Chapter 229: Never again

Before the light could fully fade from the sky, Sienna guided Aria toward the car one more time, and they drove to the Kessler family cemetery, the tires crunching softly over gravel as they came to a stop near the far edge of the grounds.

Sienna led her by the hand, past rows of old stone markers, until they reached a newer one, the engraving still sharp and clean against the smooth granite. Mr. and Mrs. Cross.

Aria stopped walking.

She stood there, staring at the two names carved into the stone, and whatever she had been holding together all day finally gave way. Her tears came fast, and she did not try to stop them this time.

"Oh, Sienna," she said, her voice cracking around the words.

"It wasn’t me," Sienna said quietly, stepping close and wrapping her arms around her. "Viktor did it."

Aria let herself be held, her face pressed against Sienna’s shoulder, her breath shaking. After a while, she pulled back just enough to look at the stone again, and then at Sienna.

"Thank you," she said. "I know he didn’t do it for my parents or for me. He did it for you." A soft, watery smile broke through the tears as she wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "But thank you, Sienna. All the same."

By the time they returned to the mansion, the sky had gone dark and soft outside the windows. Viktor was sitting on the front stairs, waiting, a folder resting in his hands. He rose the moment he saw them come through the door, and as Sienna and Aria stepped inside, he crossed the hall and held the folder out to Sienna.

She took it slowly, a frown already forming on her face. "What is this," she said.

"Open it," Viktor said.

Sienna opened the folder. Inside, page after page of legal print, the meaning of it took only a second to land. Share transfer documents. Her name is printed at the top of each one, in bold, official letters.

"What," she said, looking up at him. "You’re transferring your company’s shares to me, Viktor? I don’t need this. Okay, this..."

"Not bad, uncle," Aria cut in, leaning over Sienna’s shoulder to look at the pages, a small impressed smile crossing her face.

"That was fast." She turned to Sienna. "You did okay. Now those companies are yours. Completely and wholly legal." She tapped one of the pages lightly. "My mother used to run one of them, you know."

Sienna’s brow furrowed. "Then they should be yours, Aria."

Aria shook her head, easy and certain. "I don’t need it. My mother was never the heir, so nothing of the Kessler name ever really belonged to her, or to me, or even to Marcel. It was going to be yours sooner or later anyway." She shrugged one shoulder, a small teasing light coming into her eyes. "And maybe now we’ll finally have a true-born Kessler running a legal empire."

She smiled at that, wide and genuine, then glanced between the two of them.

"Hurry up and give me a niece, by the way," she added, already turning toward the kitchen. "I’m hungry, and I’m leaving you two to fix your issues. I’ve helped you run away from this long enough." She waved a hand over her shoulder without looking back, already walking off down the hall.

Sienna reached out as if to pinch her arm, a reflex more than anything, but Aria was already too far away, out of reach. Sienna let her hand fall and closed the folder slowly.

Viktor stood in front of her, his eyes searching her face. "Can we please talk," he said. "And can you please look at me now. It’s breaking my heart to see you like this." His voice was low, careful. "Okay? We can..."

Before he could finish the sentence, he scooped her straight up into his arms, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, lifting her clean off the floor.

"Viktor, I said we could talk," Sienna snapped, one hand grabbing at his shoulder for balance, "I didn’t say carry me."

But he was already moving, taking the stairs two at a time, heading toward the bedroom, and did not stop.

"Yes, we are," Viktor said, glancing down at her with the smallest hint of a smile pulling at his mouth. "We’re going to talk. In the bedroom."

When he pushed the door open with his shoulder and carried her inside, he set her down slowly, her feet finding the floor again, and for a moment Sienna simply stood there, blinking, taking in the room.

It had been transformed. A small table sat near the window, set with two plates and a single tall candle burning low between them.

Flowers filled every corner she could see, soft white and deep red, spilling from vases she did not recognize; balloons, scattered across the floor and hanging from the corners of the room, caught the last of the evening light through the curtains.

"I’m truly sorry, Sienna," Viktor said, standing close behind her now, his voice low and steady. "I swear I will never hide anything from you again. I won’t decide things for you again either. We will do it together, from now on." He reached out and gently turned her by the shoulder, so she was facing him. "I promise you. From this moment forward, it’s us against the world."

Sienna looked around the room once more, slowly, taking in every small detail, the candle, the flowers, the balloons swaying faintly near the ceiling.

Whatever anger she had felt earlier seemed to have quietly disappeared, replaced by something warmer, something she did not fully want to name yet. She had never been able to pretend otherwise, not really.

She had always been the flowers and chocolate kind of girl, no matter how hard she tried to act like she wasn’t, and standing here now, surrounded by all of it, she felt the last of her guard slipping, just a little, despite herself.

A smile crept onto her face before she could stop it.