When Alan finally appears in the doorway, he looks like he hasn't slept. His green eyes are red-rimmed, his jaw tight, and the fury radiating from him makes the air feel thinner. He doesn't sit. Doesn't even step fully into Emily's office. Just stands there in the threshold like crossing it would contaminate him.
"Is it real?" His voice shakes. "The video. Tell me it's fake. Tell me it's some kind of deepfake or editing or—"
"It's real." The words come out steadier than I feel.
His face crumbles. Devastation mixed with betrayal mixed with the particular horror of discovering someone you love is now a stranger.
"Alan—" I start, but he holds up a hand.
"Don't." The word cuts like a blade. "Don't try to explain it away. Don't tell me it's not what it looks like. I saw you, Tess."
"I can explain—"
"The loan sharks." His voice drops to something barely above a whisper. "The bodies at the docks. Vincent and the others. That was you, wasn't it?"
The question hangs in the air, and I watch James tense beside me. Emily goes very still. They're all waiting for me to answer, to confirm or deny, to shape the narrative into something Alan can accept.
But I'm done lying. Done hiding.
"Yes."
The admission detonates in the small space. Alan takes a physical step back like the word hit him, and I watch him process what I've just confirmed—not just that vampires are real, not just that his sister is one, but that she's a killer. A murderer. Someone who took lives to solve a problem that money could have solved just as easily.
"I've been losing sleep." His voice cracks. "Every night since they found the bodies. Terrified the police would connect me to Vincent. That they'd find the debt records or the hospital visits or some piece of evidence that would put me at the scene. I've been having panic attacks, Tess. Waking up at three in the morning convinced they're going to arrest me."
The guilt slams into me so hard I can barely breathe. "Alan, I didn't know—"
"Because you didn't ask!" He's shouting now, and tears stream down his face unchecked. "You just decided. Decided to kill for me. Decided I needed saving. Decided I couldn't handle my own fucking problems without my big sister murdering people on my behalf!"
"I was trying to protect you—"
"I could go to PRISON for what you did!" The words tear out of him raw and ragged. "Do you understand that? The police think it was gang violence, internal conflict, whatever. But if they dig deeper, if they connect dots—I'm the one with the motive. I'm the one who owed them money. I'm the one they'll arrest."
James steps forward, his voice calm and controlled in contrast to Alan's fury. "That won't happen. I'll make sure of it. I have resources, connections—"
"You." Alan turns on him with vicious contempt that makes James actually flinch. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Alan, that's not fair—" I start, but he cuts me off.
"Fair?" He laughs, and the sound is brittle. "You want to talk about fair? You killed PEOPLE for me. And I never asked for it!"
The accusation lands like a physical blow because it's true.
"You were going to die," I whisper.
"Then I would have died!" His voice breaks completely. "That would have been my choice, my consequence. But you took that away from me. You made me responsible for your murders because you couldn't stand the thought of me suffering."
Emily tries to intervene. "Alan, I think everyone needs to calm down—"
"Stay out of this." He doesn't even look at her. His eyes are locked on me, full of tears and rage and something that looks like grief. "You killed people, Tess. Human beings with families and lives and futures. And you did it for me."
"They would have killed you." I say desperately.
"So that makes it okay?" His voice drops to something quiet and terrible. "That makes you judge and jury and executioner? That makes their deaths your right?"
I don't have an answer. Can't defend what I did without sounding exactly like what Alan thinks I am—a monster who's convinced herself that violence is justified when it's for the right reasons.
"How am I supposed to live with this?" The question comes out broken. "How am I supposed to wake up every day knowing people are dead because of me? Because I borrowed money I couldn't pay back? Because I was stupid and desperate and—"
"It's not your fault," I interrupt. "It's mine. I made the choice."
"A choice I have to live with!" He's shouting again. "You don't get it, do you? You think you saved me, but all you did was make me complicit. Make me the reason people died. And I can't—" His voice cracks. "I can't carry that, Tess. I can't."
James moves closer to me, a silent presence of support, but Alan sees it and something ugly twists his expression.
"Of course he's here. He’s the one who bought you and made you into this, isn’t he? Your vampire boyfriend." His laugh is caustic. "Does he know what he created? Does he know he turned someone desperate into something capable of mass murder?"
"That's enough," James says, and his voice carries centuries of authority.
"Or what?" Alan challenges. "You'll kill me too? Add me to Tess's body count?"
The accusation is so absurd, so cruel, that for a moment no one speaks. Then Alan seems to deflate, all the rage draining out of him until only exhaustion remains.
"I can't do this," he says quietly. "I can't look at you and not see what you've done. What you've become."
"Alan, please—" I take a step toward him, and he flinches back like I might hurt him.
"Stay away from me." The words are final, absolute. "Stay away from Mom and Dad. Stay away from everyone I care about before you destroy them too."
"You don't mean that—"
"I mean every word." He looks at me one last time, and I see it in his eyes—he's already mourning me. Already decided that his sister died. "You're not the person I thought you were. Maybe you never were."
The rejection cuts deeper than any physical wound could.
He turns and walks out, and I watch him go with the sick certainty that I've lost him. Not to distance or circumstance, but to my own choices.
The door slams shut, and the sound echoes in the small office like a gunshot.
Silence follows. Heavy. Suffocating. Final.
Emily speaks first, her voice gentle. "He needs time—"
"He needs a sister who isn't a monster." The words come out flat, empty.
James's hand finds my shoulder, but I can't feel the comfort he's trying to offer. Can't feel anything except the hollow ache where my brother's love used to be.
I thought transformation meant freedom. Thought becoming powerful meant I could protect the people I loved without consequence. But Alan's horror—his absolute rejection of what I've become—makes me wonder if I've just traded one cage for another.
This time built from the consequences of my own violence.
This time with no one to blame but myself.