My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 818: Twelve Steps Across a Decade

"I did."

"You walked into my penthouse," Roxanne said slowly, as if each word needed permission to survive, "at whatever illegal hour this is, and the first word you chose was bitch?"

"Technically, the first word was hey." Melissa’s tone remained perfectly composed. "The second was bitch. I believe in precision, Roxanne. Especially when using profanity."

Roxanne stared at her and Melissa stared back.

The moon, being useless in all matters of conflict resolution, illuminated both of them equally.

Then Melissa’s mouth twitched.

It was not quite a smile but the ghost that came before a smile, the first treasonous movement that had carried resentment too long and had begun, against its own pride, to consider laying some of it down.

Anyone else might have missed it. Roxanne did not; she had survived a decade of reading Melissa’s face across luncheons, committee meetings, galas, and every other decorative battlefield Paradise’s wealthy women used to pretend they were not at war.

"That is what you used to call me, no?" Melissa said.

Her voice lowered, no longer raised, but not forgotten either.

Melissa’s gaze held hers. "I believe bitch was one of your favourites. Your signature little poisoned ribbon tied around every sentence."

Roxanne flinched.

Melissa noticed, but did not retreat from the truth.

"So I thought," she continued, "if we were going to do this, whatever this is, we should start with the word that has the longest distance to travel. If bitch can survive the journey from insult to something else, perhaps the rest of us have a chance."

The silence that followed was packed with years of manufactured hostility, rehearsed contempt, public cruelty, private terror, and the exhausting knowledge that both women had been placed on opposite sides of a war neither had designed.

The room held all of it while the city’s gold burned through the windows; even the wine on the table remained untouched, which was a shame, because a night like this clearly demanded alcohol, but apparently trauma had decided to handle the pacing.

Roxanne’s eyes glistened:

"Melissa, I..."

"He told me."

Three words...

Melissa did not decorate the blade before setting it down.

Roxanne’s gaze snapped toward the window.

Phei stood against the glittering panorama, silver outlining him from behind. He inclined his head once, barely, but she understood him.

’I told her enough... it is safe.’

Roxanne’s fingers tightened against the pillow.

"Everything?" she whispered.

"Enough," Melissa said.

There was no accusation in her voice now, no old venom or cold triumph for Roxanne’s fallen old world. What lived there instead was far more dangerous to Roxanne’s defenses:

’Comprehension.’

"He told me about Jonathan, everything I need to know that what waited for you when your cruelty was not convincing enough." Melissa paused, and for the first time, her composure seemed to draw a quiet breath around something heavy.

"He also told me you endured twenty years of a man’s fists alone, and nobody came for you just to protect your child. There’s no more I respect than that... I lived the same life." It felt as if the script of their suffering was written by the same person for them.

Roxanne broke.

Quietly.

She did not care about posture, lighting, or whether one’s grief matched the interior design it was like a fracture through stone, a fine crack spreading through everything that had been pretending to hold.

Her mouth trembled with tightened shoulders...

...A tear slid down her cheek before she could stop it.

She wiped it quickly.

Too quickly; the woman was trained for years to erase proof of pain before someone could notice and punish her for it.

Melissa crossed the room; the moon followed her too, dragging a pale path across the Italian stone as if even that ancient celestial witness had decided the moment deserved a proper aisle. Her shadow stretched behind her, long and dark, while city gold gathered around her feet.

Twelve steps carried her across a decade.

She stopped in front of Roxanne, she looked down at her because Melissa was taller.

She then extended her hand.

"My name is Melissa Ryujin Tiamat," she said. "I believe we have not been introduced."

Roxanne stared at the offered hand.

For a moment, she could not breathe.

The hand was not forgiveness. Not yet. Forgiveness was too large, too costly, too sacred to be tossed into the room just because midnight had become dramatic.

’Or maybe she’s underestimating Melissa’s softness.’ Phei thought.

To Roxanne, Melissa’s hand was something else. More honest, frightening:

A new beginning presented without pretending the past had vanished; like a door opened with all the ruins still visible on the floor.

Roxanne’s fingers trembled.

She took it.

"Roxanne Lowell Fontaine," she said.

Her voice cracked on her surname.

Of course it did. The cursed name, the chain she had worn in public as if it were jewellery and the name of the man who had turned her mouth into his weapon and her marriage into a prison with excellent curtains was no more... Now introducing herself without that name to Melissa felt like really freedom, almost funny in the way tragedy became funny when it exhausted every other category.

A broken sound escaped her, half laugh, half sob.

"I’m sorry," Roxanne whispered. "Melissa, I am so sorry. For all of it. Every time I—"

"I know."

Melissa’s grip tightened.

Firm. Grounding and real.

"I know, Roxanne."

She sat beside her on the couch.

She did not let go of her hand.

At the window, Phei watched them in silence.

And he did not interrupt: a rare and medically significant event.

Someone in the heavens should have recorded it.

The boy who could tear open reality, freeze the breath of the world, and make distance submit had discovered the immense discipline of shutting up at the correct moment.

Miracles, after all, came in many forms, some less flashy than portals but far more socially useful.

The two women sat side by side beneath the mingled blessing of moon-silver and city-gold. The untouched wine remained on the dark marble table, still catching fragments of light in its red depth, still playing the part of an abandoned sacrament.

The penthouse seemed to hold its breath around them.

Above Paradise, the moon remained fixed.

Patient and...

...Pale.

Perhaps judging. Perhaps guarding...

...Or perhaps merely performing the ancient duty of light: to fall where darkness had been left too long.

Roxanne stared at Melissa’s hand around hers.

"I thought you would hate me forever," she whispered.

Melissa’s expression shifted. Not soft enough to be easy not hard enough to be cruel either.

"I did hate you."

Roxanne closed her eyes.

"But hatred is exhausting," Melissa continued. "And I recently learned mine had been misaddressed for years. Very embarrassing. If you must know, I pride myself on accurate targeting."

A wet laugh escaped Roxanne before she could stop it.

Melissa’s mouth curved faintly. "There. See? You still understand dark humor. That means Jonathan failed to ruin you completely."

Roxanne wiped beneath one eye. "That is a horrible comfort."

"It is the only kind Paradise produces in bulk."

From the window, Phei murmured, "That city should come with a warning label."

Melissa glanced toward him. "It does. They call it a family crest."

Roxanne laughed again.

This one hurt less.

The sound trembled, but it lived.

Phei looked back out over Downtown Paradise, his reflection faint in the glass.

Below him, the city continued glittering, arrogant and beautiful, completely unaware that one of its old lies had begun to unravel in a penthouse above its head.

That was the problem with corrupt cities: They grew so used to being worshipped that they forgot how often gods started by watching quietly from windows.