Chapter 32
Thirty-two
Alaric
Once again, my phone won’t stop vibrating.
It skitters across the corner of my desk, as if it’s trying to escape, and every time the screen lights up, my thoughts scatter.
It’s late on a Friday night, and I’m still here because I’m supposed to be finishing patient notes, but I’ve just read the same sentence four times without absorbing a word.
Another alert. Then another. I finally give in and turn the phone over.
It’s a news clip. Evelyn again. She’s standing at a microphone outside the tasting room, wrapped in her heavy wool coat, looking small and delicate in a way that’s absolutely intentional. Crown Corporation Investigates Evelyn Dempsey as Paradise Clan Circles
Of course, she’s framing it that way.
Another notification drops, a community post exploding with comments. Then my phone buzzes again.
Sera: Can you talk to Evie? Please. She’s making it worse.
Josie: Can you get her to stop? Dylan’s losing it, and the town is turning on us.
I set the phone down and lean back, staring at the ceiling, trying to breathe. I’m trained for chaos. I’m good at talking people down. I know how to keep things calm.
But my own family imploding like this is different.
The screen lights up again, and I make the mistake of watching the full clip. Evelyn grips the podium like she’s bracing against the wind, her voice thin and trembly as she says, “I’m just one old woman trying to protect what my family built.”
The crowd cheers. Signs wave. People I’ve known my whole life stand there like she’s leading a crusade. She knows how to work a crowd. She’s been doing it for years. Small. Frail. Brilliant at getting people to act in her defense.
I shut the clip off before the reporters can spin it any further. But then my phone actually rings. Barry Portman, our family attorney.
I hit speaker. “Tell me you’re calling with something normal.”
“I wish,” he says. “It’s bad.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that I stepped out of my daughter’s engagement dinner.” Paper shuffles on his end. “I’m hearing the Crown believes Dylan’s acting as a foot soldier for your grandmother. People are talking about it tonight.”
My eyes widen. I mean, seems correct, but not the message Evelyn wants out there. “Foot soldier? Seriously?”
“Yep. And it gets worse. Someone overheard Scott at Iron Horse bragging about ‘taking the Paradise family down a peg.’ Half the bar heard.”
“Great,” I mutter. “Just what we need.”
Barry lowers his voice. “This is exactly what Max and Trace Paradise want. Chaos. And Evelyn’s feeding right into it.”
I clear my throat. “I’ll call you back.”
“Alaric—”
“I need a minute.”
He doesn’t push. He just sighs, tired and resigned, and hangs up.
Another vibration hits my phone before I can lower my hand. A new text. Another comment thread. Someone has tagged me. Pressure builds behind my eyes, making my head throb.
The notifications keep coming, and stupidly, I click one.
Someone has shared a photo of Sera from a school fundraiser. She looks sweet, harmless, just standing there holding brownies. The caption underneath makes my stomach roil.
Funny how she’s pretending to be innocent when her family’s sabotaging the town.
I scroll, and it gets worse. Comments tearing into her, dragging Josie into it, accusing them of playing dumb, of protecting the guilty, of whatever else the town wants to believe.
Then there’s a picture of Josie unloading barrels behind the winery. Someone captioned it, Hard to trust the wine when the winemaker condones sabotage.
I shut the screen off so fast my thumb stings. I try calling both of them—Sera, then Josie. They don’t pick up. Their phones probably look exactly like mine, buzzing nonstop with accusations.
I sit on the couch and lean forward, elbows on my knees, trying to get air into my lungs. Everything’s spinning. Evelyn’s theatrics. Dylan’s recklessness. Scott’s stupidity. The town choosing sides.
I’m so goddamn tired of all these problems my grandmother has manufactured—or at least magnified. And the only voice I want to hear, the only one that could quiet all of this for even a second, is Liz’s.
I look over at my computer screen. The unfinished patient notes blink on the monitor like they’re impatient with me. I ignore them and turn back to my phone instead. One more alert rolls across the top. I swipe it away and tap Liz’s name.
She answers on the second ring. “Alaric? Are you okay?”
I can tell she was sleeping, but her voice is warm and gentle, and suddenly, I don’t know how to keep my answer light. It almost makes everything worse.
“No,” I tell her. “I’m not okay.”
“What happened?”
How to explain? “Evie’s been giving speeches all over town. Dylan’s name is everywhere. Scott’s bragging. And people are going after Sera and Josie like they’re personally responsible for every problem in the valley.”
Liz listens without interrupting. I’m close to unraveling, and if I do it now, she’ll hear all of it, get a front-row seat to the part of me that’s scared and exhausted and failing at holding my family together.
“It’s a mess,” I finally conclude. “I’m trying to keep up, but I can’t.”
“What do you need?” she asks.
The question hits like a blow.
What I need is comfort. Someone to tell me I’m not failing. Someone to sit in the quiet with me. I need her. But the thought of letting her know all that makes something inside me panic.
So I don’t have an answer. The silence stretches until the frustration in my chest turns sharp. “I shouldn’t have called,” I say.
“Alaric—”
“I mean it. I can’t handle one more thing. I shouldn’t drag you into this.” My voice breaks, tight and strained. “Reigniting our relationship was a mistake.”
The second the words leave my mouth, regret chases after them. I can feel the hurt silence on her end like it’s pressing against my skin. What the hell is wrong with me?
Before she can say anything, before I hear the disappointment in her voice, I end the call.
The silence afterward is brutal.
I set the phone beside me. That was the last thing I should’ve done. But I’m already drowning, and I can’t reach for her without pulling her under with me.
The phone buzzes again, but I don’t check it. Whether it’s Barry or Sera or Liz, I don’t have anything left. I stand, pace halfway across the room, then return to sink back down again.
I feel like a shell of myself. My family has become more than I can manage, and now I’ve screwed things up—at least three separate times—with the one person who hasn’t asked me to be anything more than human.
I get up again and walk to the window, resting my forehead against the cool glass. “This is all going to get worse before it gets better,” I mumble.
With that, I shut the lights off, grab my coat, and pocket my phone. Evie needs to understand that all she’s doing is making it worse. Everything’s slipping out of my hands, and I have no idea how to stop the rest from falling apart.
My phone rings at 2:31 a.m.
The glow from the screen throws a pale rectangle of light across the ceiling.
I blink, disoriented, until the screen lights up again. My eyes sting with tiredness, and the cold creeps under the blanket as I turn toward the nightstand.
Of course, it’s Evie.
We talked earlier at her house, but she remained convinced she was in the right. I begged her to listen to what the community is saying, but it didn’t work. And now this. She only calls like this when she’s spiraling. Or furious. Or both. My heartbeat kicks up as I swipe to answer. “Evie?”
She doesn’t bother with hello. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
There’s a tremor in her voice that lifts the hair on the back of my neck.
I sit up. “Seen what?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb,” she snaps. “The coverage. The glowing praise. The human-interest fluff about Tarryn Paradise saving the valley’s precious vines.
They found a powdery mildew on some vines they purchased, and they handled it so perfectly, so publicly, so transparently.
” She spits the words like they’re poison. Her breath hitches.
I close my eyes. “Evie, it’s two thirty in the morning—”
“And I suppose that’s a reason not to care?” she cuts in. “Every news station is talking about them. Every reporter is calling them responsible leaders. Meanwhile, only one reporter bothered to come to my press conference yesterday.”
Her voice breaks. Not with sadness, but with rage contained too long.
I don’t tell her it’s because nothing she says is new. Or that everyone can see she’s just shitting all over the Paradise family. I tried that earlier. She waved it all off.
“They don’t care about the truth,” she says. “They don’t care that I’m being framed. They only care about the shiny story in front of them.” The words tumble out faster, like she’s struggling to keep up with her own thoughts.
“Evie—”
“And you,” she snaps. “You’re doing nothing. Nothing. You’re sitting there while the Paradise family paints themselves as heroes and lets this valley believe I’m the villain.”
I press my palm to my forehead. “I can’t go out and give statements. You know that. I’d lose my license.” My fingers dig into my hair.
She scoffs. “Rules. Ethics. You hide behind those like a child behind a curtain.” She pauses, then adds, “Your girlfriend doesn’t seem to care much about ethics.”
Heat flashes through me, and then disappears, leaving a cold hollow behind. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, please.” She inhales, long and shaky. “Don’t insult me. Someone leaked that the Paradise family compensated us for the damaged block. No one in this family would betray me like that. So who does that leave?” Her voice climbs just a little too high on the last word.
The word girlfriend clangs around in my head. Wrong and out of date. I sit straighter. “Evie, Liz didn’t leak anything. She doesn’t even know—”
“She doesn’t know?” Evie cuts in, incredulous. “She absolutely knows. The compensation, the poisoned well, the water testing. Someone told her. And I know it wasn’t anyone at the vineyard. They know better.”
“Evie—” My throat feels dry.
Breathe in. Count to four. Breathe out. Count to four.
“So that leaves you.” Her voice turns cold. “Did you tell her? Did you open your mouth about Zach’s sabotage?”
“I didn’t,” I say. “I didn’t tell her anything.” My hand tightens around the phone. It’s the truth.
The Paradise family caught their cousin sabotaging the well that sits between our properties. They came clean and have been compensating us for what happened. Evie’s just been leaving that part out.
“Then how did the reporter know that ‘According to a source close to the families, the Paradise well was deliberately sabotaged by Zach Paradise, a Dempsey cousin’?” Evie demands, apparently reading from a recent article.
“Liz didn’t leak anything,” I repeat. “And the Paradise family has every incentive to get that out there themselves. It makes them look generous. Cooperative. Clean.” The last word tastes bitter.
I get silence in return. Not agreement. Offended silence. It stretches long enough that I can hear my pulse thudding in my ears.
“I won’t have anyone undermine me,” she says. “I won’t have you rewriting my reality to defend some girl you’ve known five minutes.”
Liz isn’t some girl, and it’s been a lot longer than five minutes, but I don’t correct her. It would pour gasoline on open flame. And it doesn’t matter at this point anyway.
My grandmother drops her voice into that low, dangerous tone she uses when she wants to hurt someone into obedience. “You do remember,” she says, “that I can disinherit you. And your sisters. All of you. With a signature. A moment.”
My jaw tightens. “Evie…”
“No,” she says. “Don’t test me. I can cut you out of this family as easily as I cut vines in the spring. Don’t think I won’t.”
What does she think she has that I want?
“Evie, look,” I say carefully. “I’m on your side.
I want the truth to come out. I want this to be over.
I’ll help however I can, within reason. Just slow down.
Breathe. Please.” The psychologist in me wants to guide her back from the edge, but the grandson already knows she’ll refuse to be led.
A long pause. I hear her breathing, uneven and ragged.
“You should have defended me,” she says. “You should have been out front.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. The words sit heavy in my mouth, heavier in my chest.
She exhales. “Good. Then maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
An abrupt click snaps in my ear, and the line goes dead. I sit in the dark, staring at nothing. Her voice was off tonight. More frantic. More paranoid. The investigation is eating at her mind, chewing through her composure. And the valley’s sudden love for the Paradise family only stokes her fear.
Evie said Liz knew about the Paradises’ compensation.
About the well. And I’m pretty sure, yeah, we talked about the Zach situation in Hawaii.
It was one of those nights where everything spilled out too easily.
I can still see us on that balcony, the ocean dark and loud. My guard lower than it should’ve been.
Would Liz tell someone?
Would she say something without realizing what it implied?
I don’t know.
But it shouldn’t matter. There are a million ways that information could have gotten out there. My grandmother can’t control everyone, and she shouldn’t expect me to fall in line.
As she unravels, though, she seems to believe just the opposite.