Chapter 77.

VICTOR.

Sitting in my mother’s darkened, dusty cottage, grief grips me like a vise, squeezing the air from my lungs. It’s been days since Nicole was taken from me. She was the only pride I had in this godforsaken world. I swirl the drink in my hand, letting the bitterness numb me.

The whiskey is meant to dull the pain, but instead, it amplifies it. Nicole’s face haunts me—the hollow ache in her eyes the last time I saw her alive, when she complained about that deadbeat of a husband… I wish I could have given her better advice than I did.

Tears threaten to spill from my eyes, but I swallow them down.

My mother won’t let me drown in sorrow. “Victor,” she snaps, her voice cutting through the silence like a knife. “Are you really going to sit here, drinking yourself into oblivion?”

I glare at her, but she doesn’t flinch. She never does. She’s a hard woman—made of iron and shadows—and right now, she looks at me as though I’m the pathetic one. “And what would you have me do, Mother?” I snar