Chapter 19
AISLING
Sleep refuses to come.
I lie awake long after the room goes quiet, long after Raf’s breathing evens out beside me, staring at the faint spill of moonlight across the ceiling and replaying every word he said.
The way his voice changed when he spoke Genevieve’s name still echoes in my chest.
He sounded… ruined, like a man walking through the wreckage of a house that used to be his, and it makes me hurt for so many different reasons.
I turn onto my side, careful not to wake him.
He sleeps on his back, one arm flung above his head, lashes casting dark shadows on his cheeks.
He looks younger like this, less carved from stone, less dangerous, and it’s strange to think of him as anything but impervious.
But tonight, he showed me that beneath his stone-cold exterior, he feels pain, guilt, and remorse just like the rest of us.
That realization unsettles me more than any threat he’s ever made.
I press my palm flat against my ribs, as if I can quiet the anxiety buzzing there.
Everything he told me makes sense now—the way he holds himself like loving anyone is a liability he can’t afford.
Though I know logically that our marriage is fake, it still stings to have confirmed Raf’s heart belongs to another woman.
But it’s not at all in the way I imagined.
It isn’t lust for another he was clinging to when he was with me.
It’s grief, a kind of grief so deep, it fossilized around him, turning love into something sacred and forbidden all at once.
It hurts more than I expect it to.
Swallowing hard, I squeeze my eyes shut, pushing the unwanted emotion deep down inside me.
And in its place rises a slow and persistent anxiety as I consider just how close his apology came to the truth of our reality.
Raf didn’t just carelessly break my heart and walk away.
He made the choice based on what was right for his family.
And he left before he knew what he’d done to me—before I knew what he’d done to me.
My hand drifts unconsciously to my stomach, fingers splaying over fabric and skin like I can feel the echo of my past.
The fear, the shock, the moment my entire world tilted on its axis and never quite righted itself again.
He doesn’t know.
He has no idea that when he walked away, convinced he was preventing a violent conflict, he left me pregnant and terrified and utterly alone.
He doesn’t know that my family didn’t just hate the Chiaroscuros on principle.
They didn’t just hate Raf for taking my virginity or ruining my marriage prospects.
They hated him for stealing my future and leaving me with an impossible choice.
Unmarried and pregnant at just eighteen?
In our world, it was nothing short of condemning me.
So the alliance with the Tanakas wasn’t just about territory or power or vengeance for slights real and imagined.
It was personal.
It was blood-deep.
It was my brothers and my father looking at me, pale and shaking, utterly broken when I confessed I was carrying Rafael Chiaroscuro’s baby and that he wanted nothing to do with me, and deciding no one would ever hurt me like that again.
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.
“Of course,” my mom says, pressing a kiss to my temple. “You just let us know if you need anything.”
They hand over Riley’s overnight bag, remind her to behave, to listen, to be good.
She nods enthusiastically and gives them both a kiss before nudging me with her heels like I’m a horse.
“Come on,” she says. “I want to see your castle.”
Laughing, I encourage her to wave until my parents’ car is out of sight, then I turn and carry her inside. “What would you like to see first?” I ask, setting her down once we reach the foyer.
“My room,” she says, bubbling over with excitement. “Do I get to sleep in the tower?”
“Not this time, bug. It’s not safe just yet, but you get to stay in the room right next to mine.”
That seems to be enough to appease her as I show her up the grand staircase.
She looks around, taking it all in with wide eyes and endless questions, her hand never leaving mine as we wander through halls that already feel less empty with her laughter echoing through them.
She chatters nonstop, about preschool, her teacher, a boy who pulled her pigtails, and how she got in trouble for pushing a little girl who was picking on her friend Astrid.
“That’s my girl,” I say proudly. She’s not even five yet, and already, Riley has that fiercely loyal Murray streak.
She beams.
We end up sprawled on the rug in the sitting room, building a lopsided tower out of decorative pillows while she narrates an elaborate story involving princesses, dragons, and a surprisingly aggressive goose.
I’m so wrapped up in her that I don’t hear Raf at first, not until Riley gasps dramatically and scrambles to her feet, eyes wide as she considers him.
He stands in the doorway, suit jacket discarded, the sleeves of his mint-green dress shirt rolled up, watching us with an expression I can’t quite name.
Something in my chest lurches, and I lick my suddenly dry lips. “Hey. You’re home early,” I observe.
“It was a good day,” he says. “So I figured I’d play hooky to come greet our new house guest.” He crouches down to Riley’s level. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Riley.”
She studies him with solemn curiosity, then nods. “You’re Sissy’s husband.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s right.”
She considers this, then reaches out and takes his hand without hesitation.
“You have big hands,” she informs him. “Are you strong?”
Raf blinks, then chuckles. “I suppose I am.”
“Good,” she says decisively. “You can help us build the castle.”
And just like that, he’s at the mercy of the spirited young girl.
He sits on the floor with us, following her instructions with exaggerated seriousness, letting her boss him around as if he doesn’t command entire armies with a glance.
He listens when she speaks, laughs when she jokes. And I watch it all like I’m witnessing something impossible.
He’s so natural with her, so… gentle.
The sight of it hits me like a freight train.
I’d never really considered whether Raf would make a good father before. I’d never had cause to. But now, it’s so glaringly obvious that it feels like the building blocks making up my construct of him are all coming tumbling down.
My chest tightens, emotion flooding me so fast, I have to look away.
Riley crawls into my lap, leaning back against me as she points at their crooked creation. “It’s perfect,” she declares.
“It is,” Raf agrees, glancing at me.
Our eyes meet.
Something unspoken passes between us, heavy and terrifying and achingly tender, and a question I’ve avoided for years rises up, sharp and impossible to ignore.
Is it right to keep such a massive secret from him?