folded hands pressed just a fraction harder into each other.
"Brazen, Gran," I murmured, echoing her own earlier taunt.
My voice came out low, rough, laced with the same velvet threat she had used on me.
"You've spent weeks spinning your little web. Paying Eskar. Whispering in Chelsea's ear. Preparing my exile like some careful housewife putting up preserves for winter. All because the thought of me between your daughter's thighs makes you sick."
I took one deliberate step closer until my knees brushed the edge of her chair. Close enough that the heat of my body cut through the chill of the room. Close enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly to keep my face in view.
I let my gaze drop—not to her eyes this time, but lower. Down the line of her throat, where her pulse fluttered visibly beneath the pale skin. Down to the modest neckline of her gown, the faint swell of breasts that age had softened but not erased. Down to her hands, still composed in her lap, knuckles now showing white again.
Then I smiled. Slow, ugly, intimate.
"You want to know if knowing all this changes my answer?"
I reached down, bold and unhurried, and caught her chin between my thumb and forefinger. My touch was firm—not painful, not yet—but possessive, tilting her face up so she couldn't look away. Her skin was warm, surprisingly soft for a woman who had spent decades working with her hands.
"It doesn't. It only makes me want to remind you exactly who you're dealing with."
Gran's breath hitched—just once, a tiny betrayal—but she held my stare, those clever eyes narrowing into slits of pure hatred.
"Take your filthy hand off me, savage little—"
I didn't.
Instead, I leaned in closer, my face inches from hers, close enough to smell the faint lavender on her wrists mixed now with the sharper scent of her rising anger. My free hand rested lightly on the arm of her chair, caging her in without quite touching her body.
"You've been so busy plotting to take Chelsea away from me," I whispered, my voice dropping to a husky murmur, "that you never stopped to wonder why she keeps coming back to my bed. Why does she let the boy she raised ruin her night after night? Maybe it's because deep down she craves what only a degenerate like me can give her. Something raw. Something wrong."
My thumb brushed once across her lower lip, slow and deliberate, tracing the seam of it. She jerked her head, but I held her chin steady.
"And maybe," I continued, bolder now, my pulse hammering with the sheer audacity of it, "you've been watching us for so long that some part of you wonders. Wonders what it feels like to have the same hands that touch your daughter touch you. Wonders why a woman who gave up everything for Chelsea still sits alone in that cold bed upstairs while I fuck the life back into her."
The words spilled out filthy and unfiltered, each one a deliberate thrust into the wall she had built between us. I could feel the hate radiating off her in waves, but beneath it—beneath the clever schemes and the righteous fury—there was the faintest tremor.
Shock and disgust.
And something else I couldn't quite name yet, but I intended to find out.
I released her chin but didn't step back.
Instead, I straightened, towering over her once more, and let my hand drift down to rest possessively on the back of her chair, fingers brushing the silver threads in her braid.
"So here's my new answer, Gran," I said, my voice steady and dark with challenge.
"I'm not leaving. Not tonight. Not ever. And if you want to keep playing your games—Eskar, the reeve, and the whispers—I'll play too. But I'll play dirty. I'll remind Chelsea every single night exactly why she can't quit me. And maybe…"
My gaze lingered on her mouth again, then lifted to her eyes with a wicked, defiant grin.
"Maybe I'll start reminding you what a real man feels like. See if that clever tongue of yours has any other uses besides spinning webs."
The room felt electric now, the air thick with the scent of cold ashes, old lavender, and raw, unspoken tension.
Gran Rosalinda sat frozen in her chair, her composed mask cracked wide open, eyes blazing with a hate so pure it could have set the house alight.
But she hadn't slapped me. Hadn't screamed. Hadn't called for Chelsea.
She was calculating again. I could see the wheels turning behind those sharp eyes.
I took one step back at last, but the challenge hung between us like a drawn blade.