Chapter 216: …Where I Wait For Your Return

LOUISE’S POV

Instead, he was dragged into the Vassilis family’s affairs, tied to Orion through circumstances neither of them could easily escape, and forced to watch strangers turn his suffering into entertainment.

Even now, people will keep talking about him.

They will invent stories, twist his words, and decide what sort of man he is without caring whether any of it is true.

And Orion...

I close my eyes for a moment. Orion is the one part of Adrien’s future I cannot understand.

I have watched that man destroy people without losing sleep over it. I have seen how easily he turns anger into action and how little patience he has for anything that stands between him and what he wants.

His interest in Adrien has never looked like ordinary affection.

There is something possessive about it. Something that makes me wonder whether Orion even understands the difference between protecting someone and refusing to let them go.

I do not believe he will suddenly become a good man because he loves someone. If what he feels for Adrien can even be called love.

Perhaps it will grow into something gentler with time. Perhaps it will become another kind of prison, one with softer walls and a prettier view.

I cannot know.

I only hope that whatever his obsession becomes, it will continue to protect Adrien from the people who would gladly tear him apart.

I hope Orion will stand between Adrien and the world when it matters. Not because he has become kind. Not because he has learned to forgive or understand everyone who has ever suffered.

But because, for reasons even he may not fully understand, Adrien matters to him.

Sometimes, that is all a person has to hold on to.

It is not much. It is also not nothing.

A weak smile touches my lips.

Maybe I am being foolish. Maybe I am trying to find something good in a situation that has never promised me anything good.

Still, I hope Adrien gets his quiet house someday.

I hope he gets to wake up without fear. I hope he finds a way to laugh without looking over his shoulder afterward. I hope there comes a time when his name no longer reminds him of everything that has been taken from him.

And I hope Orion does not become the next person to take something from him that he can never recover.

My smile fades.

I know better than to mistake obsession for safety, but if Orion’s fixation gives Adrien even a little room to breathe, I will take that small comfort with me.

It is an ugly thing to wish for someone. Then again, I have never been very good at wishing for beautiful things.

A thought comes to me, and this time, I almost laugh.

One of Adrien’s sources of misfortune is finally leaving him. His troublesome sister.

His ’vulture’ as he likes to call me.

The woman who spent years making his life harder, who turned his pain into something useful to herself, and who helped put him in the position he is in now.

I am finally getting out of his way. The other source of his misfortune will soon follow.

Alice. My mother.

I wonder what she will do when she realizes that I am no longer there to carry out her plans. What excuse will she invent when there is nobody left to stand between her and the consequences of her choices?

Will she be angry? Will she be disappointed? Will she mourn me, or will she mourn the usefulness she has lost?

I cannot decide which possibility is worse. Perhaps she will do all three.

A part of me wants to see her face when she learns that she can no longer control me. I want to know whether my absence will trouble her more than my obedience ever pleased her.

But I will never know. And that is the point.

I have spent years wanting my mother to look at me and see something worth loving. I have spent years trying to become the daughter she could proudly claim, the daughter who never embarrassed her, the daughter who could be trusted to do whatever was necessary.

I wanted her approval so badly that I mistook her attention for affection. Even now, I cannot say that I never loved her.

That is another truth I would rather avoid.

Love does not always make a person good. Sometimes, it only gives them another reason to keep hurting themselves.

I wish I had understood that sooner.

My thoughts return to Adrien. I will not hope that he will forgive me. I do not expect him to remember me kindly, and I have no right to ask him to forget what I have done.

My death will not undo his suffering. It will not return the years he lost or repair the things I helped break. It will not turn me into a victim or make my choices less cruel.

I know that.

I am not leaving because I believe I have earned forgiveness. I am not making a sacrifice for him, either. This is not a story in which my final act makes everything right.

There is no grand meaning waiting at the end of it.

There is only a woman who has run out of ways to imagine herself living, and a boy whose quiet dream she hopes will somehow survive the people who keep hurting him.

The thought is almost enough to make me cry. Almost.

I have cried over so many things in my life, most of them when nobody was watching. I cried when my mother praised someone else.

I cried when I realized that being useful was not the same as being loved. I cried when I understood that I had become someone I would have hated as a child.

But I do not cry now.

I sit quietly, listening to the distant movement of the guards outside the door.

They are still there. They are still doing their jobs.

Somewhere beyond this room, Orion is probably making plans. He will want me gone. He will want to know what I have told Adrien and what I have kept from him. He will want to decide what happens next.

He always wants to decide what happens next.

I wonder what he will think when he discovers that, for once, there is nothing left for him to decide.

Then I let the thought go.

The room grows softer around me. The sounds that seemed so clear a little while ago begin to feel distant, as though I am hearing them from another place.

I think of Adrien’s dream one last time.

A small house. Rain on the roof. A quiet life where ordinary happiness is enough.

I hope he finds it. I hope that one day, when he remembers me, he feels nothing at all.

Not hatred. Not grief. Not even the need to understand why I never explained why I went against the real person who hurt him.

I hope he is too busy being happy to think about me. That would be a better ending than anything I could have asked for.

My thoughts begin to drift.

I do not know what waits beyond this moment, and I do not pretend that I have found peace. There are too many things I have left broken, too many truths I have refused to face, and too many people who will never get the chance to tell me what they think of me.

I cannot change any of that now.

For the first time in a long while, I stop trying to arrange the world into something I can control. I let the silence remain. I let my thoughts grow quiet.

And at last, I close my eyes.