Chapter 28 #2
And then this—this room full of women and blankets and mugs and too-sweet brownies pressed into my hands whether I wanted them or not.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I saw.”
Natalie leaned forward, forearms on her knees, fingers loosely laced.
“You’re allowed to be furious at what happened,” she said.
“At your father. At whoever strapped that vest onto him. At the universe, if you’re into that.
And you’re allowed to be relieved he can’t hurt you anymore.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. Trust me, I’ve moderated enough public meetings to know humans are one big contradiction. ”
“You’re not alone,” Claire said. “None of us just … married a Dane after meeting him at Whole Foods. There was always something. Danger, secrets, some shadow-whatever breathing down our necks.”
“Now, it’s The Vanguard,” Camille said quietly. The word rolled off her tongue with French edges. “We can say it. It doesn’t summon them like demons.”
A chill ripple tiptoed down my spine at the name.
“Point is,” Isabel cut in, giving Camille a brief nod of thanks before focusing on me again, “every woman in this room has had her life turned inside out by the Danes and the mess around them. We’ve all stood where you are—at the edge of something we didn’t choose, deciding if we’re in or out.”
“In or out of what?” I asked, even though I thought I knew.
Portia tipped her head towards the windows, toward the looming bulk of Dominion Hall reflected in the glass. “This,” she said simply. “The family. The fight. The … collective delusion that we can build something good out of all this chaos and money and blood.”
Lexi huffed out a breath, smiling crookedly. “When Lucas first dragged me here, I thought it was a cult,” she admitted. “Like, capital C. Secret rooms, weird security, too many handsome emotionally unavailable men in one place.”
“Hey,” Sloane objected faintly.
“I stand by it,” Lexi said. “But then I watched them. The way they circle each other. The way they circle us. And I realized … It's not a cult. It’s a pack. A very dysfunctional, heavily armed pack. And I wanted in, anyway.”
“They’re not easy,” Anna said. “Any of them. They are … intense. Possessive.” Her mouth twisted like the word tasted complicated.
I looked from face to face. They were all so different. Different backgrounds, accents, careers. A hotelier, a podcaster, a musician, a preacher’s daughter, a ballet dancer, an influencer, a wedding planner, a chef, a scientist, a mayor, an actress.
And yet their eyes held the same thing when they looked at me—recognition. Like they were seeing an earlier version of themselves.
“How many are there?” I asked quietly. “Brothers, I mean. Gideon said some things earlier, but then … everything happened.”
“Fourteen,” Natalie said. “Seven from Charleston. Seven from Montana. All with the same father, two different mothers. You’ve met most of them now.”
“Most?” My stomach flipped.
Sloane ticked names off on her fingers. “Charleston: Ryker, Marcus, Atlas, Noah, Elias, Charlie, Silas. Montana: Gideon, Caleb, Jacob, Ethan, Lucas. That leaves two Montana ghosts still out there.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Sorry. Not ghosts. Ghost-adjacent. Alive. Probably brooding somewhere picturesque.”
“We’ll bring them in,” Isabel said, like she was promising a weather forecast. “That’s what this whole … thing is now. Collect the lost brothers, keep them alive, keep them from breaking anything too expensive.”
“Gideon’s been on his own a long time,” Meghan added. “He’ll pretend he likes it that way. He doesn’t. None of them actually do. They’re all just very committed to the bit.”
My chest pulled tight. I thought of Gideon alone in that little room at my inn, counting my breaths. Alone on that porch, watching the sensors. Alone with his ghosts long before any of this.
“And you?” Claire asked softly. “What do you want, Hazel? Not in some big, abstract ‘what’s your five-year plan’ way. Tonight. Sitting here in this ridiculous leather museum with a bunch of strangers who won’t be strangers for long, if you let them.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. The truth bumped around inside me, big and unwieldy.
“I want to go home,” I said finally.
Meghan’s brows drew together. “To the inn?”
“Yes,” I said, and the word rang clear in me.
“To the inn. To my ridiculous creaky house with its new porch and its cursed dining room and its will-mandated year. I want to finish what my grandmother asked me to do. I want to repaint the rooms and fix the roof and learn how to make breakfast without burning the biscuits.” My throat thickened.
“I want that life. That quiet. That choice.”
“And?” Claire prompted gently.
“And,” I whispered, “I don’t want to do it alone.”
The sentence hung there, vibrating in the space between us.
“I have spent my entire adult life trying to outrun what he did,” I said, the words spilling faster now.
“My father. I’ve been small and careful and invisible.
I changed my name, I moved, I built a life that took up as little space as possible in the hope that …
if I were quiet enough, the monsters wouldn’t notice me.
” My hands curled in my lap. “They noticed, anyway.”
No one spoke. No one interrupted. They just watched me, breathing with me.
“I thought this inheritance was some kind of test,” I said.
“Stay a year. Don’t sell. See if you’re strong enough to hold onto anything without losing it.
And then Gideon showed up and he made it feel possible.
Like I could have something of my own and let someone in at the same time.
And then my dad walked in and—” My voice broke.
“And I thought, ‘Of course. Of course, he ruins this, too.’”
Vivienne leaned forward. “But he didn’t.”
“He’s gone,” I said. The words felt unreal. “For real this time. There’s a part of me that … unclenched when I realized that. And I hate that part. I don’t want to be the kind of person who feels relief at her father’s death.”
“You’re the kind of person who survived him,” Natalie said, voice firm. “That’s not the same thing.”
“And he didn’t ruin anything,” Portia added quietly.
“He tried. The people behind him tried. They’ll probably keep trying.
That’s what people like that do. But you’re still here.
The inn is still there. Gideon is still utterly, stupidly in love with you, in case that wasn’t obvious.
Which means everything is … inconvenient. Messy. Complicated. Not ruined.”
“So the question isn’t ‘what did he take,’” Claire said. “It’s ‘what do you claim now that he’s gone?’”
I stared out at the harbor. The water was dark and calm, dotted with pinpricks of light from anchored boats.
In the glass, I could see my reflection—pale face, damp hair, borrowed clothes.
I looked like a stranger. But my eyes were mine.
Green and too wide and maybe, for the first time in a long time, not just afraid.
The words kept coming, rising up from someplace deeper, steadier.
“And I’m moving out of my Chicago condo. I’m quitting my HR job. I’ve been living half in, half out—afraid to commit to anything because I never trusted it to last. But I want a life that feels like mine, not a placeholder I stand inside because it’s safe.”
A breath shuddered out of me.
“I don’t know how I’m going to make enough money from the inn to support myself long-term. I don’t even know if it can make enough. But I’ll figure something out. I’ll find a way. I’m done choosing safety over living.”
Hallie Mae let out a soft, scandalized laugh.
“Oh, honey,” she said gently, “if you’re with Gideon Dane, you don’t have to worry about money ever again.”
Several of the other women nodded—some knowingly, some with amusement, some with the kind of tired, affectionate exasperation that only came from loving a Dane.
“But,” Natalie added with a shrug, “we get it. The independence matters. Just … know that the financial part? That’s the least of your concerns now.”
Lexi grinned. “Trust us. Being with a Dane comes with a lot of chaos but never a Venmo request.”
Laughter bubbled around the room—warm, soft, pulling some of the tightness out of my chest.
But my voice stayed firm when I answered,
“I want to build something of my own, anyway. Even if I never need the money. Even if it takes years. The inn is mine. And I want to stand on my own feet inside it.”
“Good,” Isabel said, satisfaction in her voice. “That inn deserves someone stubborn.”
“And I claim Gideon,” I added, the words surprising me with how right they felt in my mouth. “Not as … property. God, no. But as … my person. My choice. Whether we’re at the inn or here or on some mountain in Montana.”
“Excellent,” Lexi said. “We approve. Not that you need our approval, but it’s nicer when the sister-in-law council votes yes. Less drama at holiday gatherings.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “I don’t know what this looks like,” I said quickly, panic nipping at the edges of my resolve. “I don’t know how to be in a relationship where … there are snipers and secret organizations and surprise half-brothers. I don’t know how to be part of a family like this.”
“None of us did,” Meghan said. “We learned. You will, too.”
“Also, for the record,” Sloane added, “the surprise half-brothers thing was new. We’re all improvising.”
A laugh sputtered out of me, shaky but real.
“So.” Portia clapped her hands once, the sound soft but decisive.
“Action items. You go home to your inn when it’s safe.
You don’t sell. Dominion Hall reinforces the place so thoroughly a raccoon couldn’t sneak up the driveway without tripping three alarms. And when you’re ready for a party that doesn’t involve bomb vests and long-lost fathers,” Portia went on, eyes gleaming, “I happen to be very good at planning that type of thing.”
Hallie Mae giggled. “She means weddings.”
“I know what she means,” I said, cheeks flaming.
I looked around the room again. At Isabel’s steady eyes and Claire’s sharp ones. At Anna’s quiet strength and Hallie Mae’s tender courage. At Vivienne’s fire, Sloane’s humor, Portia’s steel, Meghan’s competence, Camille’s calm, Natalie’s resolve, Lexi’s feral loyalty.
I’d spent so long convinced I didn’t belong anywhere. That every room was temporary. That every connection came with an expiration date.
But right now, in the middle of the night in a leather museum of a living room, wearing someone else’s clothes and someone else’s restaurant logo, surrounded by women who’d had their lives exploded and rearranged and still stayed—
Right now, I felt something I hadn’t in a very, very long time.
Rooted.
A sound drifted down the hallway then—low voices, a door opening and closing, the faint echo of boots on polished wood. The men making their way out of the war room, finally.
My heart did a weird, lurching thing. Fear and anticipation and something softer tangled together.
I looked out at the harbor one more time. The water was still dark. The boats were still bobbing. But the reflection in the glass had shifted.
For the first time since my grandmother’s lawyer read her will and dropped that year-long sentence in my lap, I knew exactly what I wanted.
I wanted all of it.
The inn. The man. The chaos. The family I hadn’t asked for and the one I was choosing, anyway.