I didn’t stop them. I didn’t pause to look at the big picture. Because I was too busy surviving. The thought coils tighter in my chest, sharp and suffocating.
Raf believed he was sparing us all.
He believed he was doing the right thing.
And in doing so, we set off a chain of events that led to Genevieve’s death.
If I had just kept my mouth shut about whose baby it was…
The guilt lands hard, a weight I don’t know how to set down.
Because at the root of it all, I’m responsible for his wife’s death.
I let my pain create shockwaves through countless people’s lives.
My family might not have wielded the blade that cut her throat, but the destruction my anger caused is enough to bury me beneath the remorse.
I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling again, blinking back tears I refuse to shed. This isn’t the time or the place.
I don’t know what my role is in all of this yet—victim, catalyst, coward, survivor. Maybe all of it.
What I do know is that telling Raf the truth—the whole truth—would change everything.
It would expose me in ways I’m not ready for. It would unravel family secrets I swore never to speak aloud.
It would hurt my parents, my siblings—God, Riley.
It would destroy everyone who’d held me together when I was breaking apart.
And it would hurt Raf. Deeply.
I turn my head and look at him again, this man who is both my husband and not, my past and my present, my greatest mistake and my most dangerous temptation.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the dark, though I don’t know who the apology is for. I’ve hurt so many people.
The week crawls by.
The house is a whirlwind of renovations and meetings and the quiet chaos of rebuilding an empire from its bones, but underneath it all, I count the days until Friday like a child waiting for Christmas.
I get to see Riley today, and it’s all I can do not to stand by the window, bouncing with anticipation.
I’m halfway down the front steps when the car pulls up, my heart pounding, joy bursting bright and unrestrained in my chest. Then the door opens, and she’s there.
“Sissy!”
Riley launches herself at me with zero regard for physics or dignity, and I catch her easily, laughing as her arms loop around my neck and her familiar weight knocks the breath from my lungs.
“Hi, bug,” I murmur into her hair, breathing her in like oxygen. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you more,” she declares solemnly, pulling back to cup my face in her small hands like she’s the grownup here. “You smell strange.”
I laugh, tears pricking my eyes. “That’s probably the paint. We’ve just finished fixing up the home theater. It needs a few days to air out, but I’ll show you what it looks like.”
She giggles, then hugs me again, fierce and unselfconscious, and something in my chest cracks wide open.
My parents watch from outside the car, their expressions soft and wary and full of unspoken things.
“Thanks for bringing her over,” I say, shifting Riley to one hip so I can give them each a side hug.