I wrote about the accident. The coma. Waking up to scars and a dead father and a stepmother who’d already fled the country. About the clause that turned my life into a ticking bomb. About how watching her from afar had been the only light in years of darkness, and how I’d twisted that light into something dark because I was too terrified to step into it honestly.
I told her I loved her. Not in the possessive, obsessive way I’d shown it. But in the quieter, steadier way I wanted to prove — if she’d ever let me.
I told her I’d understand if she never forgave me.
I told her I’d spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of her anyway.
I set the pen down, flexed my cramped hand, and slid the letter into the larger envelope addressed to her in my own handwriting. Then I added Henry’s note on top — shorter, steadier, explaining why he’d helped me, why he’d stayed silent. How I was the closest thing to a son he’d ever had. How the clause had backed everyone into a corner no one saw coming.
I tucked both into the top drawer of the east wing study desk, right side, exactly where I’d told Henry to direct her if she ever came back.
If she ever wanted answers.
If she ever wanted me.
I closed the drawer and leaned back in the chair, staring at the leather blotter. The lodge felt different now. Not empty… more like it was waiting for something. Like it knew I’d finally stopped raging against the wreckage and started sweeping it up.
I thought about the boy I’d been before the accident. Cocky. Reckless. Certain the world would keep handing me everything on a silver platter. Dad’s clause had been meant to curb that arrogance, to force me to grow up. Instead it had frozen me in place for years, terrified of losing the only control I thought I had left. But losing Chrissy — watching her walk away with her head high and her heart broken — had done what no clause or coma ever could. It had cracked me open.
I wasn’t naïve enough to think one letter fixed anything. Eight pages wouldn’t erase the lies, the tests, the blood on my hands.But it was a start. A line in the sand. From this moment forward, every choice would be about becoming someone she could respect — even if she never looked back. Someone Henry could be proud of. Someone my father might have recognized.
I’d made my choice. I was going to become the kind of man Chrissy could forgive, even if she never did. Starting with not drinking myself into oblivion. Starting with not burning the estate to the ground just to spite Vivian. Starting with being someone who fixed things instead of breaking them.
The door to the study burst open without a knock.
Henry filled the frame, face grim, phone still in his hand.
“Lucia didn’t show up for work.”
The words hit like a bucket of ice water.
I was on my feet before my brain caught up.
“What?”
“No call. No text. Phone goes straight to voicemail.” His jaw was tight, eyes hard. “She’s never missed a day. Not once. Not in twenty-five years.”
Code red.
I knew it instantly. Lucia wasn’t just staff. She was the woman who’d snuck me extra cookies when I was twelve and grounded. Who’d held my hand in the hospital when I woke up screaming from nightmares about the ventilator. Who, Henry reported, had cried harder than anyone when Dad died. Who’d told me, fierce and quiet, that I would survive because someone had to carry the Stonewood name forward.
She didn’t miss work.
Ever.
I could still see her at my bedside the first morning I woke up from the coma to three years gone, my body broken, and my mind foggy. She was there with Henry, both of them looking like they hadn’t slept in days. She’d taken one look at me — eyes wide — and burst into tears, calling me ‘tesoro’ while she adjusted my pillow and brushed my hair back with shaking hands.
Later, when the pain meds wore off and the reality of the scars hit me and I lost it, she’d sat in that chair for hours, holding my hand, speaking softly to me in Italian like she did after my mother died when I was four years old. I had no idea what she was saying, really. I just liked the sound of it.
In the weeks after, when the reality of Dad already being gone hit me like a second wreck, she’d sat in that chair for hours, holding my hand, humming old hymns under her breath like she could will away the grief. She’d brought me real food when the hospital stuff turned my stomach — manicotti she’d made at home, smuggled into the hospital in Tupperware containers inside her massive purse, still warm.
Back at the lodge, she’d kept the place alive, cooking for the staff every day, refusing to let it turn into a mausoleum without him. She’d been the only one who ever called me ‘tesoro’ without hesitation, like I was still the boy she’d known before everything fell apart.
If something had happened to her — if that bastard had laid one hand on her — I’d burn the world down to make it right.
“Her husband?” I asked, voice low.
Henry’s nod was sharp.
