Chapter 187: She Says That She Will, But…

LOUISE’S POV

The silence in the lake house does not feel like peace. It feels like a cage.

Outside, the world is lit by an eerily bright, blinding sun. The morning light pours down through the clear blue sky, striking the surface of the lake until the water glints like polished steel.

There is no wind, no clouds, and no storm to match the wreckage inside my head. The weather looks cheerful, clean, and completely indifferent to the fact that my life has just collapsed into ash.

The harsh sunlight feels wrong.

It exposes every speck of dust on the wooden floors and highlights the peeling wallpaper in the corner of the room. It makes the isolation of the property feel sharper, mocking the trapped, desperate corner I am standing in.

My phone rests on the mantelpiece behind me. The screen is dark. It has been dark for sixteen hours.

I do not need to check it again. I know nobody is going to call.

When the alert first went out across the news networks, when the headline popped up saying Alice Dubois was missing under suspicious circumstances, the rest of the world assumed the worst.

They thought she had finally been snatched up. They thought her sins had finally caught up to her.

I know better.

My mother did not get taken by her enemies. She did not panic because of a private war or a police investigation.

Alice ran away because she knew I was coming for her.

For years, my mother played the master puppeteer. She pulled every string, shaped every thought in my head, and pointed me like a loaded weapon at whoever stood in her way.

She believed I would spend my entire life dancing to her tune, begging for her approval, and taking the blame whenever her schemes started to unravel.

She thought I was her property.

She forgot that puppets eventually figure out where the scissors are kept.

Last week, in the study of the mansion, we had an argument that changed everything. I looked at her across the desk, and for the first time in my life, I did not lower my eyes. I did not nod and agree to follow her demands.

I told her I was done being the instrument she used to carve out her empire. I told her I saw right through her little schemes and her endless demands.

I saw the exact moment the color drained from her face. I saw the flash of pure, primal panic in her eyes.

She did not leave me behind to take the fall because she is a coward who protects herself. She left because she felt the strings snap in her hands.

She knew that the moment I stopped obeying her, I was going to turn my teeth on her throat. She fled because she was sure of what I was going to do to her.

A sharp, hysterical laugh slips out of my throat, breaking the quiet of the room. I set the teacup down on the windowsill with a hard, echoing bang.

She ran away into a hole like a vicious woman she is, and she left me. She denied me the immediate satisfaction of watching her fall by my own hand.

My chest burns with a heat so sharp it makes my fingers tremble. I walk over to the mantelpiece, grab my phone, and tap the screen. The news notifications are still scrolling across the display in a relentless, steady stream.

Vassilis Empire in Crisis After Leaked Hotel Scandal. Where is Alice Dubois? Family Representatives Refuse to Comment. Adrien Vassilis Seen Returning to the United States on Private Jet.

I stare at Adrien’s name on the glass. Vassilis huh?

Adrien. The saintly, pathetic legitimate son. The boy who spent his entire life looking at my mother like a terrified rabbit, trembling every time a door closed too loudly in the hallway.

Now he is back in the country, protected by Orion Vassilis, wearing fine clothes while the whole world whispers about his tragic past.

He thinks I leaked that hotel video just to hurt him. He thinks I did it out of petty sibling jealousy, wanting to ruin his reputation because he dared to crawl back into society as Orion’s fiancé.

He has no idea.

I didn’t leak that video for him. I leaked it to start a fire. I wanted to blow up our entire society, to shatter the fragile peace between the Vassilis family and ours, and to force my mother out into the open where she could no longer hide behind her cruelty.

Adrien was just a convenient piece to knock over on my way to her.

And now I am here. Alone in a cold, rotting house bathed in bright, mocking sunlight, waiting for Orion’s men to come crunching down the gravel driveway.

I walk over to the small wooden desk in the corner of the room. A silver hand mirror sits on the polished wood, beside a dusty lamp and a stack of old papers. I pick up the mirror and look at my reflection.

My long hair is brushed, but my skin is pale, with heavy, grey dark circles under my eyes. My lips are pressed into a thin, bitter line. I look like my mother.

Everyone has always told me that. From the moment she brought me into the Dubois manor when I was a child, dressing me in dark dresses and telling me to stand straight, people looked at my face and saw Alice.

They were wrong.

Alice wears black dresses and speaks words that make people doubt their own sanity. Alice hurts people with a calm, pleasant smile, making her cruelty look like an act of grace.

I am not like that. I do not have her patience. I do not have her cold, bloodless restraint. When I bite, I want to taste the blood.

I throw the silver mirror onto the desk. It lands with a loud crash, sliding across the polished wood and knocking over a small glass inkwell. Black ink spills across the surface, pooling around the edges of Alice’s old handwritten notes.

I watch the stain spread, my breathing coming fast and shallow.

Alice thinks she can hide from me. She thinks that by running away, she can let Orion and Adrien handle the fallout while she watches from a safe distance, waiting for the dust to settle so she can crawl back and pick up the pieces of her life.

She believes she will eventually regain control. She expects to use me, even in my absence, as the ultimate scapegoat.

She is wrong.

If I am going down, if my life is going to end in this bloody room because of the chaos she created, Alice is not getting out of this clean.