“What do I do now?” I whispered through my fingers. “How do I move forward from this?”
“That’s not for me to decide.” Sinclair’s voice was gentle now, almost kind. “But if you want my advice, and I know you don’t, I’d say this: Rowen spent several months in hell to build a future where he could choose you, without reservation. He walked away from power, from the empire, from everything he’d fought, bled, and killed for. The question isn’t whether he loves you. The question is whether you can forgive him for the way he showed it.”
I lowered my hands, meeting his gaze across the desk. “And if I can’t?”
“Then you walk away,” he replied. “You take Danika, you raise Travis’ child, and you build a life without him. You’veproven you can survive without Rowen. The question is whether you want to.”
The weight of that question settled over me like a shroud. Did I want to? Could I forgive six months of silence, six months of pain, six months of believing I’d been abandoned? Could I trust that he wouldn’t leave again, that he wouldn’t choose power over me the next time Sinclair came calling?
“I need time,” I said finally, my voice steadier than I felt. “I need time to think, to process, to figure out what I want.”
“Take all the time you need.” Sinclair raised his glass in a small salute. “But don’t take too long. Life has a way of making decisions for us when we wait too long to make them ourselves.”
I stood, my body heavy with exhaustion and emotion. The baby shifted again, a reminder that I wasn’t just making decisions for myself anymore. Whatever I chose, it would affect this child and shape the life we built together.
“One more thing,” I said, pausing at the door. “Did you tell him to come back today? Did you orchestrate that too?”
Sinclair’s smile was enigmatic. “I told him when the consolidation was complete. When the power structure was stable enough for him to walk away. The timing of his return was his choice, not mine.”
“But you knew he’d come back.”
“I hoped he would,” Sinclair corrected. “But hope and certainty are very different things, Melissa. Even the Devil can’t control everything.”
I left without another word.
Chapter Sixty-One
Rowen
It was late when I heard the front door open and close.
The sound cut through the silence of the brownstone like a blade, sharp, definitive, impossible to ignore. I’d been sitting in the living room for hours, the lamp beside me casting long shadows across walls I’d never seen furnished, in a house I bought for a future I wasn’t sure existed anymore.
Dante had come for Danika hours ago. He hadn’t said much, just gathered his sleeping daughter in his arms and gave me a look that said everything his words didn’t...Don’t fuck this up.
I wasn’t sure she would come back.
The thought had circled through my mind like a vulture, patient and persistent. She could have gone anywhere: back to Sinclair’s, to Dante’s apartment, to some hotel where she could process everything without my presence weighing on her. She could have decided that six months of silence was unforgivable, that my reasons didn’t matter, that the man who walked away wasn’t worth coming back to.
But she did come back.
My body tensed as I heard her footsteps in the entryway, soft, measured, the careful gait of someone heavily pregnant and emotionally exhausted. I didn’t move. Didn’t call out to her. I just sat there in the dim light, waiting to see what storm she would bring with her.
Her footsteps grew closer, and then she appeared.
She looked different, calmer, maybe, or just more tired. The anger that had animated her earlier had burned down tosomething quieter, something that lived beneath the surface like embers waiting for oxygen. Her hand rested on her belly, an unconscious gesture of protection that made my chest tighten as I wondered if she would do the same when she carried my child.
She didn’t say anything. Just walked into the living room and sat down in the chair across from me, her movements careful and deliberate. The space between us felt vast, not just physical distance, but the accumulated weight of six months apart, six months of silence, six months of choices made without consultation or explanation.
The silence stretched.
I counted my breaths, trying to ground myself in something tangible. The house settled around us, old wood expanding and contracting, the distant hum of the heating system, the muffled sounds of the city beyond the windows. Everything felt suspended, held in place by the fragile tension of this moment.
She looked at the coffee table, at the bookshelves, at everything except me. Her fingers traced absent patterns on the arm of the chair, and I watched the movement as if it held answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask.
Finally, she spoke.
“I went to see Sinclair.” Her voice was quiet, matter-of-fact, like she was reporting the weather. “I needed clarity. Answers.”
