Ethan:

  There’s a difference between curiosity and disrespect.

  One is dangerous.

  The other is fatal.

  Three days after the party — after the whispers, the makeout gossip, the wine-stained threats — someone started asking questions. Not casual ones. Not harmless.

  Targeted.

  Strategic.

  Old photos were being requested from my high school records. My university scholarship? Cross-checked. My mother’s old employer? Visited.

  It wasn’t subtle.

  And in this family, subtlety is survival.

  Her name was Lucinda Lysandre.

  Cousin on her mother’s side. Always lurking near the edge of the family tree, pretending to be ornamental — harmless.

  But she wasn’t.

  She was a forensic accountant with an art dealer’s smile. Numbers were her weapon. And she thought that because I wasn’t born into this family, I must be hiding something.

  She was right.

  But she had no idea what.

  Celeste:

  I knew the moment her scent turned up in the wrong places. My father’s private library had a fingerprint that didn’t belong. My office’s server history had a download from a locked drive.

  Lucinda was smart.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I'll give her that.

  But she was playing with scalpels in a room full of wolves.

  And she had no idea that the thing she was trying to expose?

  Was the very thing that made Ethan dangerous.

  She wanted to know about his parents.

  About the psychiatric hold at sixteen.

  The incident in sophomore year — the one that left a boy hospitalized and Ethan transferred with a glowing letter of "recommendation."

  She wanted to peel him apart.

  To prove he wasn’t Lysandre enough.

  What she didn’t realize?

  He was something worse.

  Ethan:

  She cornered me in the west library.

  Late. Too quiet. The air smelled like cherry wood and slow poison.

  Lucinda stepped from between the shelves with a polite smile and a folder in her hands.

  “Ethan,” she said sweetly. “Mind if we talk?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Just turned the page in my book.

  She came closer.

  “You know, I found something interesting.”

  I waited.

  She set the folder down in front of me, opened to a copy of a sealed juvenile file.

  “Assault,” she said, with mock surprise. “Hospitalization. Broken jaw, orbital fracture. But no charges. Isn’t that neat?”

  My eyes met hers.

  “I was defending someone,” I said calmly.

  Lucinda tilted her head.

  “Your mother. I know. I found the restraining order. But still…” She leaned in, her smile slicing. “Do you really think Celeste would’ve married you if she knew you were just another angry poor boy with a savior complex?”

  Celeste:

  I was already in the room.

  Behind her.

  She didn’t hear me approach.

  Didn’t see the gun in my hand — not drawn, just present.

  “Funny,” I said, voice low. “You found the file. But missed the poem he wrote afterward.”

  Lucinda stiffened.

  Turned.

  I walked to Ethan, kissed his temple, then picked up the file and ripped it in half.

  “Do you want to know who I fell in love with?” I asked, staring straight into her face. “The boy who fought off a grown man with a broken desk lamp because his mother was bleeding.”

  “Not the monster?”

  “No. That came later. I taught him that.”

  Lucinda:

  Her lips trembled.

  “I wasn’t trying to expose him. I just—people talk—he’s not—”

  “Family?” Ethan finished for her, standing now, full height, voice calm and lethal.

  Lucinda swallowed.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m not. I wasn’t born a Lysandre.”

  He stepped closer.

  “But neither was Vincent. He married in. Took the name. You think blood is loyalty?”

  He leaned forward, whispered in her ear:

  “Loyalty is choosing the fire. And staying in it.”

  Celeste:

  She left shaking.

  No tears.

  Just silence.

  And that’s the thing with family.

  You don’t have to kill them.

  You just have to make sure they never forget who’s in charge.