Chapter 29 - Poppy
The lock on the guest room door is flimsy—decorative more than functional, the kind of hardware you install when you never expect anyone to actually use it.
Gabriel could break through it with one solid kick.
He could have the staff bring him a key.
He could find a dozen ways to reach me if he wanted to.
But he doesn't.
I hear him in the hallway around midnight, his footsteps pausing outside my door. He stands there for what feels like an eternity—I can see the shadow of his feet in the gap beneath the door, can feel the weight of his presence pressing against the thin barrier between us.
He doesn't knock. Doesn't speak. Doesn't try to force his way in.
Eventually, the shadow moves away. His footsteps retreat down the corridor, and I'm alone again.
I should feel relieved. Instead, I feel hollow.
I lie in the unfamiliar bed, staring at the ceiling I've never really looked at before. The guest room is beautiful—of course it is, everything in this house is beautiful—but it feels sterile. Unlived in. A space designed for strangers, not for the woman who's been sharing the master's bed.
Sleep doesn't come. Every time I close my eyes, I see Gabriel's face in the garden. The desperation in his expression when I accused him. The way his voice cracked when he said I was afraid.
Gabriel Ambrose, afraid. The man who kills without remorse, who controls empires, who tied me to his bed and made me beg—that man was afraid. Of losing me. Of watching me look at him the way I'm looking at him now.
Like I'm a monster, he said.
Is that what I see when I look at him? A monster?
I don't know anymore. I don't know what I see, what I feel, what I want. Everything is tangled together—the horror and the desire, the betrayal and the understanding, the rage and the grief, and something else I refuse to name.
He killed my father.
The words echo in my head, relentless and inescapable. He killed my father. Before I was born, before he knew I existed, Gabriel Ambrose wrapped his hands around Dwayne Thomas's throat and squeezed until the life drained out of him.
And my father deserved it.
That's the part I can't reconcile. The part that makes everything so much more complicated than it should be.
I've read Dwayne's journal entries. Zach made sure of that—showed me the pages that detailed, in my father's own handwriting, the things he did to his students. The boys he targeted. The ways he broke them.
Gabriel was one of those boys. For two years, he suffered at my father's hands.
I try to imagine it—a teenage Gabriel, not yet the predator he would become, trapped in a nightmare he couldn't escape. Powerful family, prestigious school, and a teacher who used his position to torment children who had no one to protect them.
What would I have done in his place? If someone had hurt me like that, and I'd found a moment where I could fight back—what would I have done?
I don't know. I've never been tested like that.
But I understand why he did it. I can even understand why he kept it secret all these years, why he let the Brotherhood cover it up, why he built his life on the foundation of that first kill.
What I can't understand—what I can't forgive—is why he didn't tell me.
He's had days. Days of knowing who I am, who my father was, how our histories are intertwined. Days of looking into my eyes and choosing to stay silent. Days of touching me, fucking me, whispering words of possession and desire, all while carrying a secret that should have been mine to know.
I was trying to find the right words, he said.
There are no right words. That's what I told him, and I meant it. But there are better choices than silence. Better choices than using my body to distract me from the truth.
I curl onto my side, pulling the blanket up to my chin, and try to organize my thoughts.
What do I know for certain?
Gabriel killed my father. That's a fact, undeniable, confirmed by both Zach and Gabriel himself.
My father was a monster. Also a fact, supported by the journal entries, by what Gabriel told me, by the way my mother spent twenty-five years running from his shadow.
Gabriel didn't know who I was when he started watching me.
That's harder to verify, but I believe it.
The way he reacted when I confronted him—the shock, the desperation—that wasn't the response of a man who's been manipulating me from the beginning.
That was the response of a man whose carefully constructed world just collapsed around him.
And he's been hiding the truth from me since he found out. That's the part that burns. Not the kill itself—I can almost understand that, can almost frame it as justice rather than murder. But the lies. The deliberate choice to keep me in the dark.
He doesn't trust me. He said he does, but actions speak louder than words. If he trusted me, he would have told me the truth as soon as he learned it. Instead, he tried to bind me tighter, to make me so dependent on him that I couldn't leave even when I found out.
That's not trust. That's control.
And I'm so fucking tired of being controlled.
***
Dawn creeps through the windows, painting the room in shades of gray and gold.
I haven't slept. My eyes are gritty, my body heavy with exhaustion, but my mind won't stop racing. I've spent the entire night cycling through the same thoughts, the same questions, the same impossible choices.
Stay or go.
Forgive or condemn.
Tell him about the baby or keep it secret.
My hand drifts to my stomach, as it has a hundred times since I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test. There's a life growing inside me. A tiny cluster of cells that will become a person—a person who is half me and half Gabriel, who will carry Dwayne Thomas's blood alongside mine.
I haven't told him. I've been holding it back, waiting for... what? The right moment? There is no right moment. There's only now, and now is a disaster.
If I tell him about the baby, everything changes.
He'll never let me go—I know that with bone-deep certainty.
Gabriel Ambrose possessive of a woman is one thing; Gabriel Ambrose possessive of a child is something else entirely.
He'll move heaven and earth to keep us, will burn down anyone who tries to take us away.
Part of me finds that comforting. Part of me finds it terrifying.
And part of me—the small, stubborn part that's been growing stronger since this nightmare began—wonders if I want to be kept at all.
Zach's card is still in my purse, tucked into the lining alongside the pregnancy test and the manila envelope full of documents. A way out, he called it. A new life, far from the Brotherhood.
I could take it. I could pack a bag, slip away while Gabriel is distracted, disappear into whatever network of safe houses and false identities Zach has prepared. I could raise this baby alone, far from the darkness that Gabriel represents.
But even as I think it, I know I won't do it.
Not because I'm afraid. Not because I'm weak. But because running would mean making a decision without all the information. It would mean letting Zach—a man with his own agenda, his own reasons for wanting to hurt Gabriel—dictate the course of my life.
I'm done letting other people control my choices.
If I stay, it will be because I choose to stay. If I go, it will be because I choose to go. But either way, it will be my decision.
First, though, I need perspective. I need to talk to someone outside this world, someone who might understand what I'm going through.
I need to talk to my mother.
***
I hear Gabriel moving through the house around seven—his footsteps on the stairs, the distant murmur of his voice as he speaks to the staff. He pauses outside my door again, and I hold my breath, waiting.
Still, he doesn't knock.
I wait until I hear the front door close, until the sound of a car engine fades down the driveway. Then I get out of bed and start to pack.
Not everything. Just a small bag—enough for a few days. Clothes, toiletries, the envelope from Zach. The pregnancy test, still wrapped in its silk scarf. Evidence of all the secrets I'm carrying.
My phone buzzes with a text from Bea: Haven't heard from you in forever. Starting to worry. Call me?
I stare at the message for a long moment. Bea has been my best friend for ten years. She's the one I should be turning to, the one who's always been there when I needed her.
But I can't drag her into this. Can't explain any of it without putting her at risk. Gabriel's world is dangerous, and I won't make her a target just because I need someone to talk to.
Everything's fine, I type back. Just busy with work. Talk soon, I promise.
Another lie. I'm drowning in them now.
I finish packing and sit on the edge of the bed, my phone in my hands. I need to tell Gabriel I'm leaving. Not asking permission—informing him. There's a difference.
I compose the text carefully, deleting and rewriting until the words feel right:
I need to see my mother. I'll be back in a few days. Please don't follow me.
My thumb hovers over the send button. Once I do this, there's no taking it back. I'm drawing a line, establishing a boundary, demanding space that he may or may not respect.
I press send.
The response comes almost immediately: Poppy, please. Let me explain—
I don't read the rest. I turn off the phone and slip it into my bag.
***
James is in the kitchen when I come downstairs, drinking coffee with Mrs. Bloom. They both look up when I enter, their expressions carefully neutral.
"I need a car," I say. "I'm going to visit my mother."
James sets down his cup. "Does Mr. Ambrose know?"
"I've informed him. He's not my jailer, James. I'm allowed to leave."
Something flickers in his eyes—doubt, maybe, or concern—but he nods slowly. "Of course, miss. I'll bring the car around."
Mrs. Bloom watches me with worried eyes. "Are you all right, dear? You look pale."
"I'm fine. Just tired."
It's the same lie I've been telling for weeks. She doesn't believe it any more than Gabriel did, but she doesn't push. She just presses a thermos of tea into my hands and tells me to be careful.
The drive to my mother's apartment takes one hour. I spend most of it staring out the window, watching the landscape change from rolling estates to suburban sprawl to the modest neighborhood where my mother has lived for the past decade.
It's the longest she's ever stayed in one place. I used to think that meant she finally felt safe, that whatever she'd been running from had faded into memory.
Now I know the truth: she was running from a ghost. Twenty-five years of looking over her shoulder, and the man she feared was already dead.
Because Gabriel killed him. Three months after I was born, while my mother was still changing my diapers and learning to survive on her own, a sixteen-year-old boy wrapped his hands around Dwayne Thomas's throat and ended the threat she didn't know existed.
She deserves to know. Whatever else happens, whatever I decide about Gabriel and the baby and my own future, my mother deserves to know that her nightmare is over. That it's been over for a quarter century.
James drops me at the curb outside her building. "Shall I wait, miss?"
"No. I'll call when I'm ready to come back."
If I'm ready to come back. But I don't say that part out loud.
I watch him drive away, then turn to face the building. It's modest—clean but unremarkable, the kind of place that doesn't attract attention. My mother has always chosen places like this. Places where she can disappear.
I climb the stairs to her apartment and knock on the door.
It takes a moment before I hear movement inside—the shuffle of footsteps, the click of locks being undone. Then the door opens, and my mother's face appears in the gap.
"Poppy?" Her eyes widen with surprise, then narrow with concern. "What are you doing here? Is everything all right?"
No. Nothing is all right. Nothing has been all right since I walked into that gala and saw a man standing over a corpse.
But I can't say that. Not yet. Not standing in the hallway where anyone might hear.
"Can I come in?" My voice cracks despite my best efforts to control it. "I need to talk to you. About my father. About everything."
My mother's face goes pale. For a moment, I think she's going to refuse—going to slam the door and pretend I never came, the way she's pretended my entire life.
But then she steps back, opening the door wider.
"Come in," she says quietly. "I think it's time you knew the truth."