Chapter Twenty-nine
Serena
The house is warm when we step inside, too warm, maybe, heat curling around my skin like a hand I cannot shrug off. My mother pauses just beyond the threshold, taking everything in with that clinical appraisal she calls interest.
“So,” she says lightly, as if we’ve parted yesterday and not half a year ago. “How have you been?”
The question lands like a pebble thrown into a deep well, small, meaningless, swallowed instantly.
Across the foyer, Bianca freezes mid-step and fixes my mother with a glare sharp enough to peel skin. I give her the smallest smile I can manage, a promise I’m not crumbling yet.
The dogs save me from answering immediately.
Pancake barrels into me first, tail helicoptering, paws slipping on the hardwood. Milkshake follows, more cautious, but still pressing his warm body against my leg. Their presence pulls a breath out of me I didn’t know I was holding.
“Hi, babies,” I murmur, scratching their ears. Pancake licks my wrist; Milkshake nudges under my hand as if anchoring me. Their wet noses bump my cheek. I kiss them both without thinking.
“I’ve been good,” I finally say, polite. My mother does not deserve the truth. She forfeited that right the moment she walked away.
She doesn’t notice the steel beneath my voice. She never has.
Her gaze drifts to the dogs, her expression sharpening into distaste.
“I heard dog hair is bad for babies,” she remarks, as if delivering a public service announcement.
Something ugly twists inside me, hot and instant. I bite back the first response that rises, so is abandonment, and go for the second.
“And I heard unsolicited advice is unnecessary,” I reply sweetly.
Milkshake, usually the calmer one, emits a low growl from deep in his chest. Pancake doesn't acknowledge her existence at all, which somehow feels worse. I smile before I can stop myself.
Dogs always know.
Her expression flickers, hurt? annoyance? then smooths back into pleasant detachment.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and if the tremor in her voice fools me for even half a heartbeat, that’s on me. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”
No. She never means anything. Things simply happen around her, and she watches them like someone tasting weather.
We move farther inside. The familiar scent of roasted beans and fresh pastries drifts from the kitchen. Bianca steps out, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Serena, darling,” she says warmly, before turning her gaze, far cooler, to my mother. “Should I prepare coffee?”
My chest tightens. This woman, the one I met far too late, has done more mothering in three months than the one who raised me.
“Yes,” I say, steadying my voice. “A decaf for me, and a regular for my mother, please.”
Bianca’s mouth softens into a smile that is both approval and affection.
“Of course.”
She disappears back into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the woman who gave me life, and took so much of it away.
The silence stretches, full of years that won’t ever be reclaimed.
And for the first time since she arrived, I feel it fully:
This is going to hurt.
And I am finally strong enough to let it.
The dogs flank me as I lead her into the kitchen, one pressed tight against each leg, warm bodies bracketing mine as if they can feel the air shift around my mother. Pancake keeps glancing up at her, wary. Milkshake stays glued to my side, a low rumble vibrating through him every time she moves.
Guardians.
Or judges.
I’m grateful for both.
“Thank you,” my mother says when Bianca sets the mugs down.
Her smile is bright, practiced. Bianca’s answering expression is thin ice, polite enough not to crack, cold enough to cut.
So Bianca senses it too.
My mother inhales, looking around the room like a tourist.
“The house looks nice,” she says, and her tone is airy, like she’s complimenting a hotel suite she plans to leave in the morning. “Now it feels like. . .” She searches for the word. “Home.”
She has no idea how violently my stomach twists hearing that.
Because she’s right, and it kills me that she’s right for all the wrong reasons.
This house stopped being my parents’ home the moment responsibility and cruelty seeped into every wall.
It became mine only after the ghosts fled.
My good memories live here, yes, but they are recent, fragile, still forming.
They started when my friends tried to fill the emptiness with laughter and pasta and pregnancy cravings at midnight.
They bloomed with the smell of Bianca’s lasagna filling every room, food made from affection, not obligation.
And yes, God help me, they deepened every time Lorenzo walked through that front door. The warmth in his eyes. His hand settling over my rounding belly like reverence. Pancake rolling onto his back, Milkshake shoving toys at him. All of that stitched meaning into the walls.
But he’s not here now.
And some part of me aches like it always will.
Bianca places the cups in front of us.
Steam curls upward.
I take a sip and close my eyes, decaf, nutty, warm, perfectly made.
My mother never learned how I take my coffee.
Twenty-four years with her, and she never bothered.
It’s astonishing, really, how a stranger in my kitchen knows my preferences better than the woman who raised me.
I push that thought away before it festers.
“How can I help, Mother?” I ask, aiming for neutral but hearing boredom lace my tone anyway.
She reaches across the table and takes my hands. Her touch is cool, manicured, tentative, like she’s afraid I might shatter.
I swallow the instinct to pull back.
“Serena. . .” Her voice trembles, just enough to sound human. “I’m so sorry.”
The words crack the air between us.
“I’m sorry I was an absent mother. I’m sorry for how I treated you. For what I said. For what I failed to do.”
Her fingers tighten around mine, too desperate, too late. “I don’t regret you. Not for a single second.”
She tries to hold on when I gently slip my hands free.
“Please. . . please forgive me.”
And God help me, something in my chest wants to believe her.
Wants a mother who did not weaponize love.
Wants blood that doesn’t burn when it touches mine.
I hate that I want that.
I hate that a part of me still hopes.
I sit there, dogs pressed at my feet, coffee cooling beside us, and feel the ground tilt under the weight of a truth I never asked for:
Forgiveness is easy when the wound is superficial.
But when the person holding your hand is the same one who taught you what abandonment tastes like—
Forgiveness is a battlefield.
And today, I’m not sure I’m ready to fight.
My throat works around a swallow, and I force myself to stay still, to stay rational.
To not react to the way every sentence she speaks drips like poison I can’t spit out.
“Tell me what you meant when you said I’m in danger.”
She draws a slow, steadying breath, or pretends to. Her eyes glisten, but not a muscle in her face moves. Tears without emotion, like someone rehearsing grief in a mirror.
“Right,” she murmurs. “I didn’t just go on holiday after your father died.” Her gaze locks on mine, pinning me to the chair. “I was hiding.”
Hiding.
From what, guilt? Consequences? Herself?
I arch a brow. “From?”
“Ian Archibald.”
She says his name like he’s some mythic monster, a villain lurking beneath floorboards. I bite back the snort rising in my throat.
Ian, tidy, polite, golden-boy Ian, the man my father pushed toward me like I was a gift basket. The man Lorenzo nearly beat unconscious to stop a wedding I never agreed to. The man who vanished the second my world imploded.
A ghost I never bothered summoning back.
“Well?” I ask her, impatience prickling under my skin.
If she dragged herself all the way back from whatever tropical spa she exiled herself to, she can manage a complete sentence.
She watches me too closely. “Do you know what happened to your father and John?” she asks softly.
Yes.
I know exactly what happened. Two bullets in a basement.
The sound of them still echoes in my head, sharp and final.
Blood spilled across the concrete like retribution finally delivered.
And the man I loved stood over the bodies, silent and terrible, like an executioner pulled from some ancient myth whispered to misbehaving children in the dark.
“They died,” I reply flatly. I offer her nothing more. She hasn’t earned more.
She reaches across the table and takes my hand, and Milkshake growls low in his throat, fur bristling.
Good dog.
“I think you know what happened,” she whispers, “and I think you know who killed them.”
Oh, I know.
I blink slowly. “Your point?”
She exhales as though relieved she can finally say it aloud. “I don’t blame him, Serena.” Her tone softens, too soft, as if she’s comforting me. “They were terrible, terrible men,” she continues. “I actually feel relieved that this happened, and for your safety, I’m happy that he did it.”
I stare.
My mother, polished, brittle, heartless, relieved that her husband is dead?
None of this fits. None of it makes sense.
“Mother,” I say, voice sharpening like a blade, “your point.”
She draws another breath, a long one, like she’s about to confess a mortal sin.
“Do you know why he did it?” she asks.
My chest constricts.
I shake my head once. “And I don’t want to know.”
“I suppose that’s why Lorenzo isn’t here right now.” Her smile is humorless. “But I’m sure he is here, even if we don’t see him.”
I don’t react.
If she knew just how right she was. . . the guards, the cameras, the unseen leash around my wrists, she’d probably faint.
“But I hope he’ll see this as a. . . gesture,” she adds carefully, “a good-will attempt to get you back.”
Something cold slides down my spine.
“What are you talking about?”
She tilts her head.
“I’m surprised he didn’t use the reason he killed them to win you back sooner. I suppose that’s what a decent man does, he protects you quietly.”
Now my pulse is thunder.
“What reason?” I whisper.
Her lips curve, not into a smile, but into something that looks like resignation.