I picture it. Sun and palm trees and grocery stores without guards. No cards. No councils. No ravens on the roof. A life where my daughter’s father is a story instead of a shadow in the halls.
“No,” I say, surprising myself with how firm it comes out. “Dad asked me the same thing. But if I leave now, I abandon more than just a man. I abandon a family. A bratva. And I abandon Gustav when he is hanging by threads. This isn’t just a bratva thing. It’s a mafia thing. You don’t leave family.”
Keira nods approvingly. “Then we make it work. Together. But you must be careful. Rupert and the Council aren’t done with him.”
Micha appears in the entryway, big and solid and kind, rubbing his bald head like he always does when he is unsure if he should interrupt. When he sees my face, he smiles, warm and steady, and some of the panic inside me unclenches. If Gustav is the storm, Micha is the anchor. My surrogate-dad who somehow feels more like one every day.
“Everything all right?” he asks.
“For now,” I say, and mean it only halfway.
Before bed, I find Gustav in one of the dens, pacing, shadows carving sharp lines into his face. He is arguing with no one, hands flexing at his sides, eye twitching. The ravens outside rasp and croak like they are echoing something only he can hear.
When he sees me, he stops. For a moment he looks broken. Young. Terrified. I take a step forward, wanting to reach him.
A knock sounds from the hall.
A maid slips inside, cheeks flushed from hurrying. In her gloved hands she holds a large, ornate blue envelope with gold trim. She looks from Gustav to me like she hopes I will be the one to take it.
“From Rupert,” she says carefully. “To Gustav.”
His jaw tightens. The ravens outside shriek. And deep inside my chest, I know with absolute certainty that whatever is inside that envelope is going to change everything.
Chapter 53
Peighton
Gustav breaks the seal on the envelope with a slow drag of his thumb, like he already knows whatever is inside will hurt.
He pulls out a stack of folded pages tied with an ivory ribbon. The moment he loosens it, a letter slips free and flutters to the floor between us. I bend down quickly before he can stop me. The handwriting makes my stomach lurch. My mother’s. Her loops. Her little flourishes. I stand there frozen with the page in my hand as Gustav unfolds the one on top of his stack.
He reads fast, eyes racing left to right, then back again, as if he thinks he must be misunderstanding. I glance at the page I picked up. The words are soft. Tender. Aching with a kind of love I have never seen in my mother’s life.
She had so little love for anyone but me. How could she have given this part of herself to Magnus, a man outside the family?
I force myself to look away and glance at Gustav’s page instead. His father’s handwriting. Possessive. Bold. A man declaring devotion that never belonged to his wife. I feel sick.
Because these are the love letters Dad spoke of.
The air thickens around us. Gustav’s chest rises once. Twice. His jaw flexes. His fingers curl around the letter until it is nothing but wrinkled paper in his fist.
He looks at me without moving his head, only his eyes shifting toward mine. “Did you know your mother was a whore?”
The word hits like a slap.
Heat floods my face. My spine straightens. “She was no more a whore than your father was.”
The silence that follows is terrifying.
In one movement he closes the distance between us and wraps his hand around my neck. A firm hold. Controlling. His palm is warm. His grip steady. My pulse thunders against his thumb as he tilts my face up toward his.
“Did you know,” he says slowly, each word precise, “that she was sleeping with another man while she had a husband and a child waiting for her at home?”
My breath shakes. I refuse to look away. If I do, it will seem like shame. Or guilt. Or deceit. And I lived too many years in the shadow of my mother’s silence to repeat that curse.
I nod. Once. “I didn’t know it was this serious. That they were in love.”
His nostrils flare. A muscle jumps beneath his eye. “I knew you were a liar,” he murmurs, voice dropping. “I knew it.”
