53. Kate
Kate
The weeks after the arrests felt unreal.
Not quiet… not peaceful… not normal.
Just unreal.
Like life had cracked open and reshaped itself while I wasn’t looking.
Every morning there was another headline, another news alert on Claire’s phone, another frantic voicemail from Gertie. Redmond dead. The council gone. Rumors of a cartel hit swirling everywhere. The mayor calling emergency meetings. The tribes calling for peace ceremonies no one understood.
By the time Michael finally walked through the door of Brett’s cabin, I swear I felt my bones unclench for the first time in months.
He didn’t say a word at first. He just scooped me up—my whole six-and-a-half-months-pregnant self—and inhaled me like he’d been drowning without my scent.
“I’m home,” he whispered into my hair.
And just like that, everything inside me exhaled.
Brett gave him the house without hesitation.
“Keys are on the counter, big guy. And I stocked the fridge. Don’t thank me, I’ll vomit.”
Classic Brett.
He took over Michael’s penthouse downtown instead, and honestly? It made sense. Brett needed lights, noise, movement, people. Michael and I needed stillness.
The woods.
The river.
The cabin with the creaky floors and the view of the lake that turned gold at sunset.
This was our sanctuary now.
Claire went back to her toy shop—though Brett still popped in like a stray tomcat trying to win back the queen cat who clawed him last. She refused to give him an inch… which only made that stupid man hungrier.
And me?
I bloomed.
Literally.
I’d traded T-shirts for flowing dresses, bikes for long slow walks, adrenaline for music. My bump was round now, high and perfect. My little boy kicked like he had somewhere urgent to be. Everything in my life shifted around that tiny heartbeat inside me.
Michael and I spent our mornings strolling the riverfront, fingers laced, his other hand always warm on my belly.
“That one’s mine,” I’d point.
“And that one.”
“And that one over there.”
He’d shake his head every time.
“You’re a damn shark, Mrs. Waters.”
“Correction,” I’d grin. “I was a shark. Now I’m an artist.”
Because I was writing again.
Composing again.
Singing again.
Every night, after dinner in Brett’s oversized kitchen, I disappeared into my little borrowed studio—the old refurbished community center Drew had unlocked for me.
I filled notebooks with melodies, lyrics, whole operatic arcs of emotion and story.
My voice echoed in that old gymnasium, drifting between the rafters, healing me from the inside out.
I wasn’t building an empire of concrete anymore.
I was building an empire of sound.
Gertie came back as my assistant, my project manager, my second brain. Together, we reimagined the music school timeline—phases, soft opens, the amphitheater completed first, summer concert series scheduled, plans drafted for residencies and scholarships.
It felt like breathing real air again.
The only shadow left was the one that carried Michael’s bloodline in her belly.
Krystal.
A two months behind me.
Angry.
Desperate.
Unpredictable.
And out there somewhere—alone, unstable, and carrying his other child.
It gnawed at us both.
I saw it in Michael’s jaw every time her name came up.
I saw it in Brett’s eyes whenever he checked his phone and muttered, “Nothing yet.”
But then Brett—God bless him—became the voice of reason.
“We get you to delivery,” he said one night over dinner, leaning back in his chair. “We get Krystal to delivery. And then everything sorts itself out. Babies calm storms. Even mob storms.”
Who knew Brett would be the philosopher of the group?
Now, with the world settling and the danger behind us, everything felt lighter. Softer. Safer.
This time, the yacht wouldn’t be a warzone of mobsters and backdoor deals.
This time, the yacht would be ours.
A baby shower on the open water, champagne replaced with sparkling cider, fireworks reflected in river waves instead of gun barrels.
A celebration of survival.
Of rebirth.
Of the little life growing inside me… and somewhere out there, inside her.
A celebration of the family we were creating, messy and unconventional and stitched together through chaos and blood and love.
I rested a hand on my belly as my son rolled beneath my skin.
“Almost there, baby,” I whispered.
Almost home.