The disgust in his voice was visceral.
“She had a child,” I said.
He inhaled sharply.
“Yes.”
The word was a blade.
“She had a child,” he repeated. “And she never told me.”
His jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack.
“I found out after she died.”
The confession hung there.
“How?” I asked.
He barked another laugh.
“You think she wiped everything? She was sloppy at the end. Distracted. Emails left open. Transfers I couldn’t explain. A lease.”
His eyes darted around the room.
“This lease.”
The apartment felt smaller.
“I came here,” he said. “After the funeral. After I stood next to your parents and accepted condolences like a good, grieving husband.”
His voice broke on the word husband.
And something in me—something old and sharp—wanted to pity him for a fraction of a second.
Wanted to see a grieving man standing in the rubble of a marriage he hadn’t understood until it was too late.
Then his gaze slid, calculating, over the room. Over Rose’s books. Her scarf on the chair. The photographs on the dresser.
Not grief.
Inventory.
Like he was taking stock of what she’d kept from him.
“You know what the worst part is?” he said, voice lowering, tightening into something uglier. “It wasn’t even hard to find.”
My stomach clenched.
“What wasn’t?” I asked, though I could feel the answer coming.
He laughed again, softer. Meaner. “Her routines.”
He gestured toward the window with the gun, a lazy flick of metal that made Kane shift half an inch—subtle, lethal readiness.
“She was predictable. Same cafés. Same streets. Same building.” Randy’s eyes snapped back to me. “She thought she was so careful. But she always did that thing?—”
He mimed checking an invisible watch.
