Chapter 24 Home To Roost （Kane）
HOME TO ROOST (KANE)
One Week Later
Sometimes, I still can’t wrap my mind around waking up next to this fuck-hot woman, alive and whole and hopelessly in love with me.
How?
Just how?
The early morning sun spills through the gaps in the curtains, painting her in soft gold like she belongs in heaven’s VIP room.
Never thought it would be so easy to get her into my bed in New York.
I thought there’d be more to figure out, more time to process the hell we just lived through.
More arrangements, more negotiation to reshape the pieces of our lives to fit neatly.
Surprise. It turns out attempted murder really fucks with a person’s priorities.
And no, we haven’t figured out everything yet.
We’re working on that, one day at a time.
But after everything that went down, we needed to share our space.
We needed to be whole.
And we made it happen, faster than I could blink.
Margot left with me the day after the Babins and Lee Glazkov got taken into custody after endless sit-downs with the police.
Not that it needed much detective work.
Lee had social media posts scheduled with a thousand-word manifesto about what happened and why. What he intended to happen, my murder in cold blood.
Looking back, it felt obvious that his will to kill was weakening.
Yes, he was irate and fighting hard like the depraved psycho he is, but it still takes a special ruthlessness for a man who’s never killed anyone to pull the trigger.
Anger alone can’t always cut it.
Now, though, I wonder if I read him wrong.
Or maybe I just figured out there was a small buried part of him who wanted another chance at life.
I smelled his desperation—too much like mine—even if his was twisted into deranged violence.
Thank God I wore him out before he let his anger shoot first.
One day, after a lot of justice and years of hardcore mental treatment, he might even have a second chance.
I certainly have mine.
Margot snoozes beside me, an eye mask over her face to block out the sun, and her blonde hair splashed across the pillow.
It’s adorable watching her sleep like a kitten.
She shifts in her sleep, pressing against my side with a sleepy groan.
I pull her in and reach for my phone, just like I do every morning.
Margot says it’s a bad habit to read the news before I’ve had coffee. Before the stalker-killer episode in Maine, I wasn’t the kind of guy to get too hung up on social media.
Hell, I know half of it isn’t true, especially the shit they write about me.
But this is different.
None of it feels real yet, and I need to make sure.
With one hand, I punch in the Babins’ names.
There’s not much fresh. Nothing new since yesterday.
But they’re out of the hospital, already in front of a judge for attempted assault, trespassing, arson, and a litany of other charges that’ll keep them locked up for years.
Especially if I have anything to do with it.
The cameras caught everything their confessions didn’t before the Babins took them out. Viola was caught walking into the house with a club, and Joseph doused the front porch in gasoline.
The rain has probably washed it all away by now, if it wasn’t cleaned up by the Blackthorns’ bodyguard, who rushed up there the day we left.
There’s no way they’ll crawl back to their blueberry farm after this.
The Babins didn’t make many friends in Sully Bay.
And Margot?
She made a hell of a lot.
As for Lee, he’s only at the start of a very long, rough road. My name is big enough, and his vendetta personal enough, to make his attempt on my life a big splash in the press.
Ironically, about as big as he wanted.
And now there’s a simmering stir about AI screwing over designers and other creatives.
Part of me hates that Lee’s message didn’t just die in that cellar.
Only, a bigger part of me knows it had to happen, for reasons that have nothing to do with one enraged almost-killer.
More importantly, it’s brought up legal questions about how the OptiSynth software learns, how it pulls so much material from existing designers and artists without compensation.
I’m not the guy to sort it out, so I’ll leave that to the judges.
The crack in the armor is there. OptiSynth will face the issues I tried to warn them about—big questions and a crisis they can’t just sweep away.
The world is talking.
Morals are shifting like desert sands.
I don’t know if Lee Glazkov will ever walk free again, but it won’t be for many years.
For now, that’s enough.
And if he ever does, I sincerely hope he turns his ruined life around.
There’s nothing like opening your eyes and seeing the world right-side up.
Margot stretches sleepily in my arms, her eyes opening in lazy slits of blue.
“Kane.” Her voice is thick with sleep as she pulls the phone from my hand. “What have I said about brooding alone this early?”
“Only after coffee.”
“After coffee. Actually, only after coffee you’ve made.”
“Isn’t that implied, duchess?” I ask, dropping a kiss on her head.
“Mmm. Any news?”
“Nope. Guess some people speculate we broke up because we haven’t been seen together since the dustup.”
“Screw them!” She snuggles closer. “Who cares what they say? They don’t need to know I wake up in your arms wet every morning.”
I like that.
I like that a fucking lot.
“The rest is all good news,” I promise. “Everything we’d hope for.”
“Mmm.” She kisses my shoulder and rolls over, grabbing the worn, bound journal off her nightstand.
It’s one of the final gifts her granddad left for her, tucked behind that stuck glass panel Lee shot out in his fury. On top of it, there was a broken pair of little shoes. Beautifully painted clay and far more intricate than the other lumpy, unfinished sculptures down there.
They were barely held together too by this crude attempt at gluing them together. At one point, they must’ve been fractured into half a dozen pieces.
After the crime scene was cleared, the police handed Leonidas’ stuff over, saying it wouldn’t be much use as evidence.
I don’t think she ever imagined she’d wind up with the old man’s treasures.
She’s been glued to the journal ever since, flipping through the pages to soak up the wisdom, a different entry every single day. He kept it going for years.
Sometimes the entries make her sad, sometimes happy, and sometimes wistful.
It’s the connection she always wanted from the Great Beyond, and I’m happy as hell for her.
She flicks through the pages again, stopping on a random one. I prop my chin on my fist as I watch her read, her forehead lining with focus.
“Now who’s brooding?” I tease, reaching up to smooth away the lines with my thumb. “What’s he telling you today?”
“Do you want to read it?”
“Read it to me.”
She reaches over for my hand and our fingers twine as she starts at the beginning.
“My darling wife,
You were always right, even when I was too blind to see. Lately, my pride has kept me from seeing anything except the beautiful baby shoes you made—the same ones I savaged in a fit of rage a few months ago.
You must know I’ll restore them. I just need time. I need to practice my technique and hope my arthritis doesn’t make art impossible.
I don’t have your talent, May, but I’ll try to do you justice. I won’t stop until they’re the perfect memory of what our Elvira wore in happier, easier times.
Yes, I know.
She deserves to know how sorry I am, too.
One day, she’ll know the truth, and she’ll have the little shoes we lost in that fire. I hated seeing you in tears. The precious shrine to our children was the one thing I could never replace after those goddamned devils turned your studio into ashes.
If I had more proof, you know they’d be in jail. I would rename their lot May Blackthorn Blueberry Farms in your memory.
That’s why you made the shoes she wore as a loving testament. That’s why it was your last project.
I miss you, May.
I miss the easy times.
I miss the old Leonidas you loved, before a tortured old man smashed our daughter to pieces, just like I smashed up the lovely shoes you made.
I pray you’ll forgive me from the other side. Just like I pray she’ll understand how deeply I regret the ways I tore the heart out of this family.
“On the bright side, the grandkids are fine.” Margot’s voice wavers.
I squeeze her hand, giving her the space to keep reading.
“They’re too young to understand this nasty rift.
One day, before it’s their problem, I will mend Elvira’s heart.
And I will copy your shoes down to the last detail, so help me God.
You were the only one who could ever suffer a stubborn old fool.
Even when you’re gone, you’re still my guiding light.
One day, no more night.
One day, Elvira will know she’s been loved with every step of her life.
If there’s one thing I wish I’d learned when you were still here by my side, it’s how there’s never enough time to say the things that truly matter.
The words settle between us like lead.
She already knew about her grandfather’s hand in trying to break up her parents, Elvira and Scott. One of the many things we discussed when we came back to New York.
I understand how crazy it must’ve been, learning that the man she looked up to the most was flawed.
Your heroes in life are ultimately people, riddled with human flaws.
And now, hearing his remorse, his determination to put things right, her eyes are misted.
“He never finished the shoes, did he?”
“I don’t think so,” she whispers. “His arthritis did get worse. A few years after he wrote this, he could barely stand to write. It must’ve killed him that he couldn’t do it. He could never get his sculptures up to my grandmother’s level before his body gave out.”
I shake my head. There are times when biology is so fucking cruel.
“Your mother doesn’t know yet, does she?” I say softly.
“No.” She wipes at her eyes, sitting up.
“Do you think it might be time to tell her? Show her this letter and the shoes?” I tap the journal. “It’s never too late to make amends. He couldn’t make it perfect, but he put in a ton of effort.”