Chapter 22
Iwas happy—if onlyin a careful, provisional way.
The realization came without ceremony, slipping in quietly, like something fragile I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to name.It wasn’t joy exactly.It was relief threaded with caution.The kind that settled into my bones only after someone else finally saw the full scope of what I’d been carrying—the fear, the constant vigilance, the way my mind never quite shut off.Creed understood now.Not just the facts, but the weight of them.He believed me.Believed inus.And that certainty eased a pressure I hadn’t realized I’d been living under for months.
For the first time since Ray died, I didn’t feel like I was standing alone at the edge of something dangerous.
Creed had reached out to the Barone family himself.Pulled the right strings.Asked the questions that needed asking.Marco Vincenzo was done with me, with the money, with whatever shadow had lingered between us.Creed had paid him in full, wiped the slate clean in a language men like Marco respected.
That should have brought relief.
In some ways, it did.
But relief, I was learning, didn’t arrive without consequences.
Because Marco stepping back meant something else entirely—that whoever had been watching, calling, waiting...wasn’t him.The threat hadn’t vanished.It had simply shifted shape.Gone quiet.Unnamed.Unseen.
And then there was Francesco.
The memory surfaced uninvited, the way unresolved things always did.He’d called just after Thanksgiving, his voice smooth and polite, the conversation brief enough to seem harmless.He hadn’t asked for anything.Hadn’t made a demand.But there had been something measured in his tone, a quiet curiosity beneath the civility—as though he were checking to see whether I was still standing exactly where he’d left me last.
At the time, I’d brushed it off.I told myself it was nothing more than courtesy.A loose thread from Ray’s past finally settling.
Now, stripped of distractions, that call lingered in my mind like a question without an answer.
Celine handled the closure of Elite Staffing with the same quiet efficiency she brought to everything else.Utilities scheduled for disconnection.Lease terminated without penalty, no refund.Clean.Final.The office would officially close at the end of the month.She’d worked for Ray for years, knew every corner of the business, and would shut it down without sentiment.
One less tie to him.
One less place for the past to reach out and grab me.
Still, the unease didn’t fully lift.
The rest of the week blurred into preparations for the annual Spring Fashion Show at the Richmond Convention Center.The kind of event that hummed with pressure and promise in equal measure.Designers.Buyers.Editors.Cameras everywhere.A thousand eyes watching for brilliance—or failure.
Manny Lennox’s spring collection was the centerpiece this year.
No previews.No leaks.Just rumors—whispers of control and precision from a designer known for both.I was scheduled to meet him privately in the dressing room the morning of the show, just after breakfast.My first glimpse of the designs that would anchor IWM’s May edition.
I kissed the twins goodbye at the bus stop, waited until the yellow doors folded shut and the bus pulled away, before driving across town to my mother’s house.Olivia was already there, spreading omelets and Danishes across the table from one of our favorite brunch spots.
She was glowing.
She’d shared everything with Mommy—the gallery showing, the owner’s interest in a full exhibit this fall—and my mother looked quietly undone by it.Painting had been the one thing that truly belonged to her.The one part of herself my father hadn’t managed to take.Other than the two girls she’d raised and loved fiercely, it was all she’d had left.
And now, finally, it was being seen.
“So,” I asked, biting into a cheese Danish, “what did Daddy have to say about you doing the show this fall?”
My mother smiled, then looked between Olivia and me, her eyes shining with unshed tears.“He drove me to the gallery so we could see it together,” she said softly.“He’s happy for me.”
The moment settled heavy and meaningful.
Was my father changing?Had he loosened his grip enough to let her step out from under his shadow?Or was this simply one small mercy offered late?
Either way, my mother had been living in the attic ever since—painting into the night, lost in color and light, breathing life into something new.
Maybe things really were shifting.
