Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THREE MONTHS LATER
Lucian
Bachman Jewelers is no longer a crime scene.
That should feel like progress.
Instead, I stand in the back office with my hands in my pockets, staring at the exact stretch of floor where Carlos died, and feel nothing at all.
Not satisfaction.
Not grief.
Not even rage.
Only the strange, hollow quiet left after a fire finally goes out.
The office has been rebuilt from the studs. New floor. New plaster. New safe. New security system designed by Gregory, tested by Rafe, and threatened into perfection by me.
The old courier route beneath us has been sealed behind steel, stone, and enough surveillance to make ghosts reconsider haunting.
No hidden backdoor opens without three living Bachmans approving it.
No dead credential breathes under this floor.
No twelve-second delay waits in the dark.
Carlos is gone.
And still, some rooms remember what they were.
I turn away from the floor.
Beyond the open office door, the store glows.
Bachman’s.
The gold letters have been restored on the front window.
The glass counters sparkle beneath warm brass pendant lights.
Diamonds sit in velvet trays. Pearls gleam.
Watches rest in neat lines under crystal.
The air is clean and cool, quiet in that expensive way that makes ordinary people lower their voices before they know why.
It is beautiful.
It always was.
Bronson Bachman once told me this store was never only about jewels.
I was young enough then to think that sounded sentimental.
I know better now.
There are stores in New York that sell diamonds.
Bachman’s sells history.
Power.
Secrets.
Apologies men are too proud to speak aloud.
Vows they would rather place on a woman’s hand than admit they are afraid to lose her.
The front bell chimes.
Bronson’s voice comes from the doorway of the office. “You look like a man about to either buy a ring or commit murder.”
“Both have happened in this building.”
“Only one today, I hope.”
I glance over my shoulder.
Bronson stands in the doorway of the back office in a black suit, his expression dry, unreadable, too familiar. Beside him, Paige Bachman carries a red leather box in both hands as if she were bringing me something sacred.
She probably is.
Paige looks around the office once, her gaze catching on the floor.
She knows.
Of course she knows.
Everyone knows what happened here.
That story has become family mythology.
A girl on Bachman Avenue.
A proud old brownstone.
A blue diamond in the window.
An itch in her fingers.
A Bachman waiting on the other side.
And a woman who once walked into the most exclusive jewelers in New York wearing kitten-printed work scrubs, wanting a diamond that she had no business touching.
Bronson’s beginning.
Or maybe Paige’s.
Depends which one of them tells it.
“What?” Paige asks, catching my stare.
“Thinking.”
“Dangerous habit in this family.”
Bronson’s mouth curves. “She would know.”
Paige narrows her eyes at him. “I run this store.”
“You do.”
“Brilliantly.”
“You do.”
She looks back at me. “He gave me Bachman’s because he thought I needed purpose.”
“I gave you Bachman’s because you were better at it than me,” Bronson says.
“You had never done paperwork in your life.”
“I had people.”
“You had chaos in suits.”
His mouth moves again. “Then we tried suburban life in the Hamlet.”
“And now, we’re back in the city.” Paige beams. “And I’ll never, ever leave the Village again.”
“I know.”
The look of love he gives her is so intense, I feel like an outsider. I look away.
A strange ache opens behind my ribs.
I want Erin.
Paige steps farther into the office and sets the red leather box on the desk. “When Bronson gave me this store, I thought he was giving me diamonds,” she says. “He wasn’t.”
Bronson’s expression changes.
Subtly.
The way ours do when women unknowingly put their hands on the softest part of us.
“He gave me a place to become someone,” Paige continues. “A place that was mine. Not because I stole it. Not because I dreamed about it from the sidewalk. Because I earned it.”
She opens the red box.
Tucked inside the red velvet is Erin’s ring.
Gold band.
Four-carat princess-cut diamond.
Sharp enough to catch every light in the room and throw it back brighter.
Mine.
Mine as vow.
Mine because she chose me.
My throat tightens.
Paige watches my face and softens. “She’s going to love it.”
“She likes gold.”
“I know. You said that at least fourteen times.”
Bronson crosses his arms. “Seventeen.”
I ignore him.
The diamond flashes.
I think of Erin in an armored car on the way to Bachman Village, asking if I would ever get around to proposing as if she did not already own every ruined part of me.
I think of the first night.
Her fear.
Her false name.
Her inadequate coat.
The money she needed.
The way I thought I was buying one night, when I was really opening the first door to the rest of my life.
Then I think of Erin walking into this store one day, not as a desperate girl staring at things she cannot have from the sidewalk.
As my wife.
As a Bachman.
“Inside?” I ask.
Paige nods. “Exactly as requested.”
She lifts the ring and tilts it toward me.
The inscription is small.
One perfect word.
“The wedding is soon,” Bronson says.
Paige laughs. “You Bachman men never favored long engagements. Did you?”
“Never,” Bronson says. “When you know, you know.”
Paige glances at him.
Something passes between them.
Something old enough to have built legends and recent enough to still make her cheeks warm.
Every Bachman story begins there, whether the men admit it or not.
Not with the money. Not with the gates. Not with the violence.
With a woman walking where she should not. A man who thinks he owns the room.
And the moment both of them discover they were wrong.
I close the red leather box.
For the first time since Carlos died here, the office doesn’t feel dark.
It feels like a beginning.
“I want to buy it,” I say.
Paige blinks. “Lucian, it’s already yours.”
“Erin should have something purchased cleanly,” I say. “Chosen. Paid for. Recorded. Hers.”
Paige smiles.
Not brightly this time.
Proudly.
“Then I’ll write the receipt myself.”
Bronson looks vaguely pained. “I married a woman who at one time insisted on buying things on her own.”
“You married a woman who enjoys ownership,” Paige says sweetly.
His eyes darken.
I pretend not to see.
Paige walks to the front counter with the red box, and I follow her out of the back office.
The store is open but empty. We closed it for this. No customers. No staff. Just family, glass, gold, and a morning quiet enough to hold what this means.
Paige steps behind the counter.
The same counter, family stories claim, where she once looked at a diamond as if it had called her by name.
Now she opens a sales ledger.
Paper.
Not digital.
A very new Bachman choice.
“What name?” she asks.
I stare at her.
She looks up, brows raised. “For the receipt.”
“Lucian Bachman.”
She writes it.
“And the item?”
“Engagement ring.”
“For?”
My chest tightens.
“Erin.”
Paige waits. Teasing me with her smile.
I exhale.
“Erin Bachman.”
Her smile turns brilliant.
“Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?”
Bronson makes a small sound.
I look at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It was not nothing.”
“It is only satisfying,” he says, “watching another man get ruined properly.”
Paige laughs.
I look down at the ring box, red leather beneath my hand, Bachman’s stamped in gold across the top.
Once, a woman stood outside this building and wondered what secrets it held.
She found Bronson.
Erin found me through a different door.
And the ring I have imagined on Erin’s finger since before I had the courage to ask is finally in my hand.
Paige slides the receipt across the counter.
I sign it.
Lucian Bachman.
For Erin Bachman.
The letters look like a vow.
When I hand the pen back, Paige places the box into a black-and-gold Bachman’s bag, folds the tissue over it, and ties the handles with a gold ribbon.
“There,” she says. “Official.”
I take the bag.
It weighs almost nothing.
Yet the promise it comes with is everything.
At the door, I pause and look back.
Through the front windows, Bachman Avenue moves around us. Daughtry Clothiers. Clara’s Children’s Boutique. Cass’s bakery isn’t open yet, but it’s coming. A street built on money and secrets and women who keep changing what Bachman men think they know.
The brownstone stands strong and proud around me, older than my grief, older than Carlos’s envy, older than the blood spilled beneath it.
A historical giant with too many secrets.
But not all secrets are ugly.
Some are love stories waiting behind locked doors.
Some begin with a stolen glance at a blue diamond.
Some begin with a girl selling one night to save her family.
I step out onto Bachman Avenue with Erin’s ring in my hand.
Ready to make her my wife.