Chapter 214: A Strange, Underwhelming Tale

ADRIEN’S POV

The door of the hotel room opens with a quiet, dull click.

Orion’s men step aside, their eyes tracking my every movement as I step across the threshold into the room.

The air inside smells of stale wool, cold air conditioning, and that strange, metallic sharpness that always seems to linger around Louise.

The velvet curtains are drawn tight against the afternoon sky, cutting the space into long, grey stripes of shadow.

Louise is sitting on the edge of the white bed.

She sits perfectly straight, her back rigid, her hands resting flat against her knees. She doesn’t flinch when the lock engages behind me.

She doesn’t even turn her head right away. She just sits there, looking past the lamps toward the blank beige wall.

I stop a few feet away from the foot of the bed, my fingers digging into the pockets of my trousers. My heart is beating a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs, but I force my voice to stay calm. I didn’t come in here to shout. I didn’t come in here to let Orion’s violence do the talking.

I came because I need to understand.

"Louise," I say softly, the name scraping against my throat like dry paper.

She turns her head slowly, her dark eyes locking onto mine. There is no warmth in her face, no surprise, and no fear. She looks at me with a cold stillness that makes my stomach turn over.

"You came back," she says, her voice flat, devoid of any real emotion. "I thought Orion would have put a leash on you by now."

I ignore the jab, taking a small step closer, though I keep a safe distance between us. "I need you to talk to me, Louise. Real talk. No games, no clever insults."

"I don’t owe you anything, Adrien," she replies, her chin lifting just a fraction of an inch.

"You owe me the truth!" I snap, the frustration breaking through my quiet posture before I can catch it. I take a breath, forcing my hands to stay still in my pockets. "At the lake house... when Orion’s men grabbed you... you were laughing. You cursed Alice. You called her a coward. You said it was your chance to get back at her."

Louise stares at me, her lips pressed into a thin, pale line. She doesn’t say a word.

"Why would you say that?" I ask, stepping closer, my voice dropping into a desperate whisper. "You and Alice... you were always together. She built everything for you. She gave you the resources, the money, the backing. I spent my whole life watching the two of you stand side by side against me. Why are you acting like she’s your enemy now?"

Silence fills the space between us, heavy and suffocating. The air conditioner hums overhead, blowing a cold breeze across the floorboards.

Louise watches me. Her gaze moves slowly over my face, taking in my pale skin, the dark circles under my eyes, and the expensive clothes Orion bought for me.

For a long, terrifying second, the sharp, bitter anger in her eyes seems to flicker, softening into something quiet, distant, and unreadable.

She looks at me, but I feel like she isn’t seeing the man standing in this hotel room. She is looking at a ghost. She is looking at something far behind my shoulder, buried deep in a past I thought we both forgot.

"Did she leave you?" I press, my voice shaking slightly as I try to read her face. "Did she abandon you at the lake house when the scandal broke? Is that why you’re angry at her? What is going on, Louise? What did you two set up together?"

I wait for her to break. I wait for her to yell, to spit at me, or to blurt out a bitter confession that finally makes the pieces fit together in my head.

I want a reason. I want something to hold onto so I don’t feel like I’m drowning in a storm I never asked for.

Louise doesn’t break.

She pulls her gaze back, her eyes hardening into two polished jade-like stones. The quiet, distant softness vanishes so fast I wonder if I imagined it entirely.

"You really don’t get it, do you?" she says softly, her voice carrying a quiet calm. "You stand there in your nice clothes, protected by Orion’s guns, and you still expect the world to hand you neat little answers just because you asked nicely."

"I just want to know what happened!" I say, my hands coming out of my pockets, hovering in the space between us. "We grew up in the same house, Louise! We survived the same ruined family! Even after everything you did to me... even after that hotel video... I don’t want Orion to kill you. I don’t want you dead! But you have to give me something!"

Louise looks down at her hands, her fingers flexing slightly against her knees.

"I am giving you nothing, Adrien," she whispers.

"Louise, please--"

"Get out," she interrupts, her voice flat, steady, and immovable. "Go back to Orion. Go back to your soft life and your armed entourage. You are wasting your time standing in this room."

A cold wave of despair washes over me. The knot in my chest tightens until it feels like a physical pain.

I stare at her, looking for any crack in her armor, any tiny sign that the girl I at least could predict and understand is still in there somewhere.

There is nothing. Only silence and the cold hum of the air conditioner.

I step back slowly toward the heavy door. My fingers reach for the brass handle, my heart heavy with an exhausting defeat.

I came looking for answers, but all I found was another quiet person in a world full of secrets.

"I tried," I say quietly, my voice barely audible over the hum of the unit. "I really tried to save you from this, Louise."

I turn the handle and pull the wooden door open an inch. Behind me, the silence shatters.

Louise begins to laugh.

It is a broken, bitter sound, dry and thin, scraping against the walls of the room like metal on glass. It doesn’t sound like joy. It doesn’t even sound like madness.

It is a terrible, hollow laugh that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I freeze, my hand gripping the cold door handle, looking back over my shoulder in confusion.

Louise sits on the edge of the bed, her shoulders shaking slightly as the laugh fades from her throat. She lifts her chin, looking straight into my eyes, her face pale under the dim yellow light of the lamp.

"What an underwhelming dream you have, Adrien Dubois," she says.

The words hang in the quiet air of the room, sharp and strange.

I frown, a wave of cold confusion washing over me. I stare at her, waiting for the punchline, waiting for her to explain what kind of twisted joke she is making.

"What are you talking about?" I ask, my eyebrows pulling together. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Louise doesn’t answer. She offers no explanation, no final insult, and no clever follow-up. She simply lowers her gaze back to her hands, her back straight, her posture rigid, completely tuning me out as if I have already vanished from the room.

I stand in the doorway for a long, agonizing second, my head throbbing with a dull ache. It feels like just another attack.

Another petty, spiteful attempt to hurt me, to mock my place beside Orion, and to make sure I leave the room feeling small and confused.

"Goodbye, Louise," I say flatly.

I step out into the carpeted hallway and pull the heavy door shut behind me. The deadbolt clicks into place with a definitive bang, sealing her away in the dark.

I walk down the silent corridor beside Orion’s guards, my boots making soft, rhythmic sounds against the carpet.

My chest feels hollow and strange. I keep repeating her words in my head, trying to make sense of the strange, bitter line she threw at my back.

What an underwhelming dream you have, Adrien Dubois.

I don’t get it. I don’t understand why she said it, or why her voice sounded so hollow when the words left her mouth. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I tell myself it was just her final way of cutting me before the door closed for good.

I walk toward the elevator, completely unaware that as I step out of that building, I am walking away from one of the only two people left in the world who remembered the boy I used to be.

I walk away without ever realizing that in her final moments, Louise had reached back into the past, touching the only conversation we ever had that was completely free of the roles our family forced us to play.

I leave her behind in the quiet room, not knowing that I will never hear her voice again.