Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
“We are bound by the secrets we share.”
― Zo? Heller
Jade
27 years old
Three years ago
“Don’t you want to come back home, Jadie?” My mama’s voice wavered, soft but heavy with the kind of sadness that made my chest ache. “It’s been almost three years now since you left, and I… I need you back home with me.”
Her frail, trembling hands rested on the edge of the dining table, and I reached for them instinctively. Her fingers felt too light in mine, like they might just float away if I wasn’t careful.
Three years in New York.
Three years of building a life that wasn’t tethered to Bay Village.
Back then, we’d agreed—she’d visit every few weeks, stay for a week, then return to her house. It had worked for us. At least, it had… until it hadn’t.
I couldn’t call that place home anymore. It wasn’t.
But looking at her now—so small, so fragile—I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Mama, you know I can’t do that,” I said, my voice quieter than I wanted it to be.
Her grip on my hands tightened. “Why not, Jadie? What’s keeping you here? Your… job?” She said the last word like it left a bitter taste in her mouth.
I pulled my hands back gently, resting them in my lap. “You know why I’m here.”
“Jadie—”
“I made myself a promise, Mama. I promised I’d find the person who ruined us. And being here, working for the Lazzios? Every day I get closer. Closer to finding them.”
She shook her head. “And what are you going to do when you find them, huh? What, Jadie ? You think revenge is going to fix anything? You think it’ll make the pain stop? Trust me, it won’t. It never does.”
I leaned back in my chair. “I’ll kill them.”
Her breath caught. “Jadie! You do not mean that. You can’t?—”
I cut her off, leaning forward now. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do. Don’t tell me what I don’t mean. Because I’ve been carrying this, this ”—I gestured at the space between us, the weight of all we’d lost—“for years. And the only thing keeping me breathing is knowing that one day, I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done.”
The words left my lips like a vow.
I sat back, my nails digging crescents into my palms as the memories surged.
The abyss I’d spiraled into after the psych ward. The haze of drugs and cheap highs. The arrests. The self-destruction so complete, I almost didn’t recognize the version of me that had crawled out of it.
What had saved me wasn’t hope, wasn’t love, wasn’t even survival. It was rage .
A cold purpose that focused me like a razor’s edge.
Revenge became my lifeline, my obsession.
And I’d done a damn good job of it for the last three years.
My vault room back at my apartment? It was filled wall-to-wall with receipts, photos, timelines, connections. A meticulous, airtight roadmap leading me straight to the bastards who had destroyed my family.
Every day, I got closer. Every day, I sharpened my plan to finish what I’d started.
The idea of abandoning it? Of walking away because revenge wouldn’t bring them back or soothe the raw ache grief had carved into my chest for the last five years?
That was a joke. A sick, nauseating joke.
I would see this through.
My mama could beg me, plead with me, but nothing was going to change that.
She sighed, her shoulders sagging. Slowly, she lifted her coffee cup to her lips.
Clara Whitenhouse. My mirror.
Same long black hair, same dark eyes. Her skin was so pale you could trace every delicate blue vein along her throat.
When I was little, people used to call me her shadow. Her twin.
And they weren’t wrong.
She was my hero. My anchor. I used to follow her everywhere as a kid, mimicking everything she did—the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, even the way she folded laundry.
I had wanted to be just like her.
When my papa died so suddenly, when I was just four, she hadn’t crumbled.
She’d held on, held us together.
She’d worked until she was bone-tired, dragging us out of the wreckage he’d left behind. She’d never cried in front of us, not once, but we’d heard her. Late at night, her muffled sobs had seeped through the walls.
And now?
Now, I was the one making her cry.
Not picking up on the frost spreading across the table, our waitress—a petite redhead with a smile so sweet it bordered on saccharine—bounced over and set down our plates like she was delivering happiness on porcelain.
“Enjoy!” she chirped.
Chocolate chip pancakes for me, eggs Benedict on salmon toast for Mama.
The diner, usually alive with weekend chaos, was eerily quiet for a late-August Sunday. No families spilling syrup everywhere, no hungover college kids mumbling orders for black coffee.
Just me, my mama, and the waitress.
I dug in right away, shoveling in syrup-drenched bites like my life depended on it, needing the sugar rush to untangle the nerves crawling under my skin.
Across from me, Mama silently picked at her eggs Benedict.
God, I hated silence.
Suddenly desperate to fill the void, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“I’m thinking I’m gonna ask my boss for a promotion.”
Her fork paused mid-air.
“I’ve been working there for three years,” I continued, “and I think it’s time to level up, you know? I want to be the new COO now.”
She didn’t even blink.
“Lazzio’s a royal pain in the ass,” I said, gesturing wildly with my fork, a piece of pancake almost flying off. “But even he knows I’m the one keeping that circus running. So yeah, I’m gonna ask him. And by asking, I mean I’ll remind him that without me, his entire empire would collapse faster than his temper when someone uses the wrong font on a report.”
Mama tilted her head, a bemused smile playing on her lips. “And if he says no?”
I shrugged dramatically. “Then I’ll quit on the spot, obviously. Let him suffer for a day or two while I sip cocktails and binge crime documentaries. Maybe even send him a postcard from my couch— Thinking of you while your company burns to the ground. XOXO, Jade. ”
She laughed, finally. “You’re ridiculous, Jadie.”
“And brilliant,” I countered, stabbing another pancake slice triumphantly. “Don’t forget brilliant.”
The day after he bailed me out of jail on my birthday, I walked into my office and found a few things on my desk: a shiny new pair of Louboutins, my bag, the same spa voucher he gets me every year, and a small, unmarked box.
I opened it to find an assortment of bandages, gauze, and antiseptic wipes.
I couldn’t help but laugh— really ?
Ah, and of course, a card.
It read: “Try not to get arrested again. I won’t save you next time.”
After that, things were … different.
Not in a good way.
Sure, we still had our usual rounds of me driving him insane by spilling coffee on his shoes, stealing his pens, and flirting with the movers who brought in his precious sculptures. But for some reason, he was colder. More distant. Like he’d put up an invisible wall, and I didn’t quite know how to knock it down.
He pretended my birthday night had never happened, and I wasn’t exactly going out of my way to remind him. Pretending was easier, anyway.
Then he had disappeared. Gone for seven months, off to Latin America—Mexico, Argentina, Brazil. Some business nonsense that I couldn’t care less about.
When he had come back, he was even colder.
I’d hoped the sun would’ve melted the frost off his soul, but it hadn’t. Still, he had the same icy glare, the same superiority complex, and the same way of looking at me like I was something beneath his shoe.
As for me? After the Aussie debacle that almost had me in an orange jumpsuit, I decided one-night stands were a thing of the past.
Well, at least the no-strings-attached kind.
Flirting and make-outs though? That was still fair game.
Keeping it light, keeping it fun—no more getting tied up in anything too complicated. Men were too unpredictable—especially in New York.
I’d had enough of the drama.
Less chance of getting arrested, more chance of keeping my sanity intact.
What I hadn’t known back then was that a few weeks later, I’d get that promotion—but not in the way I had expected. Not by annoying Lazzio until he finally caved, but by stumbling onto one of his dirtiest little secrets.
“You added a butterfly to your necklace?” My mama’s voice was soft, her eyes tracing the new charm.
Instinctively, I reached for it, my fingers gently caressing the two little gold butterflies.
“Yeah… one for Papa, and…” My words faltered.
She smiled with a wistful, sad curve of her lips. “They’re beautiful, Jadie.”
With a sigh, we both finished our brunch and caught a taxi back to my place.
The afternoon was spent in the comforting rhythm of cooking lasagna together, the aroma filling my apartment, and then collapsing on the couch to watch The Notebook .
We tried to carve out some mother-daughter time, pretending for a few hours that everything was right in the world between us. Even though, deep down, I knew things would never quite be the same again.