Goldsin (The Chrysophilist Trilogy Book 1)
Goldsin: Chapter 3

He doesn’t know.

He can’t know.

No one knows.

If Adrian knew, why didn’t he throw it in my face? Why act so damn vague?

If all those years of dating served as anything, I know he would have at least used this as leverage to get us back together. Anything. He would have done anything.

But he didn’t.

I slip into the dimly lit corridor and walk as quickly as I can with these heels on. I need someplace quiet, where I can clear my mind and uncoil my nerves.

Yet the more distance I put between myself and the ballroom, the louder Adrian’s words echo between the walls.

I can almost see his piercing eyes when I close mine. How he dug past my carefully constructed façade, reading every tiny secret I was hiding.

As much as I want to believe he was trying to rattle me, I can’t lie to myself. He’s never been the type to waste his time—not in all the years I’ve dated him.

If Adrian does something, there’s a good chance he has a valid reason for it.

The realization twists my gut. I’m fucked.

Maybe I’m losing control of my plan. I’ve only killed one person and I already feel like I can’t manage.

Valentine taught me how to kill. I know how to use a gun without getting a black eye or falling over from its force. I know how to stab someone, to thrust through bone, without panting afterward. I know where the arteries are, so I know not to stab those, making it painfully slow for the victim to die.

But all the strategy that comes with it? There’s only so much the internet can teach.

I can take a life, but can I stop it from taking mine?

Adrian’s a cunning little shit and Lucian’s favorite son, but he still knows how to act dirty when it doesn’t involve pleasing his old man.

So if he hasn’t shown his cards yet, it’s because he has none.

I snort at the irony of the situation.

I can’t believe there was ever a time where I thought—no, I was certain—we could be happy together. That illusion was shattered when I realized how deeply rooted his family’s illegal activities really were.

I’ve always known the Harrows have secrets—any powerful, wealthy family has them—but I never knew they were this twisted and disturbing. My mother’s diary didn’t just contain her pain and suffering; it gave me an inside look at what being part of the Inferno Consortium really means.

I learned the truth a few months before breaking up with Adrian. Somehow, I’d convinced myself staying with him would keep me safe, never make me a suspect, as I used him to get the information I needed to form my plan. But in the end, all it did was suffocate me.

Our relationship was more about power and control than real love.

Adrian never seemed like a controlling type. At least, he didn’t give me that impression before we started dating.

He decided what I should wear, gifting me most of what makes up my wardrobe today. He also liked to tell me how to act before any event we attended together.

Dinner parties and business events were for me to act innocent and indifferent. I could never let my eyes roam around the place, instructed to only ever look at the person talking to me in the moment. I had to keep quiet and . . . act like I wasn’t there.

Friends’ parties were the only places I could be myself—on the understanding I couldn’t be the center of attention.

And I was never allowed to attend Adrian’s house parties. Which I didn’t really mind, since I didn’t want to run into Julian.

In the beginning of our relationship I wasn’t too bothered by any of this. I loved the attention Adrian was giving me—even if it was toxic. Because I’d gone from spending most of my time with Julian to becoming invisible, I craved Adrian’s attention. It made me feel important.

Until it didn’t anymore, so I broke things off with him weeks ago.

Yet Adrian still haunts my thoughts. Still suffocates me.

Pressing my back further into the wall, I close my eyes, seeking the cold to steady my racing mind.

My breaths come in short gasps as I try to regain control of my emotions.

Breathe in and out. In and⁠—

The scent of Julian’s cologne, a mixture of cedarwood and something indescribable, drifts past me, tickling my nostrils. Clouding my judgment.

I miss the way he smells.

The sound of his footsteps comes next, and I snap my eyes to the side. His menacing gaze pierces me in place as he prowls toward me.

When was the last time Julian Harrow looked my way? No. When was the last time Julian Harrow was heading my way?

Panic thrums in my chest, each beat heavy on my heart, before freezing it in agony. His presence has always invoked such an effect.

Call it instinct, but his good looks won’t take me for a fool.

Again.

“Looking a bit flustered there. That’s unlike you,” he drawls.

Taming the shadows like it’s child’s play, Julian stands out in the darkness. As if he holds power at his fingertips, the lack of light doesn’t devour him whole. Instead it amplifies his presence, accentuating every line of his sturdy frame.

His white shirtsleeves are rolled halfway up his arms. Ink swirls on his arms too, up to his neck, as if he’s made of the very essence of darkness. The sharpness of his jaw calls attention to his perfectly kissable lips before his piercing, ghostly blue eyes draw me in.

Every inch of him screams power and control, and it unnerves me more than I’d care to admit.

His steps are deliberate and calculated, as if he’s on a mission. I press my body closer to the wall, bracing myself for whatever this daredevil, the prince of the Inferno Consortium, has in mind.

“Julian . . . what do you want?”

He arches his brow, assessing the rise and fall of my chest before trailing his eyes down my curves. The action heats my skin.

Oh, help!

I can’t afford myself any distractions now. Not when Adrian has just finished with his own dose of snooping around.

“Can’t I come over to say hello?” The corner of his mouth turns up and my heart amps to a hammering state, betraying the calm façade I’m so desperately trying to maintain.

He wants to just . . . come over and say hello after ten years?

“Since when have you ever cared about pleasantries?” I raise my chin slightly as I look up at him. “Don’t think your charms will work on me anymore.”

“Anymore, huh? Who said anything about charm?” He leans in closer. A strand of jet-black hair falls over his eye. “I’m just curious what’s got you so worked up.” He plays with a strand of my hair, and my eyes widen as the shock of his ice-cold touch sends shivers down my spine.

The silence I was craving is punctuated by the sound of my racing heart and his slow, measured breathing. In a second I’m transported back to the old days, when his touch was a certainty.

It’s the night before my first day of high school. He’s lying on my bed, one arm behind his head, as he follows my fretful figure while I pace back and forth across my room trying to choose what to wear for the occasion. You only get one first day of high school, and I want it to be special.

He’s supposed to be helping me, but all he does is stare, the corner of his plump lips curving ever so slightly whenever a grunt of frustration leaves mine. He looks lost in thought, someplace else, until something flickers in his eyes, and he calls me over to him. His long arm lifts, and I crawl into the nook beneath it.

He plays with the strands of my messy hair before whispering how good red looks on me.

So I wear red . . .

The day he started ignoring me I wore red. Like the blood that seeped out of the cracks he made in my heart.

“Nothing.” I hold in the gasp that threatens to leave my lips at how good his body feels up against mine. “Now leave me alone.”

I can almost taste the heat radiating from his body. His intense gaze is becoming more difficult to hold without flinching away.

“Or what?” His eyes fall to my lips before he grips my chin between his fingers, brushing his thumb over my lower lip. “What will you do, Aurelia? Run to Adrian for protection?”

The way my name sounds coming from his lips sends a shiver down my spine. Could be the fact it’s been years since he last called me by my name, or that this is the longest conversation we’ve had since I started dating Adrian ten years ago.

“Oh, please. Jealousy is beneath even someone like you.”

Then I shove him back.

Even with all the force I put into it he doesn’t move much, only enough to get his hands away from me.

He chuckles, the sound so foreign for someone I’ve known most of my life. His eyes glint, and I think he might be laughing for a different reason.

“Talk,” I spit.

“Not yet.”

He steps back into my personal space, forcing me to crane my neck to maintain eye contact as he towers over me.

“What are you waiting for?” My voice loses strength as I fall deep into his eyes.

As the confines of the corridor seem to shrink even more around us, my nerves start to unravel.

“Patience, golden one,” he murmurs. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

I ball my hands into fists as I do my best to prevent my body from reacting to his closeness. “Stop playing games, Julian,” I hiss through gritted teeth. “I don’t have time for this.”

His icy eyes darken, the specks of white between the cerulean ocean swallowed by his dilating pupils. His features take on a predatory air that makes my pulse quicken despite myself.

“Tell me, Aurelia.” He leans in, our noses almost touching as he cages me in.

I try to angle my face away from his, but having him this close clouds my reasoning, and now I want him closer.

“What’s going on between you and my brother? You two seemed awfully . . . intimate earlier.”

“Adrian and I were just talking.”

Why do I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation, with the need to reach out and touch him? To lose myself in his warm embrace.

What the hell is going on with me?

“Really?” he challenges, brushing his finger over my pulse. “Because it looked like more than just talking from where I was standing.”

“And why were you looking, Julian?”

His gaze flickers down to my mouth, then to the rise and fall of my chest, lingering there awhile before returning to my eyes. “Maybe because I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Oh yeah?” I feign interest. “Maybe. Maybe not.” Closing the small distance between us, I look deep into his eyes as I grit, “Either way, it’s none of your business.”

His other hand moves over my waist before he tightens his grip and pins me in place. His touch is addictive, like the sensation of burning alive—I crave for more to burn faster.

“It is my business when you haven’t exactly been around lately. Who knows what you’ve been up to?”

Me? Me? I want to scream it at his smug face. He was the one who ruined our friendship my freshman year of high school and then acted like an absolute asshole the whole time I dated Adrian!

God, he needs to leave before I either claw out his eyes or do worse. Far worse.

“Like I said, it’s none of your business.” My voice wavers slightly under the weight of my growing anger. “Now, can we drop this?”

“No.”

I lose it. “Why do you even care? You haven’t cared about me for years and now you suddenly decide to? No. You don’t get to play hot-and-cold. So stop caring now!”

I’m heaving by the time the last word gushes out of my mouth. I stayed quiet all these years. Why? God, I don’t even know myself. Maybe I thought hearing how bored he was would hurt me more. Maybe because in the silence I could still hope.

“You’re right.” Julian’s hushed words slither out like needles to the skin. His expression is impossible to read. “I don’t give a fuck about you. Never have and never will. Yet I can’t help but wonder which pretty little mask you’re hiding behind.”

As he grips my chin, all the hatred I feel for him boils within me.

“You can’t stand the thought of him knowing something you don’t,” I spit, relishing in the way his expression sharpens at my words. “Adrian always gets better than you, and you can’t stand it.”

He clenches his jaw—hard—eyes narrowing. But just when I thought I hit him where it hurt the most, a smirk stretches his lips. “Maybe you’re right. What will you do about it, golden one?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“And what will you give me in return?”

Do I want something from him?

The real question is, can I get what I want from him?

Then, just when I least expect it, he licks the bare skin of my collarbone, all the way to my earlobe. “I’m waiting, golden one.”

I bite down on my lower lip, suppressing the gasp that tries to escape. “Is that the best you can do, Julian? You’ll have to try harder than that if you want to get under my skin.”

“Trust me,” he murmurs, leaning closer to me until I can taste his warmth on my lips. “Getting under your skin isn’t deep enough.”

His eyes follow the movement of my tongue as it dampens my parched lips, wetting his lips in the process.

And then he takes a step back. So fast his loss leaves a chill over my flushed skin.

His hands are back in his pockets, far away from touching me, as his eyes roll down the silver gown tightly caressing my curves. Then they roam back up, stopping at my breasts.

I cross my arms defensively on instinct, bouncing my breasts farther out in the process.

But his focus isn’t on my body—it’s on something else entirely.

“Is that blood?”

“What? Where?” I stammer, my eyes darting down to where he’s looking.

And right there, just above the low neckline of my dress, on my breast, is a small droplet of blood.

DeMarco’s blood.

Before I can react, Julian reaches out and gently wipes away the droplet with his fingertip. He holds it up between us, clearly displaying the crimson stain, before doing something that sends a bolt of shock through my entire body.

He licks the blood off his finger. His gaze doesn’t leave mine the whole time.

“Julian! What are you doing?” Feeling both repulsed and inexplicably drawn to him at once, I watch him suck it clean.

“Interesting,” he says, unfazed by my reaction. “It doesn’t taste like yours.”

“Wh-what⁠—?”

“Your little secret,” he whispers, his voice taking on a dark, dangerous edge. “I’m going to find out what it is . . . one way or another.”