“She was my wife,” he hissed. “She was supposed to be mine.”
There it was again.
Supposed to.
As if Rose had been a contract that had breached.
Kane’s voice came again, calm as stone. “Randy. Put the gun down and step away from her.”
Randy’s gaze flicked to Kane with open contempt.
“You think you can tell me what to do?” he said. “Who the hell are you, her new?—”
Kane moved just slightly—barely a shift of weight—and Randy’s eyes cut back to me, like he felt the danger and didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Answer me,” he demanded. “Is she mine?”
My pulse pounded in my ears.
I thought of Étienne’s face. The gentleness in his voice when he’d said her name. The way Sabine had leaned into him without thinking, like she’d done it a thousand times.
Family doesn’t always mean blood, my mind supplied uselessly.
But Randy wasn’t asking about love.
He was asking about claim.
And I could feel in my bones that the answer he wanted wasn’t about the truth.
It was about permission.
About justification.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
The words came out soft, careful, honest.
“I don’t think she is.”
Randy went still.
Not the stillness of relief.
The stillness of something tipping.
His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed into a hateful, focused point.
“Of course,” he whispered.
Like the conclusion had been waiting.
Like he’d been holding onto a thread of hope—not because he cared about Sabine, but because the hope would have made Rose’s betrayal more forgivable to his ego.
If she had been carrying his child, then maybe this wasn’t rejection.
Maybe it was confusion.
Maybe he could rewrite it.
