"Who do you think Vance Regale is?" Moraine continued, leaning closer. "Some rich, charming fool you can curl up beside and pretend the world is all barbie?" A humorless smile touched his lips. "That son of a whore is the most accomplished manipulator walking this earth."
He eased back just enough to study Jordan's face.
"He has Patrice Regale eating out of his palm," Moraine said. "Turned that cunning old man against his own blood to claim what he believes is his birthright." He paused deliberately. "Care to guess what that legacy is?"
Silence stretched.
Moraine's brows lifted in mock encouragement. Then, almost gently, he patted Jordan's cheek—as one might soothe an animal that didn't know it was about to be culled.
"It's to cleanse the world," he said quietly, venom laced through every word. "To erase the bastards like us. The ones born in filth. In back alleys. In whorehouses. People who were never meant to survive."
His gaze locked onto Jordan's, unblinking.
"And he will do it with a smile."
A deep overwhelming darkness suddenly had Jordan's heart in a grip. He refused to believe that he had himself sent his brother to the gallows. Vance couldn't be the monster Moraine was making him out to be. He saw the way he looked at Askai that day in the dorm. He wouldn't hurt him. Would he?
As his heart caved in, anger rose to the surface.
"Why do you care?" Jordan challenged, the question tearing out of him before he could stop it. "Huh? Why do you care what becomes of us?"
For a heartbeat, Moraine looked like he might kill someone.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop, as if the walls themselves had drawn inward. It was strange—almost absurd—to remember how people whispered about him. The silver-tongued king of manipulation. The charmer of East End ladies. The elegant devil who coaxed women into his bed with promises and velvet smiles.
To Jordan, Moraine had never been that man.
To Jordan, he had always been heat—unrelenting, suffocating, the kind that left you blistered even when he wasn't touching you.
"I'm not an idiot," Moraine said at last, his voice controlled to the point of cruelty. "I don't hand my own people to Regale on a silver platter."
He stepped back just enough to look at Jordan fully, gaze sharp and assessing, his words intentionally cruel.
"You've been with me for years," he continued. "You know too much. And you've always had a talent for opening your mouth when it suits your conscience." A faint curl of disdain touched his lips. "Especially now, with your shiny new friend."
Jordan stiffened.
"He wouldn't be able to keep Askai for long," Moraine went on, dismissive. " That boy's entire life has been spent slipping through the corridors of East End power, sniffing out secrets for one master or another. He knows those mansions. He knows how to disappear."
Moraine's eyes flicked over Jordan, lingering where it hurt most.
"You," he said quietly, "do not."
The truth landed harder than any blow.
Askai had always been the one who broke away—explosive, defiant, burning bridges behind him. Jordan had survived differently. He slipped through cracks. He ran when no one was looking. And when he was caught… he stayed caught.
Askai had always come back for him.
The realization hit like a bruise pressed too often. He missed him—fiercely, irrationally.
"Pack your things," Moraine said, final now. "Kael is leaving with Veronica. And you are coming with me. I'm not letting a child suffer because you boys can't keep it in your pants."
That did it.
"No," Jordan snapped, his voice cracking with fury. "Kael is coming with me."
Moraine turned slowly.
"No, he isn't. I know what's best for—"
"I don't want to know your opinion!" Jordan burst out, stepping forward despite himself. "He is family. And unlike you, I give a damn about mine. I care if they live or -"
The words fell into the room like a dropped blade.
Then the door slammed open.
"Shut up!" Veronica stormed into the living room, her voice sharp and shaking. "Jordan, you've crossed a line. Just—SHUT UP!"
The command cut clean.
Something flickered across Moraine's face—too fast to name, too deep to examine. It cracked open a vault of memories none of them ever spoke of. It was a saga of love and loss.
For an instant, he looked older. Then the mask slid back into place. Whatever he had been about to say curdled into something harder, colder.
"GET. YOUR. THINGS."
Each word landed like a hammer strike, final and unyielding. He didn't wait for a response. He turned on his heel and crossed the living room in long, deliberate strides, opening a door Jordan hadn't even noticed before—one that led not into the hallway, not into escape, but sideways, into the neighboring apartment. A contingency. Of course Veronica had one. She always did.
He disappeared through it without looking back.
Veronica followed, her movements sharp with panic, tears spilling freely now as the dam finally broke. She stopped him just inside the threshold, her voice cracking under the weight of everything she'd been holding in.
"I asked you to run away from him," she said, the words tearing out of her chest, raw and wounded. "Not—hurt him."
Moraine didn't turn around. If he had, she might have seen something dangerous there—not rage, not cruelty, but something far worse. Guilt. Or fear. Or the quiet certainty that this was the only way it ever ended.
Behind them, on the other side of the door, Jordan slid down until his back hit the wood and his legs gave out beneath him. He cradled his head in his hands, fingers digging into his hair as if he could physically hold himself together. His breath came uneven, hitching with the tears he hadn't meant to let fall. They spilled anyway, hot and relentless, blurring the edges of the room.
Everything hurt.
Askai's face rose unbidden in his mind. Kael's voice. Veronica's scream. Moraine's back as he walked away like this was just another necessary cruelty.
He stayed there on the floor, shaking, staring at nothing.
Would this nightmare ever end?
The question echoed in the quiet, unanswered—as it always had.