The words die like a bird hitting glass.
Gabriel sits at his kitchen table, but he's not alone. Colt and Beau flank him like stone sentries, their faces carved into expressions I've never seen before. Cold. Suspicious. Wary.
But it's not them that turns my blood to ice water in my veins.
It's the man sitting across from them, silver-haired and perfectly composed in his expensive suit.
Uncle Richard.
The world tilts sideways like I've been sucker-punched. Sound becomes muffled, distant, like I'm drowning in air that suddenly feels too thin to breathe. The cheerful yellow glow from Gabriel's vintage Edison bulbs turns harsh, burning my retinas. My knees lock, refusing to bend or move, while my heart hammers hard.
He's here. Inmysafespace.
How?
"Hello, Lucinda." Gabriel's voice comes from a thousand miles away, but each syllable hits like a physical blow to my solar plexus.
Lucinda.Not Lucy. Not Trouble. He knows. They all know.
My chest constricts until I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but stand there like a deer in headlights while the buzzing in my ears drowns out everything except my own ragged gasping.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening.
But uncle Richard's smile is real. Cold and patient and victorious.
"Hello, sweetheart." He rises from his chair with the predatory grace of a wolf who's finally cornered his prey. "We've been so worried about you."
Movement in my peripheral vision makes me turn, and my stomach drops straight through the floor.
Two other figures emerge from the hallway shadows like something out of my worst nightmares. Dr. Harrison from Rosewood, his kind face masking the monster I know lurks beneath that professional smile. And Nurse Wells, who held me down while they forced injections into my veins until the world went black.
They're all here. All of them. In Gabriel's house, around his table, contaminating the first place that's ever felt like home.
"How..." The word scrapes my throat raw, comes out as barely a whisper. "How did you find out?"
I look at my men, these three incredible souls I thought I could trust with anything, and see nothing but hurt and suspicion staring back at me.
Like I'm a stranger who wandered into their home uninvited. Like I'm the enemy.
The betrayal hits harder than any physical blow ever could.
"Your uncle was very thorough," Gabriel says, and his voice is different now. Professional. Cold as a Montana winter. Like I'm a suspect he's interrogating instead of the woman who shared his bed last night. "He showed us everything."
Everything.The word echoes in my head like a death knell.
"You don't understand." I take a step toward them, stopping short when Beau actually flinches away from me like I might explode into violence.
"Whatever they told you, it's not the whole truth. I can explain—"
"Can you?" Colt's voice cuts through the air like broken glass, sharp enough to draw blood. "It looks like you've been lying to us about everything. Your name, your past, who the hell you really are."
Each word is a knife between my ribs. He's looking at me like I'm something dirty he scraped off his boot.
"I haven't been lying about who I am!" Desperation makes my voice crack, turn shrill in a way that makes me sound exactly like the unstable woman they think I am. "I'm still me. I'm still the person you know, the person you—"
But I can see the doubt creeping across their faces like shadows at sunset. The way they look at me now, like I'm something fragile and dangerous that might shatter or explode without warning.
Like every moment we shared was built on lies.
