A chill runs down my spine. Flashes of her in that cell with me, her voice coming from the hole in Mary’s throat. I clench my fist, think about the woman waiting for me upstairs. The only anchor I need. The one who keeps me in the present.
I clear my throat. "So you decided your wife is dispensable?”
"When she killed Mary, yes." Flat. Plain. "Not because Mary's death was the moral line. Because Valeria killing Mary told me she'd lost the thread entirely. She was no longer operating strategically. She was operating from jealousy. From possessiveness. And a woman operating from those things becomes unpredictable in ways that are expensive for everyone around her." He turns from the window. "She damaged you beyond what was useful. She created a situation that was attracting attention we couldn't contain. And she did it because she couldn't stand the idea of you choosing something she didn't give you. So I put a stop to it."
“When it suited you,” I remark.
"Yes." No hesitation. No apology. "When it suited me and when it was the right thing to do simultaneously. Those two things were true at the same time. They've been true at the same time about most of my decisions where you're concerned." He looks at me steadily. "I'm not asking you to forgive the calculation. I'm asking you to considerthat the calculation and the caring were never mutually exclusive."
Ian makes a sound. Low. Disgusted.
"Something to add?" Rowan glares at him.
"Just admiring how you can make thirteen years of using a person sound almost reasonable when you put it in the right order."
Rowan’s expression doesn’t change. He simply leans back slightly, fingers steepled, regarding Ian with the clinical detachment of a man examining a specimen under glass. “Sentiment is a waste of time and oxygen. It clouds judgment, weakens resolve, and accomplishes nothing.”
“And it makes you a dick.” Ian crosses his arms, challenging. “A small dick, though, ’cause only a man compensating that hard needs to break a kid just to feel like he’s got a big swinging pair.”
Rowan stares at him unblinking. “Charming.”
Ian flashes a bright, shit-eating grin. “Thanks. I do try. Though I gotta say, for a guy with such refined taste in suits, your personality’s still off-the-rack. Basic. Cheap. Slightly itchy.”
I look at Rowan. At the man who found me bleeding on a floor when I was fourteen, who made a calculation and a choice and has been running both ever since. Every word, every calculated pause, every “gift” he laid on the table has been positioned like a chess piece over years—decades, maybe—to put Valeria in checkmate. Remove her leverage. And take her family empire.
I start clapping, rhythmic, empty, taunting. “Bravo,” I mock. “I got to give it to you, you play an enormous game, Rowan. Marrying a woman for her family's power, waitingwith the infinite patience of someone who knew she’d destroy it eventually. And now you’re handing her to me because you no longer have use for her.”
Rowan steps up to me, eyes fixed on mine. “My wife’s obsession with you made her a liability, and she is no longer of any use to me.”
“What’s the deal, Rowan?” I cross my arms, widen my stance.
He smirks, all-knowing, glances at the piece of paper, at Ian, and then back to me. "You and I have reached the end of the line." His eyes hold mine one last time, and for just a second—just one—something moves behind them that isn't calculation, but awe. Pride, even. "I built something remarkable and am content to leave it standing."
With that, Rowan walks toward the front door. He stops at the threshold, one hand resting on the frame, and turns back to face me. His expression is calm, almost contemplative, as if he’s savoring the final moment.
“I’ve waited a long time for you to become dangerous enough to be worth saving.”
The words settle between us like a blade laid on the table, and I watch him leave, every instinct in me firing, crackling, knowing that tonight…was the last time I’ll ever see Rowan Capello.
26
SOPHIA
I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, hands folded tightly in my lap, listening to the specific quality of silence downstairs that tells me Rowan has left. The front door. A car engine turning over. Then nothing but the low hum of the mountain wind against the glass and the particular stillness of a house exhaling after something significant has moved through it.
The door opens.
I look at him, and I already know. From the rigid set of his jaw. The way he's carrying himself—not tense, exactly, but weighted, like something massive has been laid across his shoulders and he hasn't decided yet whether to bear it or burn it.
His eyes find mine across the room, and they're doing the thing they do when he's holding something large—present, clear, but darker than usual, a winter sky before a storm rather than after one.
He crosses to the side table without speaking. Sets afolded piece of paper on it without opening it. The sound of it landing is almost nothing, just paper against wood, but in the quiet of the room it has weight.
Then he sits beside me on the bed. Forearms on his knees. Hands loose between them. Staring at the floor like it might give him something the ceiling won't.
I look at the side of his face. At the scar I know by touch. At the jaw working slightly, the way it does when he's running through something internally that he hasn't found the words for yet.
I wait.
