One Night in Valeria - Chapter 30: Chapter 30
You are reading One Night in Valeria, Chapter 30: Chapter 30. Read more chapters of One Night in Valeria.
Fifteen Years Ago, Klara Hale's Journal
Unpublished
I should have known he would take it.
The moment Alex touched my sketchbook fingers lingering too long on the page marked Lineage I knew he’d already decided it belonged to him.
The betrayal didn’t come with shouting.
It came with silence.
It came with stolen keys.
With a name printed on my designs that wasn’t mine.
I tried to confront him calmly, at first.
“Don’t do this,” I had said. “Not to me. Not to what we built.”
But his face… it had changed. Hardened into something jagged and hungry.
“You gave up on the work when you chose Dorian,” he told me. “You don’t deserve to carry it anymore.”
As if love was a disqualification.
As if survival made me weak.
Dorian wasn’t perfect.
He was powerful. Sharp. Cold at the edges. But he protected me in a world that had already tried to chew me up. He gave me space to breathe when Alex started trying to swallow me whole.
They both wanted me.
But only one wanted me free.
I remember the day I locked the vault.
I stood alone in my atelier, hands trembling as I sealed every sketch even the unfinished ones behind layers of steel and security.
If I couldn’t protect my work in the world, I would protect it in silence.
I thought that would be enough.
But I was wrong.
Because August came next.
A cousin once estranged, now whispering sweet support and promises. He saw the crack Alex left behind and slipped in with a smile and a lie.
He said: “Let me archive your work. Let me preserve your legacy.”
And I exhausted and too trusting handed him the keys.
By the time I realized what he’d done, it was too late.
Pieces of Lineage were already out in the world altered just enough to blur the signature, but still mine. Still bearing the soul I’d poured into them.
Dorian offered to bury it. Quiet lawsuits. Cease and desist letters.
But that wouldn’t stop August.
Not someone so petty. So wounded.
So desperate to be remembered.
So I did what I always feared.
I disappeared.
I became invisible, not because I was ashamed — but because my daughter deserved a world that wouldn’t destroy her for bearing my name.
If Jessica’s reading this now…
If she’s seeing the damage they tried to hide…
Then I know she survived it.
And maybe, just maybe, she’s strong enough to do what I couldn’t:
Speak.
Stand.
Finish what I started.
Lineage was never just a collection.
It was a bloodline.
And blood always remembers its way home.
Unpublished
I should have known he would take it.
The moment Alex touched my sketchbook fingers lingering too long on the page marked Lineage I knew he’d already decided it belonged to him.
The betrayal didn’t come with shouting.
It came with silence.
It came with stolen keys.
With a name printed on my designs that wasn’t mine.
I tried to confront him calmly, at first.
“Don’t do this,” I had said. “Not to me. Not to what we built.”
But his face… it had changed. Hardened into something jagged and hungry.
“You gave up on the work when you chose Dorian,” he told me. “You don’t deserve to carry it anymore.”
As if love was a disqualification.
As if survival made me weak.
Dorian wasn’t perfect.
He was powerful. Sharp. Cold at the edges. But he protected me in a world that had already tried to chew me up. He gave me space to breathe when Alex started trying to swallow me whole.
They both wanted me.
But only one wanted me free.
I remember the day I locked the vault.
I stood alone in my atelier, hands trembling as I sealed every sketch even the unfinished ones behind layers of steel and security.
If I couldn’t protect my work in the world, I would protect it in silence.
I thought that would be enough.
But I was wrong.
Because August came next.
A cousin once estranged, now whispering sweet support and promises. He saw the crack Alex left behind and slipped in with a smile and a lie.
He said: “Let me archive your work. Let me preserve your legacy.”
And I exhausted and too trusting handed him the keys.
By the time I realized what he’d done, it was too late.
Pieces of Lineage were already out in the world altered just enough to blur the signature, but still mine. Still bearing the soul I’d poured into them.
Dorian offered to bury it. Quiet lawsuits. Cease and desist letters.
But that wouldn’t stop August.
Not someone so petty. So wounded.
So desperate to be remembered.
So I did what I always feared.
I disappeared.
I became invisible, not because I was ashamed — but because my daughter deserved a world that wouldn’t destroy her for bearing my name.
If Jessica’s reading this now…
If she’s seeing the damage they tried to hide…
Then I know she survived it.
And maybe, just maybe, she’s strong enough to do what I couldn’t:
Speak.
Stand.
Finish what I started.
Lineage was never just a collection.
It was a bloodline.
And blood always remembers its way home.
End of One Night in Valeria Chapter 30. Continue reading Chapter 31 or return to One Night in Valeria book page.