Chapter 175: When All Is Said And Done

ADRIEN’S POV

I hit him a fifth time, putting every single ounce of my strength, my frustration, and my months of built-up rage straight into his bloodied jaw.

Leon’s head bounces off the wooden shelf, and he slides straight down onto the floor like a sack of wet flour, lying there in a heap, groaning pitifully into the rug.

Why? Why didn’t he fight back?

I stand over him, my chest heaving, my knuckles burning with a fierce, throbbing pain. Blood— his blood —is smeared across my hands and the crisp white cuffs of my shirt.

I turn around slowly to face Lady Dimitra.

She is staring at me, her hands trembling slightly against her sides, her cold, proud facade fractured by the violence that just took place in her study.

She looks at me like she is seeing me for the very first time. She expected a weak, humiliated boy from the Dubois family whom she could corner with press leaks and society scandals.

Instead, I am looking right back at her, wiping the blood off my knuckles with the back of my hand, my platinum wedding band glinting brightly under her chandelier.

"Five," I say, my voice ringing out through the quiet room. "Five punches. And if he ever speaks my name again, I will come back here and break every single bone in his body."

Well, it is his choice not to fight back. What does that have to do with me?

A silence settles over the study.

Lady Dimitra’s chest heaves as she stares at me, then at her son bleeding on the floor, and finally at Orion, who is practically radiating pride beside me.

"You think you have won something here today?" Lady Dimitra says, her voice shaking with suppressed rage as she slowly regains her composure. "You think standing beside my nephew makes you untouchable, Adrien? You are still a Dubois. Your stepmother, Alice, would sell your organs if it meant keeping her seat at my table. And your sister... Louise..."

She sneers, looking down her nose at me.

"Louise Dubois is the one who leaked that footage to the press," Dimitra continues, her tone dripping with malicious triumph. "Did you know that? Your own blood ruined you. She sold those tapes from your work straight to the news networks to ensure your name was dragged through the mud before you could ever claim the Vassilis’s name."

I stare at her, my expression remaining flat.

I already knew. Deep down, I knew Louise was behind the leaks. She was always her mother’s puppet, doing whatever her mother commanded to secure their standing. Though, I wonder what Alice stands to gain from this.

Hearing Lady Dimitra say it out loud doesn’t hurt me anymore. It doesn’t break me. It is just another piece of trash thrown by a family I no longer belong to.

"Is that supposed to shock me?" I ask smoothly, crossing my arms over my chest despite the blood staining my sleeves. "Louise has been trying to play a game she isn’t smart enough to win all her life. She leaked a video. Big deal. And yes she is still dating your pathetic son, thinking she gained something."

I tilt my head, glancing down at Leon, who is whimpering quietly on the floor.

"Look at what she won," I add dryly. "She traded this lunatic for that."

Orion lets out a loud, delighted burst of laughter that echoes straight up to the ceiling. He steps forward, wrapping an arm over my shoulder, pulling me tight against his side.

The scent of his expensive cologne and faint metallic blood wraps around me, warm and grounding.

"She really did," Orion grins, looking at his aunt with contempt. "She traded a dragon for a lapdog. But let’s get back to the point, shall we, Aunt?"

Lady Dimitra’s jaw tightens. "What point?"

"We didn’t come here to watch Adrien break Leon’s nose, though that was an exceptional bonus," Orion says, his tone turning sharp and clinical. "We came here for terms."

"You are going to pull every single asset you have out of the Dubois family’s accounts. You are going to release a statement from the Vassilis board confirming that Adrien’s marriage to me is legal and fully backed by the main house. And you are going to hand over every piece of intelligence you have gathered on the recent distribution routes of Euphoria."

She knows about Euphoria too?

Lady Dimitra’s eyes narrow into dangerous slits. "And why would I ever do that? You have cast off the Vassilis name, Orion. You walked out of this house years ago. You have no leverage over me."

"I don’t need leverage, Dimitra," Orion says softly, his voice dropping into a tone that makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up. "I have guns. I have three hundred men waiting for my call outside your gates. I have Niko sitting in a sniper nest three hundred yards from this window. And I have zero patience left today."

Huh? He has all of these things planned? Since when?

He takes a step closer to her desk, leaning his hands over the wood, staring directly into her eyes.

"If you don’t do exactly what I just told you to do," Orion whispers, "I will burn this estate to the ground before the sun sets. I will strip your son of every penny he thinks he is inheriting, and I will leave you sitting in the ashes of this family name with nothing to show for it."

The air in the room goes dead cold.

Lady Dimitra stares at him. She searches his face, looking for a bluff, looking for a hint of hesitation, looking for any sign that her nephew is playing a game.

She finds none.

Orion is wildly serious. He would do it. He would burn the entire Vassilis empire to the ground without shedding a single tear, just because he feels like it. ℯℯ𝑙.

Seconds tick by in silence. The only sound in the study is the faint, wet groaning of Leon on the floor and the heavy ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner.

Slowly, agonizingly, Lady Dimitra’s shoulders sink a fraction of an inch. The fierce, commanding posture she maintained for decades fractures under the sheer, unhinged weight of Orion’s threat.

She realizes, in this exact moment, that she has lost. She has no cards left to play against a man who doesn’t care about the rules of the board.

"Fine," Lady Dimitra whispers, her voice tight, strained, and filled with bitter defeat. "I will pull the accounts, I will issue the press statement, and I will send the intelligence on Euphoria to you by midnight."

I let out a quiet breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

She gave in. The formidable matriarch of the Vassilis family just backed down completely, bowing her head to Orion’s demands and setting aside all her demands.

Orion smiles, a calm, pleasant expression returning to his face as if he didn’t just threaten to commit arson thirty seconds ago. "See? I knew we could come to a sensible agreement, Aunt. You always were a practical woman."

He turns to me, his dark eyes sparkling with that familiar, obsessive affection. "Are you satisfied, my love? Or would you like to punch Leon a sixth time before we leave?"

I look down at Leon, who flinches violently at the sound of his name, pulling his knees up to his chest to protect his bloody face.

"No," I say dryly, shaking my wrist out to loosen the stiff joints. "My hand hurts. He isn’t worth a broken knuckle."

Fuck. This shit is definitely broken.

"Pity," Orion sighs happily, taking my hand in his and gently checking my bruised knuckles with surprising softness. "I could have held him up for you."

Just as I am about to yank my hand out of his grip, a sharp, synchronized chime rings out through the quiet room.

It is a double chime, vibrating simultaneously from two different sources.

Orion reaches into his coat pocket with his free hand, pulling out his phone. At the exact same second, Lady Dimitra reaches for her phone resting beside her teacup.

I lean slightly under Orion’s heavy arm, peering down at his glowing screen as he thumb-swipes the lock screen open.

A high-priority alert notification pops up at the top of the interface, sent directly through an encrypted network.

My eyes sweep across the short, urgent line of text. Beside the desk, Lady Dimitra’s phone screen lights up with the exact same encrypted text.

As I read the words displayed on the screen, my breath catches in my throat. My blood runs cold, and opposite me, Lady Dimitra freezes in place, her hand hovering over her phone, her face draining of every last drop of color.

The message reads:

[URGENT NOTICE: ALICE DUBOIS, MATRIARCH OF THE DUBOIS FAMILY, HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN REPORTED MISSING. LAST SEEN AT 04:00 HOURS. NO RANSOM DEMANDS. NO SIGNS OF STRUGGLE. SUSPECTED FOUL PLAY.]

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Bet you didn’t see that coming...

— TheLovePoet