Chapter 16
Leo
The kitchen was quiet, save for the soft hum of the refrigerator.
Leo stood at the granite island, methodically slicing a fresh peach onto a small white plate. He worked with a meticulous, careful precision, arranging the pale orange slices next to a piece of dry toast. He poured a glass of apple juice, setting it on the wooden tray beside a mug coffee.
A week had passed since Olivia walked in on her husband and Amanda.
For seven days, Olivia had not gone back to the bakery.
She had not gone downstairs except when absolutely necessary.
She had not sat with Leo in the living room the way she used to.
She had barely eaten. She spent nearly every hour curled up in the guest bed, staring blankly at the wall, and Leo felt like every single day, she was disappearing a little more into herself.
He stared at the tray, a heavy, suffocating exhaustion settling deep in his bones.
He was terrified for her. He was furious at James.
But more than anything, he was deeply, agonizingly frustrated with his own helplessness.
He could not fix this just by wanting to.
He could make tea. He could slice fruit.
He could check on her. He could call lawyers.
He could make sure James never set foot near his property.
But he could not force Olivia to want food. He could not force her to talk. He could not force her to come back to herself.
That helplessness felt like a physical weight pressing against his chest.
She had not wanted to speak to anyone. Her parents had called several times. Hannah, Claire, and Sophie had blown up her phone. Olivia had ignored every single notification.
The worst moment had been yesterday. Claire, Sophie, and Hannah had shown up at his front door, demanding to see her.
Leo had not turned them away because he wanted to keep Olivia isolated.
He had gone upstairs, knocked softly, and asked Olivia if she wanted to see them.
She had barely been able to speak, her voice paper-thin, but her answer had been a definitive no.
Leo had respected it.
Her friends had not understood. They had left his porch looking hurt, worried, and suspicious.
The memory infuriated him. Not because he cared what they thought of him—he would play the villain forever if it meant keeping Olivia safe—but because James had orchestrated the entire thing.
James had gutted his wife, manipulated her friends, and then used Olivia’s resulting trauma as "proof" that another man was controlling her.
Leo wanted to correct everyone, to tell them the truth. But he didn’t. Because it was Olivia’s story to tell, and he refused to take her voice away from her.
"You look like you're trying to negotiate with a locked door," a soft voice interrupted his thoughts.
Leo turned. Brooklyn was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, dressed in comfortable jeans and an oversized sweater, her dark hair pulled back. She watched him for a moment, her gaze dropping to the meticulously arranged tray.
Leo did not laugh. He picked up a napkin and set it next to the toast.
"Let me try talking to her," Brooklyn offered, stepping into the room.
Leo immediately resisted. "No."
"Leo—"
"She barely knows you," Leo said, his voice tight. "If I can't get her to react, there is no point in you trying."
Brooklyn leaned against the counter, her expression calm and unbothered by his sharp tone. "Maybe that is exactly why I should try."
Leo frowned. "What does that mean?"
"Maybe she doesn't need another person who knows every agonizing detail of the mess," Brooklyn said softly.
"Maybe she doesn't need another person looking at her with grief, or fury, or pity.
You care about her so much that it radiates off you, Leo.
That's a beautiful thing, but right now, it might feel heavy to her.
Maybe she just needs someone who can sit with her without carrying years of history into the room. "
Leo gripped the edge of the granite island, torn. He did not like the idea. Not because he distrusted Brooklyn—she had been nothing but kind since Olivia arrived—but because Olivia felt impossibly fragile. The thought of a stranger upsetting her made every muscle in his body lock with tension.
"I won't push," Brooklyn promised, reading the conflict on his face. "I won't ask for details. I won't lecture her about eating or getting out of bed. I will only try."
Leo studied her for a long moment. Finally, he let out a harsh, defeated exhale. He picked up the wooden tray and held it out to her.
"At least try to get her to drink the juice," Leo said, his voice dropping into a rough whisper.
The words laid his desperation completely bare. At this point, getting Olivia to drink a glass of apple juice felt like climbing a mountain. It felt like a victory.
Brooklyn took the tray carefully. "I'll try."
She turned and walked upstairs.
Once she was gone, Leo was left alone in the quiet kitchen. He could not stand the stillness. He walked over to the dining table, where his laptop sat open next to a legal pad.
He had spent the last week working relentlessly with lawyers and a private investigator he trusted.
But over the last forty-eight hours, the updates had not been what he expected.
He was one step away from wanting to drive to James’s office and break the man’s jaw, because the problem with the documents was vastly worse than they had initially believed.
At first, they thought the signatures were simply forged.
But the investigator’s initial analysis had complicated everything.
According to a preliminary review by a handwriting expert, the signatures on the financial documents did not look mechanically copied, traced, or drawn by someone else.
The pressure, the slant, the loop—they appeared physically authentic.
They looked exactly like Olivia’s handwriting.
That made the legal situation exponentially harder.
The lawyers had explained the nightmare in dry, clinical terms. The experts could testify that the signature appeared to have been written by Olivia, but they could not prove whether she understood what she was signing.
James had likely obtained real signatures from Olivia by slipping pages into routine household paperwork, leaving forms incomplete, or attaching her signature pages to entirely different financial documents after the fact.
If a document bore Olivia’s actual, physical signature, the legal battle shifted. It was no longer a straightforward case of "forgery." It became a brutal, drawn-out fight over fraud, misrepresentation, coercion, and the misuse of marital authority.
If the banks and business partners relied on documents that appeared completely valid, reversing the substantial transfers would be incredibly difficult. Because some of the drained funds were tied to marital property, debt, and shared assets, Olivia could lose access to her own money.
Worse, if James had leveraged any credit lines or business guarantees tied to her name, the bakery itself could be at risk if the paperwork stood up in court.
Leo needed more than Olivia just saying she did not knowingly authorize the transfers.
He needed proof of how James obtained the signatures, what documents had been altered, and exactly where the hidden money had gone.
Right now, all they had was Olivia’s word against a stack of legally binding paper.
Leo hated the system. He hated that it might require a devastated woman to prove she was systematically deceived, while a predator got to hide behind a veil of legitimate-looking paperwork.
He stared at the laptop screen, his blood boiling.
If they could not prove what James did, Olivia might never recover the stolen money.
She could lose her bakery. The bakery wasn't just a business to her.
It was her life. Her passion. Her dream.
It was the one beautiful thing she had built with her own two hands—the part of her James had absolutely no right to touch.
Leo started pacing the length of the dining room.
His thoughts darkened, turning violent and sharp.
He thought about the affair. The stolen money.
He thought about the way James had convinced everyone Olivia was unstable, turning her own friends against her.
He thought about Olivia, curled in a ball in his guest room for a week, while James sat in his corner office, plotting his next lie.
Leo felt as though every decent boundary he had respected for years had been thrown directly back in his face.
He had respected her marriage. He had stayed in his lane. He had forced himself to watch her love James. He had accepted the agonizing distance because he genuinely believed James made her happy.
And James had repaid that by gutting her life, humiliating her, and then attempting to paint Leo as the danger.
The thought nearly snapped the last thread of his control. Leo gripped the back of a dining chair, his knuckles turning white. He rubbed a hand over his face, fighting the overwhelming urge to walk out the door, find James, and tear him apart.
But he didn't.
Because Olivia needed him here. That was the only thing anchoring him to the floor.
More than forty minutes passed.
Brooklyn still had not come back downstairs.
At first, Leo told himself that was a good thing. Maybe Olivia was talking. Maybe Brooklyn was helping. Maybe this was the very first sign of progress they had seen all week.
But then the worry crept in. What if Olivia got upset? What if Brooklyn pushed too hard without realizing it? What if Olivia asked Brooklyn a question Leo had not explained yet? What if Brooklyn's presence made Olivia feel even more displaced?
Leo could not take the silence anymore.
He walked quietly up the stairs. When he got within a few feet of the guest room, he stopped.
He heard voices.
Brooklyn’s voice first, soft and steady.
Then, Olivia’s.
Leo went perfectly still. His heart pounded against his ribs. It had been days since he had heard Olivia speak more than a single, hollow syllable.
The sound of her voice hit him with the force of a physical blow. Not because she sounded fine—she didn't. She sounded tired, her voice rough and broken from crying.
But she was speaking. She was answering a question. She was still in there.
Leo did not listen to the words. He refused to snoop. The very moment he knew Olivia was talking and not in distress, he stepped back. He turned around and walked silently back down the stairs, respecting her privacy even while the worry ate him alive.
Ten minutes later, Brooklyn came down to the kitchen holding the wooden tray.
It was no longer full.
The glass of juice was empty. The sliced fruit was gone. She hadn't touched the toast, but it was enough to make something tight and painful unclench inside Leo’s chest.
"She also agreed to take a shower," Brooklyn said quietly, setting the tray on the counter. "I left her alone to do that."
Leo stared at her disbelief. "How did you manage that?"
Brooklyn leaned against the counter, offering a small, empathetic shrug. "She just needed someone to remind her of the woman she is."
Leo did not fully understand what she meant. He did not know what Brooklyn had said upstairs. He did not know what specific words had finally reached through the darkness. He didn't know why Olivia had responded to Brooklyn when she had spent the last week ignoring him.
There was a brief, sharp pang of inadequacy in his chest, but it did not sour into jealousy. He was far too grateful. If Brooklyn had managed to get Olivia to eat a peach and drink a glass of juice, then Brooklyn had given him the first genuine sign of life he had seen all week.
Leo looked at her, and a real smile—small, but sincere—broke across his face. "Thank you."
Brooklyn returned the smile softly. "She is a lot stronger than you think, Leo. Don't take it personally that she couldn't hear you right now."
Leo nodded, looking toward the staircase, straining to listen.
A moment later, he heard the faint hum of water.
The sound almost undid him.
Olivia was showering. Olivia was trying.
For today, that was enough.
Upstairs, the shower continued to run. For the first time in a week, Olivia was choosing to move.
Leo looked back at the legal pad and the documents spread across the dining table, and the fragile relief in his chest hardened into cold, lethal purpose. James had already taken enough from her. He would not take the rest.