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Roxina dropped the trowel, dirt crumbling between her fingers. She tugged off her gloves as she rose, letting them fall to the damp earth beside her boots.

He teetered like a man balancing on the edge of collapse. His once-powerful frame had withered beneath hardship. His finely tailored coat now hung in loose disrepair—frayed edges, missing buttons, and a jagged tear along the sleeve.

A pinkish scar slashed across his cheek, no doubt acquired when he cheated the wrong man.

Once crisply starched and snow-white, but now tattered and stained with sweat and grime, his cravat hung in a loose, wilted knot.

But his eyes—those deep brown eyes that had once burned with self-centered arrogance—held nothing of their former insolence. Shadows pooled in their depths, regret carving hollows into the sharp planes of his face.

A poorly kept mustache quivered atop his upper lip.

“Why are you here?” she asked between stiff lips, unable to summon an ounce of sisterly love or compassion.

He fashioned a frail smile and gave a pitiful shrug.

“Nowhere else to go,” he said, his mouth barely moving.

Outrage climbed Roxina’s spine, searing through her like a brand.

“No place else?” The words struck cold, sharp, and incredulous. “And so you come here? To my friend’s home, expecting what—kindness? Mercy? You, who abandoned me? You, who left me with nothing, who never once lifted a finger to help?”

She clenched her hands into tight fists.

“If it hadn’t been for Shelby Tellinger, I would have been thrown into the streets. And what you did to him… My God! It was bad enough the moneylenders forced him to put our home up for collateral and hounded him for the money you borrowed, but you cheated the leader of a gang of highwaymen at cards, and they abducted Shelby and me. Your selfishness and disregard for everyone else nearly cost us our lives.”

Roxina braced herself for his practiced excuses—the deflections, the shifting of blame, the attempts to make her feel guilty. How many times had he twisted words, making himself the victim?

But to her astonishment, he did none of those things.

“I’m sorry.”

He seemed so contrite. She almost believed him.

But experience taught her better.

Mitchel ducked his head, his shoulders folding inward as though trying to make himself smaller. His whisper, so faint, so full of self-loathing and castigation, barely carried to her across the few feet.

“I’ll go.” The words scraped from his throat like something broken beyond repair. “You’re absolutely correct. I have no right to ask anything of you, Roxina. Forgive me for disturbing you. I wish you well.”

Turning, he took an unsteady step away, and Roxina swallowed a gasp as he nearly toppled over.

His back to her, he spoke again, his voice raw and fractured. “I hope, someday, you can forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself for the god-awful, horrific way I treated you.”

Something inside her splintered, and the bastions of resentment, anger, and self-preservation crumbled.

He didn’t plead for help, nor make empty promises. Just an honest admission of his unkindness—something she had longed to hear but never expected.

He stumbled again, throwing his hand out to steady himself against the trellis.

In an instant, Roxina decided.

She refused to be as cruel as he had been.

Before hesitation or regret could take root, Roxina stepped forward, looping an arm around his frail frame. The stench of negligence clung to her brother, turning her stomach, but she held firm.

Heat radiated through his threadbare clothing, and dark smudges bruised the skin beneath his eyes.

Surprise tempered with hope sparked in his weary eyes.