Chapter 31
ELLA
The world narrowed to three things.
Randy.
The gun.
Sabine.
Everything else—the rain against the windows, the hallway light behind me, Kane’s presence at my shoulder—fell away like someone had dimmed the edges of a stage.
Randy stood between the bed and the window, black rain slicker hanging open over a suit that had once been expensive and sharp but now looked like it had been slept in.
His tie was half loosened. His hair—normally precise, controlled, parted with intention—was plastered crookedly against his forehead.
His eyes were rimmed red, not just from crying. From not sleeping.
From unraveling.
“My God,” I breathed again, because my brain refused to process that this was real. “Randy.”
Sabine looked up at the sound of my voice and smiled.
Smiled.
Like this was a game. Like this was a familiar adult in a familiar room.
My heart cracked.
Randy’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite a snarl. Something unstable in between.
“You,” he said. My name didn’t follow. Just accusation in a single syllable.
The gun trembled in his hand, but it didn’t lower.
Kane stepped slightly in front of me, subtle but deliberate. I could see the line of his arm extended, steady, controlled. His weapon aimed directly at Randy’s chest.
Two men.
Two guns.
One child sitting cross-legged on the floor between them.
“Randy,” I said carefully, forcing my voice to stay level even though my pulse was ricocheting against my ribs. “Put the gun down.”
He laughed.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was soft and hollow, like something had already broken inside him.
“Put the gun down,” he repeated. “That’s what you think this is? That I just—what?—wandered in here confused?”
His eyes flicked to Sabine, then back to me.
“She told me she was traveling for work.”
The words came out strangled.
“Conferences. Corporate trainings. Paris was just a hub. Another stop. Another client.”
He gestured vaguely around the room with the hand holding the gun. Water dripped from his sleeve onto the floor.
“I believed her.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Sabine had gone back to her toys, humming under her breath. Oblivious. Innocent.
The gun was still pointed down at her.
Randy’s breathing hitched, and something in his face shifted from disbelief to fury.
“For years,” he continued, voice rising. “For years she’d leave for weeks at a time. Sometimes months. I knew we were distant. I knew she wasn’t … affectionate.”
He swallowed hard.
“She said she was tired. Said she was building something. Said she was working.”
His eyes locked onto mine, wild.
“I loved her.”
The declaration landed heavy.
“And you had no idea?” I asked quietly.
His laugh was sharp this time.
“Oh, I knew something was off. I’m not an idiot.” His jaw tightened. “I just thought … I thought it was stress. I thought it was me. I thought she didn’t want me anymore.”
He took a step forward, and Kane’s voice cut in, calm and deadly.
“Don’t.”
Randy’s gaze flicked to Kane for the first time like he was noticing him properly.
“And you are?” he demanded.
“Not your concern,” Kane replied.
That only seemed to agitate him further.
“I wasn’t blind,” Randy snapped, refocusing on me. “I knew she didn’t want me. I knew she was … withholding.”
His mouth twisted.
“But I handled it.”
The words came out with an ugly pride.
“I’m a grown man. I have needs. I took care of them. Strip clubs. Escorts. You think I was going to beg my own wife?”
The room felt colder.
Sabine’s humming faltered, then resumed.
“I didn’t humiliate her,” he continued defensively. “I didn’t throw it in her face. I kept it quiet. Discreet. That’s what adults do.”
That’s what adults do.
My stomach turned.
“You think that’s love?” I asked softly.
His eyes flared.
“I provided,” he shot back. “Do you have any idea what my job requires? The hours? The pressure? I built our life. I built our future.”
“And she built a second one,” I said.
The words hit.
His entire face contorted.
“You think I don’t know that?” he shouted.
Sabine flinched.
The sound was small, but it split me open.
“Lower your voice,” Kane said, tone even.
Randy’s hand shook harder now.
“I started checking,” he continued, almost talking to himself. “Credit cards. Travel receipts. Phone logs. I thought she was having an affair.”
His gaze burned into me.
“I never imagined she was playing house in Paris.”
The disgust in his voice was visceral.
“She had a child,” I said.
He inhaled sharply.
“Yes.”
The word was a blade.
“She had a child,” he repeated. “And she never told me.”
His jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack.
“I found out after she died.”
The confession hung there.
“How?” I asked.
He barked another laugh.
“You think she wiped everything? She was sloppy at the end. Distracted. Emails left open. Transfers I couldn’t explain. A lease.”
His eyes darted around the room.
“This lease.”
The apartment felt smaller.
“I came here,” he said. “After the funeral. After I stood next to your parents and accepted condolences like a good, grieving husband.”
His voice broke on the word husband.
And something in me—something old and sharp—wanted to pity him for a fraction of a second.
Wanted to see a grieving man standing in the rubble of a marriage he hadn’t understood until it was too late.
Then his gaze slid, calculating, over the room. Over Rose’s books. Her scarf on the chair. The photographs on the dresser.
Not grief.
Inventory.
Like he was taking stock of what she’d kept from him.
“You know what the worst part is?” he said, voice lowering, tightening into something uglier. “It wasn’t even hard to find.”
My stomach clenched.
“What wasn’t?” I asked, though I could feel the answer coming.
He laughed again, softer. Meaner. “Her routines.”
He gestured toward the window with the gun, a lazy flick of metal that made Kane shift half an inch—subtle, lethal readiness.
“She was predictable. Same cafés. Same streets. Same building.” Randy’s eyes snapped back to me. “She thought she was so careful. But she always did that thing—”
He mimed checking an invisible watch.
“—that little glance, like time was chasing her. Like she had to get back to … whatever this was.”
The rain smeared the light outside into gray streaks. My mouth went dry.
“You followed her,” I said.
It wasn’t a question. It fell out of me, heavy with disbelief.
His expression flashed—annoyance, then satisfaction, as if he’d been waiting for someone to put the word on it.
“I had her watched,” he corrected, like that was somehow more respectable. “I didn’t follow her. I’m not a caveman. I hired professionals.”
Professionals.
The word made bile rise.
I thought of Rose’s notebook. Her warnings. Her careful separation. Her fear threaded into lines she’d written like she was trying to talk to me from the grave.
Had she known?
Had she been running from him and not saying it out loud because saying it would make it real?
My mind snagged on a memory I’d refused to touch until now: the call from Paris. The suddenness. The confusion. The way the details never made sense no matter how many times I replayed them.
An accident.
A wet road. A wrong turn. A car that “lost control.”
I had accepted it because I had to.
But standing here, staring at Randy’s bloodshot eyes while he calmly admitted he’d had my sister watched—
My lungs felt too small.
I didn’t confirm anything. I couldn’t. My mind didn’t have enough proof to form a solid truth.
But the shape of suspicion slid into place like a key in a lock.
Not fully turned.
Not yet.
Just … there.
“You had her watched,” I repeated, voice thin.
Randy shrugged, like he was discussing taxes. “I had reason.”
Kane’s voice was quiet beside me. “Step away from the child.”
Randy ignored him.
His attention kept yanking back to me, like Kane was background noise and I was the real threat. The real witness.
“You’re her sister,” he said, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t know.”
“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t.”
His lips curled.
“That should tell you something about who she was,” he said. “How good she was at lying.”
My throat tightened. Rage sparked.
“Or how scared she was of you,” I shot back.
That landed.
For a second, something flickered in his face—offense. Then something colder.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he said softly.
I swallowed.
I knew enough.
I knew he was standing in my dead sister’s apartment with a gun.
I knew Sabine was in the room with him.
I knew that whatever story Randy told people about his marriage—the high-powered couple, the ambitious wife, the glamorous travel—it had never included the part where he believed ownership was the same thing as love.
Randy’s gaze dropped to Sabine again. She was still on the floor, toys scattered around her, sensing tension now but not fully understanding it. Her small hands had stilled.
Her eyes—Rose’s eyes—flicked between faces.
Confusion.
A tremble of fear.
My chest squeezed so hard it hurt.
Randy’s voice changed. It went quieter. More controlled.
More dangerous.
“Is she mine?” he asked.
The question sliced through the room.
I stared at him.
“What?” I breathed.
His eyes were manic now, but the words were precise. Deliberate.
“Don’t play dumb,” he snapped. “You heard me.”
He took a half step closer to Sabine, like her proximity gave him power. The gun angled down again, too close.
My entire body went rigid.
“I don’t know,” I said quickly.
“You don’t know,” he repeated, mockery dripping from every syllable. “You don’t know if your sister’s child is mine?”
“I didn’t even know she had a child until this morning,” I said, voice breaking. “How would I know that?”
His jaw ticked. The vein in his neck throbbed visibly.
“She was my wife,” he hissed. “She was supposed to be mine.”
There it was again.
Supposed to.
As if Rose had been a contract that had breached.
Kane’s voice came again, calm as stone. “Randy. Put the gun down and step away from her.”
Randy’s gaze flicked to Kane with open contempt.
“You think you can tell me what to do?” he said. “Who the hell are you, her new—”
Kane moved just slightly—barely a shift of weight—and Randy’s eyes cut back to me, like he felt the danger and didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Answer me,” he demanded. “Is she mine?”
My pulse pounded in my ears.
I thought of étienne’s face. The gentleness in his voice when he’d said her name. The way Sabine had leaned into him without thinking, like she’d done it a thousand times.
Family doesn’t always mean blood, my mind supplied uselessly.
But Randy wasn’t asking about love.
He was asking about claim.
And I could feel in my bones that the answer he wanted wasn’t about the truth.
It was about permission.
About justification.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
The words came out soft, careful, honest.
“I don’t think she is.”
Randy went still.
Not the stillness of relief.
The stillness of something tipping.
His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed into a hateful, focused point.
“Of course,” he whispered.
Like the conclusion had been waiting.
Like he’d been holding onto a thread of hope—not because he cared about Sabine, but because the hope would have made Rose’s betrayal more forgivable to his ego.
If she had been carrying his child, then maybe this wasn’t rejection.
Maybe it was confusion.
Maybe he could rewrite it.
But if she wasn’t—
If Sabine belonged to another life entirely—
Then Rose hadn’t just lied.
She’d chosen.
And Randy could not survive that.
His hand tightened on Sabine’s arm.
She made a small sound—pain, surprise—and my vision went white-hot.
“Don’t,” I said sharply. “Don’t touch her like that.”
Randy’s mouth twisted. “Like what? Like she’s fragile?”
He yanked her up from the floor.
Sabine stumbled, little shoes slipping on the rug. Her eyes went wide, panic blooming.
“No—” I lunged forward without thinking.
Kane’s arm snapped out, catching me at the waist, holding me back with iron control.
“Ella,” he said low, warning, steadying. “Stay.”
Stay.
As if my body would listen.
Randy pulled Sabine against him, his arm clamped tight around her middle. She began to cry, sharp and frightened, reaching instinctively toward me.
“Tante—” she sobbed, the word broken, barely there.
My throat closed.
Randy shoved the gun up again.
This time it wasn’t vague.
This time he pressed it hard against the side of her head.
Sabine froze mid-cry, terror making her silent.
The room stopped breathing.
Randy’s eyes locked onto mine.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know,” he said, voice eerily calm now. “About her. About him. About why.”
His gaze flicked briefly to Kane—an acknowledgment of threat—then back to me, because he knew where the leverage was.
“You’re going to stop lying for her,” he whispered. “Or I swear to God—”
Kane’s voice was almost gentle when it cut in, and that was what made it terrifying.
“Randy,” he said. “If you keep that gun on her, you won’t leave this room.”
Randy laughed once, wet and broken.
“You think I care?” he spat.
And I realized, with sick clarity, that he wasn’t bluffing.
Not because he wanted to kill her.
Because he wanted to win.
Because in his mind, everyone had stolen something from him—Rose, the story he believed about his life, the control he thought he’d earned.
And if he couldn’t have it back …
He’d destroy it.
Sabine’s body shook in Randy’s grip.
My niece.
Rose’s child.
And the first day I’d tried to step into her life, the world had put a gun to her head.
I stared at Kane, at the angle of his arm, at the stillness of him—coiled violence held on a leash so tight it had to hurt.
I didn’t know what he was capable of in full.
But I knew he was capable of ending this.
And I also knew that if he moved wrong, if any of us moved wrong—
Sabine would pay for it.
My voice came out raw.
“Randy,” I whispered. “Please.”
His eyes were empty.
“Talk,” he said.
And the barrel pressed harder.