Chapter 6

I froze in place, as if my soul was frozen.

Three years. Over a thousand days and nights of despair. All of it broke loose the moment I saw him appear safe and sound.

Cyrus froze too.

He stared blankly at Sebastian, then looked down at himself.

An inferiority complex instantly engulfed him.

Though their features were seventy percent similar, their temperaments were worlds apart.

If Sebastian was a bright moon hanging high in the night sky, then Cyrus was a puddle of mud in the gutter.

Sebastian walked straight toward me.

Bodyguards on both sides cleared the way for him. The rich woman who'd been so arrogant moments ago now didn't dare breathe too loudly.

Cyrus panicked.

He felt an unprecedented sense of crisis. The bloodline suppression from the real thing.

He instinctively tried to grab my hand to assert ownership.

"Vivienne, who is he? He's just a bit paler than me, right? Don't let him fool you, I'm the one who..."

"Get lost."

Sebastian spoke.

Just one word, not loud, but carrying bone-chilling killing intent.

He didn't even spare Cyrus a proper glance, as if he were merely a patch of air.

Cyrus staggered back two steps under the force of that aura, his legs weakening until he sat down hard on the ground.

The next second, Sebastian stood before me.

He reached out, his slender fingers gently touching my cheek, his fingertips warm.

Those eyes that usually looked at everyone coldly were now frighteningly red.

"Vivienne."

He called my full name, his voice hoarse as if scraped over sandpaper.

"I'm sorry. I came back too late."

My tears instantly splashed onto his palm.

All my strength, all my pretense, all the dignity of the Sterling family head. It all crumbled in this moment.

I couldn't care about propriety anymore. I threw myself into his arms, hands desperately clutching his lapels, crying like a child who'd been lost.

"Sebastian... you bastard... you were dead for three years... why did you only come back now..."

He held me tightly back, with a force as if trying to meld me into his bones and blood.

"I'm the bastard. From now on, my life is yours. I'll never leave again."

A deathly silence surrounded us.

No one expected the cold, aloof Miss Sterling to cry like this.

Even less did they expect the legendarily ruthless new Ashford family head to publicly comfort someone.

Cyrus sat on the ground, ashen-faced.

He watched the woman Sebastian carefully protected in his embrace, watched the undisguised devotion in that man's eyes.

He finally understood a truth.

These three years, the so-called "favoritism" he'd been so proud of was nothing but Vivienne looking at another man's shadow through him.

"Impossible... this can't be..."

Cyrus scrambled up unwillingly, pointing at Sebastian and shouting.

"Vivienne! Look at me! I have a mole too! Right here at my eye! You said you loved this mole most!"

He frantically pointed at his eye corner like a madman trying to prove his worth.

Sebastian finally deigned to spare him a glance.

With one arm around me, he swept his indifferent gaze over Cyrus's face, his lips curving into a cruel arc.

"Oh? A mole?"

"You had that tattooed on to look like me, didn't you?"

"Poorly imitating your betters. Truly... disgustingly ugly."