Chapter eight: A disappointment.

Lucien Vale

The board meeting was a slaughterhouse.

I sat at the head of the conference table in the Vale Corporation tower, forty stories above the city, and watched twelve men in thousand-dollar suits take turns carving pieces out of my reputation. The room smelled like fear and expensive cologne. No one made eye contact. Not even the ones who'd known me since I was a child.

"The sponsorship loss is catastrophic, Lucien." Richard Cole, the oldest board member, slid a folder across the polished mahogany. His hands were shaking. "Three major brands terminated this morning. Two more are reviewing their contracts. The drug allegations —"

"Are false," I said, my voice flat as a frozen lake.

"The public doesn't know that." Marcus Hale, the CFO, leaned forward, his forehead glistening. "The narrative is set. Lucien Vale, the Ice King, built on chemicals and lies. It doesn't matter if it's true. It matters what people believe."

I stared at him until he looked away.

"What do you want from me?" I asked.

"A statement," Cole said quickly. "A full cooperation with the league investigation. A public appearance with your father. Something that shows stability. Family. Values."

I laughed. It sounded like broken glass. "My father?"

"The public respects Atticus Vale. They always have. If he stands beside you —"

"My father hasn't stood beside me since I was twelve years old." I stood, my chair scraping against the floor like a scream. "But by all means, let's parade him out for the cameras. I'm sure he'll love playing the concerned patriarch."

"Lucien —"

"The meeting over."

I walked out before they could stop me. Clara scrambled after me, her heels clicking a frantic rhythm down the corridor.

"That was a disaster," she hissed, keeping pace. "You just insulted the only people who can save your career."

"They can't save my career. They can only delay the bleeding."

"Then what do you suggest? Because right now, you're drowning, and you're pushing away every life raft that floats by."

I stopped at the elevator and turned to face her. "I suggest you go home, Clara. Get some sleep. Tomorrow, we figure out what's actually left to save."

"Lucien —"

"Go home."

The elevator doors slid shut between us, and I watched her frustrated reflection disappear into the polished steel.

~~~~~~~~

The drive to my penthouse took twenty minutes. I didn't remember any of it.

I sat in the underground garage for ten minutes, my hands still gripping the steering wheel, my mind replaying the board meeting on a loop. The fear in their eyes. The way they'd looked at me like I was already dead. Like my mother's crash had been a prophecy, not a tragedy.

I took the private elevator to the top floor, my body heavy with exhaustion that sleep wouldn't fix. The hallway was dark. I always left the lights on.

My hand froze on the keypad.

The door was already open.

Not forced. Not broken. Just... open. A thin line of darkness beyond, waiting.

My pulse kicked, old instincts surfacing. I pushed the door slowly, every muscle coiled, ready for an intruder, a reporter, someone with a camera and a death wish.

What I found was worse.

Atticus Vale sat in my living room, in the dark, in my favorite chair, a glass of my scotch in his hand. He was Fifty- six, silver-haired, sharp-featured, dressed in a suit that cost more than most people's cars. He didn't look up when I entered. He never did.

"You missed the investor meeting," he said, his voice smooth and cold as a blade on ice.

"I was at a board meeting."

"The board doesn't write your checks. The investors do." He finally looked at me, and I saw the same thing I'd seen my entire life disappointment, wrapped in the thin veneer of paternal duty. "Three of them called me today. They wanted to know if my son was stable enough to continue representing their brands. Do you know what I told them?"

"That I was a disappointment? That you wished I'd stayed in business school where I belonged?"

"I told them you were going through a difficult time." He took a sip of scotch, his expression unchanged. "I lied for you, Lucien. As I have always lied for you."

I laughed, but it came out hollow. "YOU! would never lie for me. You lied for the Vale name. There's a difference."

"The Vale name is your name. Or have you forgotten that in your quest to destroy everything I built?"

"I didn't destroy anything. Someone planted drugs in my locker. Someone is framing me."

"Then find them." He set the glass down with a sharp crack. "Instead of chasing waitresses into nightclub hallways and embarrassing yourself in front of people who actually matter."

The words hit like a physical blow.

"You had me followed," I said quietly.

"I had people following me. It's called due diligence." He stood, smoothing his jacket, and walked to the window. The city lights painted his face in shades of blue and gold. "Your mother would be ashamed of you."

The air left my lungs.

"What did you say?"

"Isabella was a racer, yes. She was passionate. Reckless. But she understood responsibility. She understood that the Vale name meant something." He turned to face me, and for the first time, I saw something beneath the polished veneer anger, old and calcified, like a bone that had healed wrong. "You? You run from your inheritance. You hide on tracks like a child playing with toy cars. And now, when the world finally sees you for what you are, a fraud, a cheat, a disappointment, you crawl into alleys with women who don't even respect you enough to use your name."

I was across the room before I knew I'd moved.

My fist slammed into the wall beside his head, plaster cracking, pain shooting up my knuckles. He didn't flinch. He never flinched.

"Don't," I whispered, my voice shaking with rage I couldn't control. "Don't you ever speak her name to punish me. You lost that right the day you let her die."

"I didn't let her die, Lucien. She crashed. It was an accident."

"It was sabotage."

The word hung between us, heavy and terrible.

Atticus's expression didn't change. But something flickered in his eyes, something I couldn't read. Fear? Guilt? Or just the practiced blankness of a man who'd spent forty years hiding every true thing he felt?

"The investigation cleared the rival driver," he said carefully.

"The investigation was bought."

"And you know this because...?"

"Because I was there." My voice cracked, and I hated him for hearing it. "I was twelve years old, and I watched her burn, and I listened to you tell the police it was a mechanical failure. I listened to you bury the truth because it was cheaper than admitting someone wanted her dead."

"Lucien —"

"When was the last time you asked me if I was okay?"

The question stopped him.

I stepped back, my hand throbbing, my chest heaving. "Not after the crash. Not after the funerals. Not after I walked away from your empire and built my own name from nothing. Not after the insomnia started. Not after the nightmares." I laughed, but it sounded sobbing. "You want to parade me out for the cameras? Fine. But don't pretend it's because you care about me. You care about the stock price. You care about the board's confidence. You care about Atticus Vale looking like a good father instead of the man who let his wife die and his son drown."

The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating.

Atticus looked at me, really looked at me and for a moment, I saw something break in his expression. A crack in the marble. A glimpse of the man who'd once held my mother's hand at the track, who'd cheered when she won, who'd carried me on his shoulders when I was small enough to believe he was invincible.

Then the mask slid back into place.

"You're emotional," he said, his voice flat again. "And emotional men make mistakes. Fix the scandal, Lucien. Repair your reputation. Or I will repair it for you and you won't like my methods."

He walked past me, close enough that I could smell his cologne, the same one he'd worn my entire life, the same one that still made me think of hospital corridors and closed doors.

At the doorway, he stopped.

"Your mother loved you," he said, not turning around. "But love doesn't fix broken things, Lucien. It just makes the breaking hurt more."

Then he was gone, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in my chest like a gunshot.

~~~~~~~~

I stood in the dark for a long time.

My hand was bleeding. I didn't care. The plaster dust coated my fingers, white and fine, like ash. Like the ash I'd wiped from my mother's racing suit the day they pulled her from the wreckage.

I walked to the window and pressed my forehead against the cold glass. Forty stories down, the city moved like a living thing, lights and noise and people who didn't know my name, didn't care about my scandal, didn't feel the weight of a dead woman's love crushing them every time they closed their eyes.

Your mother would be ashamed of you.

Was he right?

Would Mother have looked at me, the drug scandal, the alley chase, the insomnia, the rage and felt shame? Or would she have seen the boy who'd watched her burn and never learned how to stop burning himself?

I didn't know.

I'd never know.

Because the one person who could have told me was gone, and the man who'd buried the truth about her death had just walked out of my apartment like he owned it.

Like he owned everything.

Including me.

My phone buzzed on the counter. Clara, probably. Or the board. Or another reporter with another question I couldn't answer.

I ignored it.

Instead, I opened the file Marcus had sent me three hours ago. The thin, unsatisfying file on Ariana Cross. Engineering student. Multiple jobs. No social media. No criminal record. Nothing that explained why I couldn't stop thinking about her.

I stared at her candid shot, her leaving some building, head down, shoulders curved under invisible weight and felt something shift in my chest.

She was a stranger.

She was nothing to me.

And yet, for one moment in that hallway, when she'd stepped into my space and called me out loud about wanting poor things, I'd felt something I hadn't felt in years.

Seen.

Not as the Ice King. Not as the Golden Monster. Not as Atticus Vale's disappointing son.

Just... seen.

I picked up my phone and dialed.

"Marcus," I said when he answered, groggy and confused. "I want everything on Ariana Cross. Family. Medical history. Finances. Daily routine. Every secret. I want it by morning."

"Boss, it's two in the morning —"

"By morning."

I hung up and walked to my bedroom, the city lights painting patterns on the walls like ghosts.

Sleep wouldn't come. It never did.

But for the first time in weeks, I had something to chase that wasn't vengeance or oblivion.

I had her.

And I was going to know her every crack, every secret, every broken piece before she even knew I was looking.

Because that was what monsters did.

They studied their prey before they pounced.

And I was very, very good at being a monster.