Chapter 1
Chapter One
Henry
The coppery scent of blood settled in the back of my throat, mingling with gunpowder and the citrus cleaner the housekeeper had used. The steady ticking of the grandfather clock filled the heavy silence.
A few feet away, Victor Kane lay motionless in a pool of red.
Dead.
The sight of him should have brought relief. Closure. Something.
Instead, it felt like the floor had shifted beneath me.
Like I was standing on the deck of a ship caught in a violent squall.
My pulse roared in my ears as Ariana’s words replayed in my mind.
Victor didn’t kill her. Sarah’s alive.
I understood each word individually. But together, they made no sense, my brain struggling to comprehend her statement.
“What do you mean?” My voice sounded foreign, raw with fear, guilt, and a myriad of other emotions I couldn’t name.
Ariana’s chest rose and fell in ragged breaths as she grasped my hand in hers, sensing I needed something to keep me grounded. I looked down at our joined hands, mine rough and trembling, hers stained with Victor’s blood.
“Exactly what I said.” She touched a hand to my cheek, forcing my gaze to hers. “Sarah… She’s not dead.”
I pushed out a breath, as if she’d just punched me in my gut. Freeing myself from her hold, I stepped back, my mind reeling.
For the better part of the past year, I’d been fueled by vengeance. By the certainty that Victor had killed Sarah and I’d make him suffer for what he’d done.
To learn he hadn’t killed her, that she might have been alive and suffering while I blindly chased revenge?
The guilt was unbearable, a heavy weight crushing my chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
How could this be?
I saw the police report myself. Read it so many times the words were branded into my brain. Saw the photographs. Saw the body sprawled out against white sheets.
It looked so much like Sarah that I never questioned if it was her. The only thing I did question was whether she’d killed herself, when all along I should have questioned whether she was actually dead.
Could she be alive? Would Victor have faked not just her murder but her actual death?
He certainly had resources. District attorneys in his pocket. Law enforcement officers who owed him favors. Entire systems he could manipulate with a single phone call.
The more I’d learned about Victor Kane over the past several months, the more I realized falsifying a police report was child’s play to him.
But I refused to get my hopes up. I didn’t think I’d survive losing Sarah again.
“Are you sure?” I asked Ariana, fighting to push down all emotion. Feelings would only get in the way. I needed to be methodical. Clear. Practical. “What exactly did he say?”
Her gaze floated to Victor’s body before returning to me. “That he didn’t kill her. That she was chosen.”
“Chosen?” I repeated, the syllables heavy. “Chosen for what?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is when I accused him of killing Sarah because she learned about his trafficking operation, he laughed this crazed, maniacal laugh, then said he hadn’t killed her. That she was chosen.” Her throat bobbed. “Like me.”
“Like you?” I repeated.
She slowly nodded.
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
My mind raced, grasping for logic. For something concrete to anchor myself to. But the more I learned, the more uncertain I felt.
“He didn’t explicitly say she’s alive. Did he?”
I hated myself for clinging to this technicality. The idea of Sarah being alive was a double-edged sword. I’d already made my peace with her death, with the regret of never really knowing my daughter.
But if she was alive and had been suffering through God knows what these past six months, I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive myself for simply accepting the narrative that she’d died, allowing me to aim my rage for my failings at someone else.
If I hadn’t been so focused on revenge, maybe I would have stopped to consider the possibility she might still be out there.
But I hadn’t.
This felt like my mother and Spencer all over again. I hadn’t fought hard enough for them. Hadn’t protected them from my father.
Because of that, Spencer froze to death all alone. And my mother put a gun to her temple and pulled the trigger.
“Not in so many words,” Ariana replied, her shaky voice cutting through my thoughts.
“Just that he didn’t kill her and she was ‘chosen’.
He could have been bullshitting me. But…
” She shook her head. “I don’t think he was.
Over the years, I’ve learned to tell when he was trying to manipulate or gaslight me.
He was telling the truth. He had that same cocky smirk on his face he got whenever he held the upper hand. Whenever he outsmarted someone.”
I stared past Ariana toward Victor’s body, stopping on the word carved onto his torso, the bleeding lines stark against his white flesh.
Weak.
But it wasn’t just a word.
It was a reckoning.
Retribution for years of abuse.
In my opinion, he got off easy. If it were up to me, I would have done everything in my power to draw out his torment. To bring him to the brink of death, then pull him back just to make him suffer more. To make him endure everything Ariana had for years.
But Victor wasn’t mine to seek vengeance on.
Watching Ariana plunge that knife into him made me realize that.
“What should we do about him?” she asked, her voice filled with worry and dread.
This wasn’t some nameless Bratva soldier or a corrupt doctor.
This was Victor Kane.
High-profile. Political connections. Charitable foundations masking unspeakable crimes.
A part of me thought it was finally time to reach out to the authorities, especially with everything I now knew about Victor’s trafficking operation.
But I’d never had much faith in law enforcement.
After learning that Victor may have faked Sarah’s death, I certainly didn’t trust the cops now. Not with this.
Not with Ariana.
“I’ll take care of the body,” I announced firmly, returning my eyes to Ariana.
“Shouldn’t we…call someone?”
“I’m not sure that’s a smart idea. Your husband seemed to have a great deal of influence over people in law enforcement, especially if he was able to fake Sarah’s death. I won’t risk anything happening to you. Plus, don’t forget…”
“What’s that?”
“Victor’s credit card was used in Florida. Any law enforcement officer who starts looking for him could use the same information Blake and I used to track him down. They’ll track him to Florida. We can use that to our advantage for the time being.”
Her expression fell when I mentioned Blake’s name.
“Wh— What happened? In Florida? To Blake?”
I smiled sadly, a knot forming in my throat from the reminder of losing one of the closest friends I had.
“It was a trap. All of it. The credit card. The guy at the gas station who looked like Victor. It wasn’t him. We found him in the house. Already dead. And when we realized it, we rushed to get back here to you, but Blake stepped on a pressure plate.”
Her face paled. “A pressure plate?”
“The place was wired to explode the second he shifted his weight.”
She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand, tears welling in her eyes.
I pulled her into my arms, inhaling her floral shampoo, grateful she was still here. That she was still alive.
And that Victor Kane was no longer a threat.
I hated that Blake lost his life because of him, but at least Victor was gone.
“I don’t want you to worry about anything. I’ll take care of Victor. Make it seem like he was never here.” I pulled back, forcing her eyes to mine. “You’ve already been through enough. I won’t let him keep hurting you from his grave. Okay?”
She gave a small nod. “Okay.”
I brushed a soft kiss to her lips, savoring in the warmth of her touch. “Why don’t you go shower, then get some sleep? By the time you wake up, it’ll be like this never happened. Like Victor was never here.”
“Are you sure? I can help.”
“It’s better if you don’t. Just go get cleaned up and rest. Okay?”
She pushed out a long breath. “Okay.”
She stepped out of my hold, her stare lingering on Victor’s body for several protracted moments.
Then she turned and moved toward the staircase, her motions slow, each step seeming harder than the last, as if the weight of everything that had transpired over the past several weeks grew heavier and heavier.
Hopefully, she’d feel better after a shower and some sleep.
But I knew better than most the weight she’d now have to carry for the rest of her life.
And it was all my fault.