Chapter 230

Chapter 230:

She pulled him toward the bed and the papers spread across it. “I’ve already started planning. The security patterns, the access points, everything.”

As she walked him through her plan, Herod felt a growing unease. This wasn’t the Rose he had first approached months ago—calculating, strategic, focused on financial gain and professional destruction. This Rose burned with something darker, more primal.

“What happens after?” he asked when she finished outlining her plan. “If we do this, there’s no going back. We’d be fugitives.”

Rose shrugged, unconcerned. “We have money. Fake identities. We could disappear anywhere.”

“Together?” The question slipped out before he could stop it.

Rose looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. Not love—he wasn’t sure she was capable of that emotion anymore—but need, certainly. Dependency.

“Of course, together,” she said, her hand cupping his face. “Who else do we have now? Who else would understand what we’ve done, what we’ve sacrificed?” There was truth in her words. They had burned all other bridges. Their mutual hatred of Victoria and Camille had bound them together in ways that went beyond normal relationships. They needed each other now, not from love, but from shared guilt, shared obsession, shared destruction.

“I need you with me on this,” Rose whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulders with desperate strength. “I can’t do this alone.”

The admission of weakness from a woman who showed none was more persuasive than any argument. Herod found himself nodding, even as part of him screamed that this was madness. “Together,” he agreed, sealing his fate.

Rose’s smile blossomed, beautiful and terrible at once. For a moment, he glimpsed the woman she must have been before hatred consumed her—stunning, vibrant, alive. Then the moment passed, and the hardness returned to her eyes.

“We’ll finish what we started,” she said, pulling him closer. “We’ll watch it all burn.”

Later, as Rose slept beside him, Herod stared at the ceiling. The peeling paint formed patterns like a map to nowhere. He had crossed a line today, agreeing to Rose’s plan. There would be no redemption, no going back.

He looked at the woman curled against him. In sleep, her face softened, the constant rage temporarily eased. Yet even now, her fingers clutched his arm possessively, afraid he might vanish while she slept.

They had become something terrible together, he realized. Something worse than either might have been alone. Rose’s hatred and his strategic mind. Her willingness to destroy everything, and his ability to make it happen.

Tomorrow, they would cross the final line. From revenge to something far darker. And though he had agreed, though he would follow through, a small part of him hoped they would fail again.

Because the alternative meant becoming exactly what Victoria Kane had always believed the Prestons to be—monsters willing to destroy lives for their own satisfaction.

Rose stirred beside him, her eyes opening. “What are you thinking about?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

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