Chapter 5 - The Secret in the Velvet Bow
"How...?" Julian gasped, his legs shaking so hard he felt his ankle bones grinding against the leather insoles. "How did you know I could do it?"
Clara pulled him an inch closer, leaning in so her golden curls brushed against his ear. Her small hand squeezed his fingers with a crushing, unnatural strength that belonged to someone four times her size.
"Because your mother asked me to remind you," Clara whispered.
Julian’s mind stalled. The joy that had been blooming in his chest froze instantly, turned to ash by the cold precision of those eight words.
"What...?" he breathed.
Clara smiled. Her amber eyes flashed beneath the low golden lights of the oak trees.
"She paid my father fifty thousand dollars to bring me here tonight, Julian," Clara murmured into his ear, her voice barely a whisper beneath the rustle of the leaves. "She hired us three days ago. She gave us your medical files, your physical therapy notes, your trauma reports. She told us exactly what phrase to say to you. 'I just want him to try.' She rehearsed it with me in the carriage house behind the chapel."
Julian’s head spun. The world tilted violently. The teak floor beneath his feet seemed to slide away like ice over water.
He looked down at Victoria.
His mother was still on her knees. She had pulled her hands back, cradling one thumb where a piece of broken glass had cut the skin. A single bead of dark, crimson blood was pooling over her silver-painted nail. She was looking at Clara now—not with surprise, but with a cold, calculating fury that signaled a contract breached, a scene played out of order.
"You weren't supposed to say that yet, Clara," Victoria said softly, her voice dropping all pretense of maternal weakness. Her accent, usually so refined and soft, took on the razor-sharp cadence of an executioner. "We had an agreement with your father. Step Four was scheduled for October."
Julian’s knees buckled.
He didn't fall back into the wheelchair. He collapsed forward, his weak legs giving out entirely.
Clara didn't catch him. She stepped back smoothly, her gold satin gown swirling around her knees as Julian hit the hard teak planks with a sickening thud, his elbows taking the brunt of the impact.
The crowd erupted into screams and hurried whispers. Men in tuxedos stepped forward; women pulled their children back.
"Julian!" Victoria cried, her voice instantly shifting back into her frantic, heartbroken mother persona as she threw herself across the wood, wrapping her arms around his shaking, collapsed frame. "Oh god, my baby! I told you! I told you not to push yourself! Call an ambulance! He's convulsing!"
She gathered him into her lap, pressing his head against her chest, her silver sequins digging into his cheek. Her heart was beating against his ear—slow, steady, forty-five beats per minute.
Not panicked. Not racing.
May you like
As she held him, her hand stroked the back of his neck, her thumb pressing firmly against the base of his skull—right over the occipital nerve.
"Shh, my sweet boy," Victoria whispered into his hair, her breath hot against his skin. "Mommy’s got you. Mommy will always have you. You're safe now. You never have to stand again."
