Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Lettie
The world didn’t stop. That was the cruelest part.
My world split open in the middle of Main Street, and the festival kept going around me.
Children still laughed. Music still drifted from the small stage near the courthouse.
Someone at the booth across from mine called out a price for homemade jam.
A woman holding a paper cup of lemonade stood frozen with one hand halfway to her mouth, staring at us, but beyond her, people kept moving, kept talking, kept living as if my name had not just been ripped away from me and replaced with one that felt both foreign and familiar.
Colette. The name echoed inside me. Not Violet. Not Lettie. Colette. I didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t know where to put my hands or how to breathe or which face to look at first.
Rykard stood in front of me with grief carved so deep into him I could hardly stand to meet his eyes.
Apollo sat beside him in his chair, shattered in a way I’d never seen before.
Brock’s arm circled my waist, solid and tight, holding me upright when I wasn’t entirely sure my legs remembered how to do that on their own.
And my mother—no, not my mother. Carol or Claire. The woman in the blue dress. She stood near the edge of my booth with terror on her face, and I hated that some part of me still wanted to ask if she needed to sit down.
“No,” she said again, louder this time. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t know what kind of sick game this is, but I won’t stand here and let you do this.
” Her voice shook, but it wasn’t the fragile tremble she used when she wanted pity.
It was rage. Real rage. The kind she usually saved for behind closed doors when I’d failed to be grateful enough.
Rykard stared at her like he was looking at a ghost he wanted to kill. “Don’t you fucking lie to me.”
Several people gasped.
Mother’s chin lifted. “How dare you speak to me like that.”
Apollo made a broken sound. “You don’t get to be offended.”
“You stay out of this,” she snapped.
Brock moved before I did, his body shifting just enough that I felt the threat radiating from him. “Careful.”
Mother’s eyes cut to him, and for the first time in my life, I saw real fear there. Not fear of sickness. Not fear of abandonment. Fear of consequences. Then she looked at me, and the fear changed. It softened. Became wounded. Practiced. Familiar.
“Violet,” she whispered.
My chest hurt.
That name had never felt like mine, not fully, but it was the one she’d given me. The one written on school forms and bank accounts and order slips. The one she’d called from her bed when she wanted tea, soup, medicine, attention, proof that I still belonged where she had put me.
“Violet, sweetheart, don’t listen to them.”
I flinched. Brock’s hand spread against my stomach. “Breathe, baby.” I tried. Mother saw him touch me, and hatred flashed across her face so quickly I might have imagined it if I didn’t know her better than anyone else did.
“They’re lying,” she said. “All of them. That man is confused. He is confused. He’s always been unstable. Look at him.”
Apollo went white.
Rykard stepped forward. “Say one more word about my son.”
Mother ignored him, eyes locked on me. “You know me. You know who raised you. You know who cared for you when no one else did.”
No one else.
The words slid under my skin with all the old hooks still attached.
No one else loved you. No one else stayed.
No one else sacrificed. No one else would put up with you.
Except now, Rykard was standing right there, looking at me like the sight of me breathing had both saved and destroyed him.
Apollo had tears in his eyes and murder in his hands.
Brock held me like I wasn’t allowed to disappear inside her voice anymore.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anything. But it was all I had.
Mother reached for me. Brock didn’t let her get close.
“Move,” she hissed at him.
“No.”
“I am her mother.”
Rykard’s voice broke through the noise, low and ruined. “No, you’re not.”
Her face twisted. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know your name.”
“My name is Carol Foster.”
“Bullshit.”
Mother recoiled like he’d struck her. The crowd around us thickened.
I could feel people watching, whispering, phones appearing in hands.
It only took one look from Ares, who had materialized at the edge of the gathering, for most of them to suddenly remember they valued their fingers.
Hermes was there too, moving with his usual lazy grace that never fooled anyone who knew better.
The Gods of Mayhem were spreading around my booth without anyone giving an order.
A wall. For me. Against her. That should have comforted me. Instead, it made me dizzy.
“Lettie,” Brock murmured near my ear. Lettie. That name steadied me more than Violet ever had. It was the name I’d chosen for myself without knowing why. A piece of something true that had survived even when I hadn’t known there was anything to survive.
Mother saw the way I leaned back into him. Her mouth trembled. Then the mask cracked.
“You’ve turned her against me,” she said to Brock.
“No,” he said. “You did that all by yourself.”
“I gave her everything.”
“You took everything.”
The words hit the air like a blade. Mother staggered back one step, and for a second, I saw the woman from my childhood. Not the frail, helpless woman lying in bed, waiting for me to bring a tray. I saw a younger woman with sharp eyes and sharp hands who knew exactly where to press until I folded.
“You don’t know what she owes me,” Mother said.
Something inside me went still. Owes. Not loves. Not means to me. Owes.
Rykard heard it too. I watched his face change, grief burning into something far more dangerous.
Apollo’s hands shook on the arms of his chair. “She was a baby.”
Mother’s gaze snapped to him. “And you lost her.”
The words sliced through him again. I felt Brock’s body coil behind me, but this time Rykard moved first. He didn’t touch her. Didn’t need to. He stepped close enough that Mother stopped breathing.
“He was fourteen,” Rykard said, his voice low enough that it scared me more than yelling would have. “A kid. You stole a little girl from her family and let us spend our whole fucking lives believing we’d failed her.”
Mother’s eyes flashed. “I saved her.”
My stomach turned. Rykard stared at her. Apollo stopped moving entirely. Brock’s arm tightened around me.
“You saved her?” I asked. My voice sounded wrong. Small, thin, like it belonged to someone else.
Mother looked at me, and for one terrible second, hope lit her face. She thought I’d given her an opening. She thought I was reaching for the story she wanted to tell.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, sweetheart. I saved you. You were meant to be mine.”
Rykard made a sound that wasn’t human. I couldn’t look at him. If I looked at him, I’d break in a way Brock might not be able to hold together.
“I was meant to be yours?” I repeated.
Mother’s eyes filled with tears. “You don’t understand. I had nothing. No child. No husband who loved me the way he should have. No life that mattered. Your mother had everything.”
My mother.
Not her.
The other woman.
The one who’d lost me.
The one who’d died without knowing I was alive. Something collapsed inside me so quietly no one else heard it.
“You mean my real mother,” I said.
Mother’s face hardened. “Don’t call her that.”
The last thread snapped. I didn’t move. Didn’t scream. Didn’t lunge or cry or do anything dramatic enough to match the violence inside me. I only stared at the woman who’d raised me and realized I didn’t know where love ended and theft began. Maybe, with her, there had never been a difference.
A familiar voice cut softly through the chaos. “Carol?”
Zander.
I’d forgotten he was there. He stood a few feet behind Mother, not pushing forward, not inserting himself, not demanding answers.
Just watching. His face held concern, but his eyes were too still.
They moved from Mother to me, then to Brock’s arm locked around my waist, then to the Gods forming a wall around the booth.
Mother turned toward him like a drowning woman seeing shore. “Zander,” she breathed. The softness was instant. So was my pain. Even now, with everything falling apart, she still had softness for him.
He stepped closer, careful and calm. “What’s happening?”
“Lies,” Mother said immediately. “Cruel lies. They’re trying to take Violet from me.”
Brock’s chest rumbled against my back. “Careful.”
Mother ignored him and moved toward Zander, putting him between herself and the men who knew too much. “The club hates me. They’ve always hated me. They love her now, all of them, because she’s useful and pretty and sweet. Hades especially. He thinks she belongs to him, and she lets him.”
My cheeks burned. Brock went dangerously still. Zander’s gaze flicked to me again. Something shifted in his expression. Not much. Enough.
Mother kept talking, her voice low but not low enough. Maybe she didn’t care who heard anymore. Maybe she just needed someone to hear her version first. But she wasn’t making sense. The club didn’t hate her; the club didn’t even know her.
“She neglects me now. She forgets what I gave up. She leaves me alone in that house while she runs after him and his club. She used to care. She used to know I needed her.”
The words landed in strange places. Not because I believed them.
Because I used to. I used to measure my worth by how quickly I answered when she called.
By whether her tea was hot enough. By whether her pillows were arranged just right.
By whether I could sense a mood before it became punishment.
I had built my whole life around not being accused of neglect.
And now she said it in front of strangers like it was the truth.
Zander watched me. Not Mother. Me. His pleasant expression stayed in place, but his focus sharpened. I felt it the way I felt storms before rain fell, causing a change in pressure invisible to everyone else.
He was listening. Not to the truth. To the leverage. The thought slid through me cold and quick, then disappeared under the heavier weight of everything else.
Rykard spoke my name. Not Lettie. Not Violet. “Colette.” I looked at him. He looked destroyed.
“I don’t know what you need from me right now,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t know how to make any of this easier. I can’t. But I’m not lying to you.”
Apollo’s voice cracked. “Neither am I.”
I looked at Apollo. At the man who had watched me with suspicion and longing and pain I hadn’t understood.
My brother.
Maybe.
No. Not maybe.
That was the part that terrified me most. I believed him. I believed all of them. But belief didn’t make it easier. It didn’t rebuild a life in one breath. It didn’t tell me who I was supposed to be now. It didn’t explain how to keep standing while every memory I owned turned uncertain.
I looked at Mother. Claire. The name sat in my mind like something poisonous. She shook her head slowly, tears on her cheeks now, but I knew those tears. I knew when they were real and when they were weapons. These were both.
“They’ll take you,” she whispered. “They’ll take you from me.”
I stared at her. “You took me first.”
The words left me before I knew they were coming. Silence fell so hard, even the festival seemed to dim. Mother’s face crumpled. For one second, I thought she might confess. Instead, she screamed.
“Liars!” People jumped. She pointed at Rykard. “You’re lying!” Then Apollo. “He’s lying!” Then Brock. “The club is lying! All of them! They want her! They want what’s mine!”
Brock’s hand left my waist for half a second. Not to release me, but to shift me behind him. I caught his wrist before he could move fully in front of me. “No,” I whispered. His eyes came down to mine. “I need to stand here.” He looked like he hated it, but he let me. Barely.
Mother saw that too. Her gaze darted from Brock’s face to his hand, to Rykard, to Apollo, to the brothers closing in around us. Panic kept cracking through her rage. She was losing control, and everyone watching could see it.
Zander stepped close to her side. “Carol, maybe you should sit.”
She grabbed his arm. “Don’t let them.”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said gently. But his eyes were on me. Still assessing. Still learning.
Mother leaned into him, her voice dropping into a trembling complaint. “She won’t listen to me anymore. She used to. Before him. Before them. They made her think she doesn’t need me.” The old guilt tried to rise. Brock’s fingers brushed mine. I held on to him instead.
Zander’s gaze dropped to our joined hands.
There it was again. That slight sharpening.
A piece sliding into place. Lettie matters.
Not to Mother. To them. To Hades. To the club.
To the grieving man who looked at her like she was a miracle with a knife buried in it.
To the broken brother whose whole life had bent around losing her.
I didn’t know how I knew Zander had realized it; I only did.
His attention settled on me differently after that.
Still polite. Still quiet. Still hidden behind the face of a man who had only come to buy lavender and comfort a woman he barely knew.
But I felt marked.
Brock did too. His body shifted closer, careful not enough to draw attention, but enough that his cut brushed my shoulder.
“Baby,” he said softly. I couldn’t answer.
My name was gone. My mother was gone. My life still stood around me in baskets of soap and tea tins and handwritten labels, but none of it looked like mine anymore.
Colette. Lettie. Violet. Daughter. Stolen.
Found. I pressed one hand to my chest because I couldn’t tell if my heart was beating too fast or not at all.
Mother kept crying into Zander’s arm. Rykard stood in front of me, waiting for permission he had every right to want and no right to take.
Apollo looked like he might shatter if I said the wrong thing.
Brock stayed beside me, the only solid thing in a world that had turned liquid beneath my feet.
And Zander watched. Quiet. Patient. Learning exactly where to cut.