Chapter 24
RAPHAEL
Ireached for her in my sleep. It had become instinct now, even though it’d only been a few short weeks. My hand slid across cool sheets. Empty.
I was awake instantly.
I sat up, scanning the room. The moonlight spilled across the floor, pale and indifferent. Her side of the bed was rumpled but vacant.
Her crutches leaned where they always do against the nightstand. She had been walking without them more often. Too often.
“She should be using them,” I muttered under my breath as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
The bathroom light was off. The hallway was quiet.
“Belle.”
No answer.
A thread of unease tightened in my chest. I stepped into the hall.
And then I saw it.
The door that had not been opened in fifteen years. The sight of it hit like a physical blow.
Air left my lungs.
The hallway felt wrong. It tilted.
I was moving before I registered the decision. Every muscle in my body locked into something primal at the violation. I couldn’t handle the past cracking open without warning.
I reached the doorway, and there she was, standing in the nursery. The music box had gone silent now, but I could feel the echo of it in my bones. The crib stands exactly as it always has.
And Belle was standing in the center of it. She was barefoot, looking at everything with wide, stricken eyes.
Something detonated inside me. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
She startled, turning toward me as confusion flashed across her face.
“I—” she began. “Raph, what is all of this?”
The question scraped against something raw and exposed. I don’t answer it.
The storm inside me surged up quick and violent. The memory of that room. The silence after. The years of keeping it sealed so I could function.
She stepped into it without asking, without understanding.
“Get out,” I growl, trying to control the anguish screaming in my head.
My voice was low now, but it shook with something dangerous.
Her eyes widened.
“I didn’t know.”
“How dare you come in here!”
“What is all this?”
“GET. OUT.” The words tear from me.
Her mouth fell open as she gawked at me.
“GET OUT!!” I raged at her.
She flinched like I'd struck her. I was lost. The fury was louder than the guilt.
She hesitated for half a second. Then she moved, slowly at first, then faster.
She slipped past me in the doorway, and the warm and familiar scent of her collided violently with the cold, preserved air of the nursery.
I didn’t look at her. My hands were fists at my sides, my entire body rigid with the effort of not breaking something.
I was barely aware of her footsteps retreating down the hall.
I stood in the wreckage of a life I had kept buried. The room was silent again. The stuffed rabbit lay on its side near the dresser. I crossed the room slowly, each step measured, and lifted it from where it rested against the wall.
Dust coated the fabric. My fingers brushed it away instinctively. The rabbit was soft from years of being handled. Worn at one ear. I placed it back exactly where it belonged.
With order restored, I moved to the window and braced my hands against the sill, staring out into the dark.
The river glints faintly in the moonlight. And then I saw red taillights crest the drive.
She was leaving. Her car pulled out of my driveway.
“Fuck.” The word escaped low and furious.
I wasn’t angry at her, but at the situation. At myself. At the crack in the armor I have maintained for fifteen years.
She should not have been in there. She had no right.
That room is— Was— Mine. Ours.
I was a mess of emotions I didn’t begin to know how to untangle. I was angry she didn’t listen and came into these rooms. But I was also angry she left, even though I told her to leave.
I needed to go after her and fix this.
Instead, I carefully closed the nursery door. The click of the latch was a return to structure.
Sleep was impossible, so I headed to my office. The house felt hollow without her presence.
I sat at my desk and opened my laptop. If I cannot control the past, I will control the present.
Isabelle Blythe. Her name pulled up easily. Employment history. Education records. Financials.
I already knew the surface details, but I dug deeper. Rental inquiries. Credit checks. Rejected applications. The timeline aligned with what she told me. Maybe even longer in spirit.
Then I pivot.
Tripp Whitaker.
I open the file Chandler compiled.
Corporate holdings. Minor infractions. Civil complaints quietly settled. Internal investigations that went nowhere.
There are patterns there. Arrogance without consequence.
I expand the search parameters to the Whitaker family holdings. Alistair Whitaker seems to have a history of shielding his son's incompetence.
My fingers move faster across the keys until I find Long Creek Memory Care.
Ownership structure. Board members. Vendor contracts. Cleaning service bids. I map the network quietly, methodically.
From the research I’d done, I could see connections, leverage points, and weaknesses.
I wasn't spiraling. I was planning.
The sun began to crest the horizon by the time I leaned back in my chair. I had not slept, and I didn't feel tired.
She walked into my past without permission. She forced open something I sealed to survive.
And now—Now I would ensure that nothing in her world could threaten her again. Even if she never understands the cost of that promise. Even if she never returns.
I closed the file, and the house remained silent.
And for the first time in years, the grief I have long kept contained was awake. And I didn’t know what I was going to do with it.
A knock landed against my office door just after sunrise.
Geoffrey.
I did not answer immediately.
The second knock was firmer.
“Sir.”
“Enter.”
The door opened, and Geoffrey stepped inside with his immaculate suit, as always, with his perfect posture. Although a carefully neutral expression gave him away, his gaze moved once around the room.
The open files. The empty coffee cup I did not remember finishing. The stack of printed documents spread across my desk. Then to me.
“You did not sleep,” he observed.
“I’m fine.”
“That was not my question.”
I didn’t respond. He studied me a moment longer, and something shifted behind his composed expression.
“The bedroom door is open,” he said quietly.
The words landed like a stone. I held his gaze. “Yes.”
“She entered it.” Geoffrey stills.
“Yes. She did.”
“And you?”
I leaned back in my chair as a large sigh left my body. “Told her to leave.” The admission tastes metallic.
Geoffrey’s brows drew together slightly. “Where is she now?”
“She left.” I shrugged, attempting indifference, but I was anything but.
Geoffrey’s composure gave a rare crack. “She left the room?”
“She left the house.”
Silence falls heavily between us.
“What do you mean she left?” he asks carefully.
“She left. I’m not sure what you aren’t understanding!”
“Raphael.” The use of my given name is deliberate.
I leaned back in my chair. “She opened the doors,” I said flatly. “Both of them.”
Geoffrey exhaled slowly.
All I could do was glare at him.
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “You frightened her.”
“I enforced a boundary.”
“You roared.”
The word was precise, and I did not deny it.
A second knock interrupted the silence. Chandler entered without waiting this time, tablet in hand.
“I received your three a.m. request for expanded Whitaker holdings,” he began briskly, then stopped when he took the room.
“Well,” he said lightly, “this feels productive.”
Geoffrey didn’t look at him. “She left,” was all he said, still giving me a disapproving look I fully deserved.
Chandler’s expression shifted immediately. “As in?”
“As in drove away before dawn,” Geoffrey clarified.
Chandler looked at me. “What did you do?”
“I did nothing.”
He merely crossed his arms, evaluating me.
“She opened the nursery.”
Silence. Even Chandler goes still at that. “And you . . . ?”
“Told her to leave.”
Chandler closed his eyes briefly. “Sir.”
“She had no right.”
“She lives here,” Chandler countered gently.
“She does not live in that room.”
Geoffrey stepped forward slightly. “She did not know.”
“That is not my responsibility.”
“It is,” Geoffrey said quietly. “If you intend to keep her.”
The word lands harder than it should. Keep her. I wanted that, but I don’t think I fully understood the gravity or depth until this moment.
Chandler set his tablet down on my desk.
“You have two options,” he said calmly. “Remain here and continue dismantling Whitaker Industries, or go find your wife.”
“She left.”
“Yes,” Chandler replied evenly. “After you shouted at her in a room she did not understand.”
I rose from my chair.
“She violated—”
“She walked into grief you never explained,” Geoffrey interrupted.
The room felt smaller suddenly.
“You cannot punish her for ignorance you created,” Geoffrey added softly.
The words struck cleanly. I looked between them.
“You expect me to chase her.”
“Yes,” Chandler said immediately.
“No,” Geoffrey corrected. “We expect you to repair what you broke.”
The silence stretches. Finally, I reached for my phone and dialed her number.
It rings once. Twice. I heard a faint vibration.
I walked into my room, and there was her phone resting on the nightstand beside my bed exactly where she left it.
And for the first time since I saw those taillights leaving the gates, real fear cut through the anger.