Chapter 8

Stella

The butler's footsteps echoed up the grand staircase with urgent precision.

Within moments, he returned with Victor following behind, walking with measured composure.

His tailored shirt hung perfectly across his shoulders, and though his movements carried a careful deliberation that suggested physical limitation, there was something in his bearing that didn't quite match the narrative of a broken heir.

He'd barely crossed the threshold into the sitting room when Alpha Sinclair's cane came down against the mahogany side table with a crack that made several servants flinch.

"Explain yourself!" The Supreme Alpha's voice rolled through the hall like thunder.

With it came something else—a wave of raw Alpha dominance that hit me like a wall of pressure against my chest.

My Omega instincts screamed at me to drop my gaze and make myself small.

Around me, the household staff responded the same way. Shoulders curving inward. Eyes finding the floor. Even the air felt heavier, harder to pull into my lungs.

I gripped the edge of the settee and forced myself to keep breathing.

Victor opened his mouth to respond, but Eleanor was already moving.

She positioned herself directly in the old man's line of sight with the practiced timing of someone who'd orchestrated this exact moment.

"Last night, Victor went out drinking," she announced, her voice pitched to carry to every corner of the room.

"When he came home and discovered that Stella was staying here as our guest, he set his sights on her. He ordered the household staff to bring her to his room!"

As if on cue, several Omega servants appeared in the doorway, practically dragging forward a Beta man whose face bore the purple-black evidence of a severe beating.

His left eye had swollen shut. Dried blood crusted beneath his obviously broken nose.

The man dropped to his knees the moment he crossed the threshold, the movement so abrupt it had to be painful.

"Please, Alpha Sinclair, have mercy!" His words came out in a desperate rush, slightly slurred from his injured mouth.

"I was weak—I shouldn't have listened, but when Mr. Victor gives an order, I didn't dare refuse! He told me to do it, sir. He made me bring the young lady to his room!"

The testimony landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples of shock through the assembled household staff.

I watched several servants exchange quick glances, then quietly step away from Victor, as if his guilt might be contagious.

Everything pointed to him. The beaten servant's confession. Eleanor's righteous fury. The perfect timing of it all.

It should have been an open-and-shut case.

But something felt wrong.

I couldn't put my finger on it exactly, but my instincts were screaming that this didn't add up.

It was like being back in the hospital, staring at test results that technically made sense but somehow didn't match what I was seeing in the patient.

Eleanor's performance was too smooth. The servant's testimony too convenient. Even the butler's timing felt rehearsed.

And Victor just stood there in the middle of it all, silent and still.

His face showed nothing except exhaustion—like a man too tired to fight anymore.

I forced myself to think back to last night, replaying the events like I would a surgical procedure.

When Victor had first walked into that dark room and found me on his bed, he'd been angry.

Really angry.

He'd told me to get out. His voice had been sharp, almost shocked—like someone who'd just discovered an unwelcome surprise.

That wasn't how a man acts when he's the one who planned everything.

That was the reaction of someone who'd been caught off guard, who'd found a stranger in his room when he wasn't expecting anyone.

But then something had shifted.

His anger had transformed into something else—something heated and desperate that felt less like predatory intent and more like a man losing a battle he hadn't expected to fight.

The drug.

My thoughts crystallized around that single detail, and suddenly the entire architecture of the trap became visible.

I'd felt perfectly fine until I'd drunk that glass of warm milk Eleanor had brought to my room.

Within minutes, I'd been overcome by a drowsiness so profound I couldn't fight it. My limbs growing heavy. My thoughts dissolving. In a way that had nothing to do with simple exhaustion.

Eleanor had drugged me.

Eleanor had delivered me to Victor's room.

Eleanor had orchestrated every detail of this nightmare.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.

All of it—the concerned rescue from the roadside, the gentle comfort, the promise of safety—had been nothing but performance. Every word calculated to lower my defenses and position me exactly where she needed me to be.

I'd been such a fool.

I'd actually believed her concern was genuine. That she cared about my wellbeing. That she was different from my own family who'd tried to sell me to that predator.

But Eleanor's goal was simple: destroy Victor, and let everything else collapse around him. Breaking the engagement was just a bonus.

One perfect trap.

The betrayal cut deeper than I'd expected, a sharp ache beneath my ribs that had nothing to do with last night's physical trauma.

I'd been so desperate for somewhere to put all that pain that I'd walked straight into her trap without a moment's hesitation.

"I understand that anything I say now will be considered self-serving," Victor said quietly, his voice cutting through my spiraling thoughts.

Not defiance. Not anger.

Just a kind of weary acceptance that seemed almost rehearsed in its resignation.

And then I caught it.

The faintest curve at the corner of his mouth, there and gone in less than a second. His eyes, when they briefly met mine across the room, held something that wasn't defeat at all.

It looked almost like patience.

The particular stillness of a man who was exactly where he'd planned to be.

"What happened last night was my fault," he said. "I hurt Stella, and I'm prepared to accept whatever consequences you deem appropriate."

The words had barely left Victor's mouth when Alpha Sinclair moved—faster than any man his age should be able to.

The whip came from nowhere.

A length of braided leather reinforced with silver wire along its spine.

It connected before I even registered the motion—and Victor's whole body went rigid in a way that had nothing to do with ordinary pain.

The crack of impact echoed through the hall.

Then I heard it: a sharp hiss through his teeth, quickly suppressed. And beneath it, the faint but unmistakable smell of scorched fabric—and something else that made my stomach turn.

Silver. The wire had made contact with skin.

Victor kept his feet. But his left hand dropped to his side and stayed there, fingers slightly curled. The fabric above his shoulder wasn't simply torn—the edges were darkened, the wound beneath refusing to close the way a normal injury would.

Silver contact wounds didn't heal on the standard accelerated timeline.

They burned. They festered. They scarred.

The sight of it sent a cold shock straight through me.

"You animal!" Alpha Sinclair's voice dropped to something far more dangerous than shouting, each word sharp as broken glass.

"You disgrace to this family! Do you have any idea what you've done? She's your nephew's fiancée—do you understand that? They're already engaged!"