To ruin an Omega - Chapter 461: Three Minutes and Forty-Two Seconds

Chapter 461: Three Minutes and Forty-Two Seconds

CIAN

The silence on the other end stretched long enough that I wondered if the connection had dropped.

Then Madeline spoke.

“What about him?”

Her voice came across as carefully neutral. Too neutral. The kind of control that took effort to maintain.

I leaned against the wall, staring at the empty hallway where Gabriel had disappeared.

“He’s dead.”

The words sat heavily between us. I heard her breathing change on the other end. Sharper. Quicker.

“How?”

“Fia killed him.”

There came another pause. It was longer this time. When Madeline spoke again, her voice had gone hard.

“Good. It’s what he deserved.”

The words came clipped and precise. Each syllable was carefully measured. I recognized the tone. Had heard it before from people trying to convince themselves they felt something they didn’t.

“He came after her,” I continued. “Sent one of his experiments to kidnap her. When we tracked them down to his home, he tried to kill us both. Fia fought back.”

“I’m sure she did.” Madeline’s laugh came sharp and bitter. “My father always did underestimate people. Probably thought he could study her like one of his specimens. Control her. Break her down until she became another success story in his sick research.”

I said nothing. I just let her talk.

“He got exactly what was coming to him.” Her voice cracked slightly on the last word. “Every terrible thing he did, every person he hurt, every life he destroyed in the name of his obsession. He earned that ending.”

The hardness in her tone wavered. I heard it fracture at the edges.

“Madeline.”

“No.” The word came sharply. “Don’t. Don’t try to comfort me or tell me it’s okay to be upset. He was a monster. He deserved to die. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad Fia killed him. I’m glad—”

Her voice broke completely.

The sound that came next hit me harder than I expected. Sobbing. Raw and uncontrolled. The kind that came from somewhere deep and couldn’t be stopped once it started.

I pressed my phone closer to my ear, wishing I could do something useful. Wishing there were words that made this kind of pain easier to carry.

The crying went on for a while. I just stood there and listened, letting her break down without trying to fix it or make it stop.

Eventually, the sobs quieted and turned into shaky breathing and occasional hitches that suggested she was trying to pull herself back together.

“Are you alright?”

The question came out stupid the moment I said it. Of course, she wasn’t alright. Her father was dead. No matter how much he deserved it, that didn’t make the grief simpler.

“Yes.”

The word came too fast. Too automatic.

“Yes,” she repeated, like she was trying to convince herself. “I’m fine. It’s better this way. He can’t hurt anyone else now. Can’t continue his experiments. Can’t destroy more lives in pursuit of his twisted… what do I even call it now… vision.”

I waited.

“No.” Her voice cracked again. “No, I’m not alright. I wished he could have been saved. That he would see common sense, especially when all of the family left him. When Wilhelm and Mother walked away. When I cut contact. I thought maybe that would be enough. That losing everyone would make him realize what he was doing. What he’d become.”

She drew a shaky breath.

“I guess nothing beats his obsession.”

The defeat in those words made my chest tighten. I knew that feeling. Knew what it was like to watch someone you cared about destroy themselves and everyone around them because they couldn’t let go of whatever drove them.

“Madeline, I’m sorry. If there had been another way—”

“Don’t.” She cut me off. “Don’t apologize. That will do nothing for me. I’m just angry. Not at you. At him. In the choices he made. The fact that he had every chance to be better and chose this instead.”

The anger in her voice sounded healthier than the grief. More solid. Something she could hold onto.

“Thank you for calling me,” she said after a moment. “For telling me directly instead of letting me hear it from someone else. I’ll find a way to break this to my family.”

“They’re with you?”

“Yes. My mother chose me instead of him.” Her voice softened slightly. “This will break her, though. No matter what he became, she loved him once. Had his children. Built a life with him before everything went wrong.”

The pain in those words hit different. The understanding that loving someone didn’t stop just because they became a monster. That grief could exist alongside relief. That you could mourn what someone might have been while being glad they couldn’t hurt anyone else.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to offer.

“You should not do that.” Madeline’s voice came firmer now. More controlled. “My father killed and hurt people. He would have hurt Fia too. Hurt anyone who got in the way of his research. You did the right thing. The only thing you could do.”

She paused. I heard movement on her end. Maybe she was pacing. Maybe just shifting position.

“Thank you.”

The words came quietly but genuinely.

“For what?”

“I do not know… For protecting her? For stopping him before he could do more damage? Saving him from his madness? For calling to tell me instead of leaving me in the dark.” She drew another shaky breath. “And for not trying to make this easier than it is.”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see it.

“Take care of yourself, Madeline.”

“You too.”

The line went dead.

I stood there in the hallway for a long moment, staring at my phone screen. The call duration blinked up at me. Three minutes and forty-two seconds to destroy someone’s world and give them closure at the same time.

I pocketed the phone and headed toward our bedroom. Toward Fia and whatever conversation we needed to have about the honeymoon and the swiftly approaching heat season.