I Am Not The Only Monster In This Story

The Night of the Rally at the Lennox Mansion

"Leo, don't," Mara Lennox pleaded. Her voice trembled, tight, desperate.

Leo stood frozen, fist clenched midair, his whole body buzzing with restrained fury. Every breath hissed through his teeth. Rage rolled beneath his skin, wild and volcanic, but still, he hadn't moved.

Across the room, Harry Lennox stood stiff, hand half-lifted, as if in disbelief at what he'd just done. His palm stung.

He had struck Leo.

He hadn't meant to.

But he had.

Silence pressed down like a smothering weight.

Harry swallowed hard. He hated this part, the aftermath, when the mask of civility slipped and the truth spilled out like rot. He hated more that this time, the ugliness had come from him. Again.

But Leo always knew how to dig deep. Too clever, too sharp-tongued, too full of fire. Always toeing the line between son and threat. All that potential, aimed inward, like a blade drawn against the family name.

Harry's voice cracked across the room, loud and bitter. "You're thirty, Leo. Thirty. You've got a PhD gathering dust under my roof. When are you going to grow up? Get a job? Make something of yourself?"

Even as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Too late. They echoed in the room like accusations from someone else's lips. But the flicker of hurt that crossed Leo's face only fueled something darker inside Harry.

Leo laughed, a brittle, hollow sound. "You think I haven't tried?"

Harry's jaw clenched. "Then try harder."

Leo stepped forward. Eyes burning. Voice rising. "You think I haven't knocked on doors? Show up to interviews? You think I don't see their faces the second they hear my last name? Half of them know what I am, the other half don't, but they feel it. Like a bad smell in the air. You want to know why I'm still here? It's not laziness. It's reality. No one will hire me."

The room was quiet. Too quiet.

Harry had no reply. Because, somewhere deep down, he believed it. And he hated that.

Mara's lip trembled. "Leo…"

"I stay because of you," Leo snapped, the edge of his voice cracking. "Because I'm the only one who sees what this house does to you. I see what he does. And if I walk away, you'll have no one left."

Harry's fists curled at his sides. He wanted to deny it. Wanted to say Leo was being dramatic.

But he didn't.

Couldn't.

Because some dark, buried part of him agreed.

"So what?" Harry said at last, his voice quieter, but no less cutting. "You're a martyr now?"

Leo exhaled sharply. His shoulders dropped, tension bleeding out of his posture, but not his eyes. His eyes were still lit from within, dangerous and clear.

"No," he said. "I'm a prisoner."

Leo's voice dropped, low and venomous, every word carved to wound.

"I'm your reminder. Of what she did. Of what I am. That's why you hate me. Just admit it."

Harry's spine went rigid. The words were toxic and true. Leo wasn't just a shadow in the house; he was the living embodiment of a choice Harry had never forgiven. A bloodline he couldn't erase. A betrayal carved into flesh and bone.

And worse?

Leo wasn't wrong.

He was brilliant.

He was loyal.

He had stayed, endured, and protected.

And Harry still couldn't look at him without seeing a man he'd despised.

"Stop," Harry growled, voice tight with restraint.

Leo stepped closer, eyes gleaming with a wild fury. "Say it."

"I said stop..."

"I wish I'd never been born to you!" Leo's voice broke like a cracked bell, sharp and unrelenting. His gaze flicked between them, his mother, pale and still, and Harry, trembling with rage. "You both treat me like garbage. And it's not right!"

Mara Lennox's face contorted, stricken with silent hurt. But Leo wasn't finished.

"You let him tear into me," he spat, pointing at her. "You watch. You pretend to be the peacekeeper, like that's neutral. But it's not. You chose. Every time you told me to be patient, to 'not provoke him,' you were telling me to disappear. You've been trying to fix me since I was a kid. Like if I were smaller, quieter, easier to love, maybe then he wouldn't see me when he looked at me."

That did it.

The dam broke.

Harry moved without thinking.

Not with reason.

Not with justice.

Just raw, ancient fury exploding out of a lifetime of shame and helplessness.

His hand flew out.

A crack of skin on skin echoed through the room like thunder.

Silence swallowed everything.

Leo didn't fall. He didn't speak. He just stood there, jaw clenched, a red handprint blooming across his cheek like a brand.

Harry lowered his arm slowly. His face drained of color. His eyes, wide, horrified, stared at his hand like it belonged to someone else.

Mara gasped, staggering back as if she had been struck, too. Her lips parted, but no words came. Tears welled in her eyes. She backed away, trembling.

"Mara," Harry rasped, reaching for her. "Don't cry…"

But Leo stepped away from them both, voice brittle and distant.

"Whatever."

He turned toward the door, and this time, no one stopped him.

Leo turned and stormed down the hall, his footsteps hitting the floor like gunshots, loud, final, and unforgiving.

Behind him, Harry didn't follow.

"Don't do anything rash, Mara," he said quietly.

But the words were meaningless. He already knew.

She would.

She always did.

Mara Lennox had been born defiant. Her spirit didn't break under pressure; it bent like fire in the wind, retreating only to strike elsewhere, sharper. She had smothered that fire for years, folded it into silence and civility, into the shape of a perfect wife. But it was rising again now, hot, uncontainable.

She wasn't crying anymore.

She was thinking.

And Harry saw it too late, the way her mouth drew into that familiar, distant line. The way her eyes didn't meet his, not even in passing. She was staring down the hallway, down the trail Leo had left behind him.

She turned without a word.

Not to retreat to her bedroom.

Not to compose herself behind a locked door.

Not to mourn.

She was going after her son.

And Harry knew what that meant.

Maybe she'd finally tell Leo the truth, strip away the lies, and give him what he'd been denied all his life. Maybe she'd choose him this time, openly and without shame. Maybe she'd walk out of the house with him and let the world see exactly where her loyalty lay.

Or maybe, God help them, she'd fall apart again. Maybe she'd find the drawer. The one she always promised she'd emptied. The one Harry still checked when she wasn't home for too long.

He stood frozen, the doorway yawning open in front of him, silence crowding in around his shoulders like collapsing walls.

He had once vowed to raise Leo as his own.

And in fragments, fleeting, half-broken ways, he had loved the boy.

But Leo was more than just a reminder of betrayal. He was brilliant. Angry. Unyielding. A mirror and a wound.

A scar Harry could never stop tracing.

And still, he wasn't the one to blame.

So why did it feel like the whole house was coming apart at the seams?

Mara returned to her bedroom like a ghost, her body moving, but hollowed out. Dismay clung to her bones like frostbite. She felt fury, but eventually that fire died out. She collapsed onto the bed without bothering to undress, her face buried in the pillow, her tears soaking silently into the sheets.

She didn't sob.

She just wept, deep, wrenching tears that came not from anger but from the sheer weight of heartbreak.

Eventually, the exhaustion hit. Heavy. Total. That kind of sleep that only follows a soul-crushing cry, not restful but blank, like drowning in velvet.

It was well past midnight when a sound stirred her, a low, mechanical murmur outside her window.

She blinked, disoriented.

The distant purr of tires over gravel.

A van. Pulling into the estate's long driveway.

Her heart stirred before her mind did.

She rose slowly. Tension spidered through her chest.

Crossing to the window, she peeled back the curtain.

A shadow emerged from the back of the van.

Her breath hitched.

It was Igor.

He staggered across the driveway, moving stiffly. His face was streaked with something dark, brownish-red, wet in patches and crusted in others.

Blood? Mud? Both?

His eyes didn't track like they normally did. They stared ahead, glassy, wide, tinged with a faint red shimmer.

Like a puppet. Like a machine.

Mara's heart slammed against her ribs.

She didn't even change, just threw on her robe and bolted down the stairs, barefoot on the cold floors.

She flung open the door.

"Igor!" she called, voice sharp, cracking. "Where have you been? What happened to you?!"

He turned slowly.

His body moved… wrong. Unnatural. Like each motion was being transmitted from somewhere far away.

"To protect the innocent," Igor said softly, as if in a trance, "we shall fight down the evil…"

Mara froze.

"…The evil is at the top… and we shall triumph over it like an angel out of the sky, fighting with lightning."

Her mouth went dry.

She knew those words. Too well.

The White Angels' motto.

She'd read them before, in fringe articles, archived interviews. People who said those words, who recited them like this, always ended up at the center of something terrible. Most of them awoke later with no memory of what they'd done. Controlled. Erased. Rewritten.

And now, Igor?

Her stomach twisted. She had seen a letter weeks ago. Folded neatly in Maisie's drawer. White envelope. Silver insignia stamped with wings.

A White Angel seal.

The moment had etched itself into her gut, but this? This was confirmation.

And Igor wasn't speaking to her like himself. His voice carried the empty polish of protocol.

He had called her Mistress.

Her. Not Maisie.

Her throat tightened.

"Igor," she said gently, swallowing the panic building in her throat, "go to bed. We'll talk in the morning."

He paused, then nodded, with that eerie slowness.

"Yes… Mistress…"

Her heart clenched at the title. He wasn't hers. Not like that. Not ever.

But she didn't correct him.

She watched as he walked away, swaying, sleepwalking through his skin.

"Goodnight," she whispered, mostly to herself.

She didn't ask about the blood.

She didn't want to know.

Because some truths, once spoken aloud, cannot be undone.

And Mara Lennox already feared she was too late.