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Eliora's POV "You don't have to explain yourself to me," I said, setting two cups of tea down on the table between us. "I just wanted to check if you were okay. After the dinner."Lydia wrapped both hands around her cup, the way she always did, like the warmth mattered more than the drinking. "I'm fine," she said. "I've had worse evenings.""You don't seem fine."She looked up at me, and something in her face shifted, not quite a wall coming down, but a crack appearing in it. "She just gets under my skin," she said. "Tonia. Always has.""Can I ask why?"Lydia was quiet for a moment, turning the cup slowly. "Because she had everything I didn't," she said finally. "The marriage that lasted. The money that never disappeared. The ability to walk into a room and have everyone defer to her without question." She paused. "And then she used all of that to hurt my daughter. To take two years away from you and Ezra both. And somehow she still gets to sit at the same table, holding her head u
Eliora's POV "You're early," I said, when the front door opened and Kian walked in still in his work clothes, jacket over one arm, a takeout bag in the other."I said I would be."Ezra appeared at the top of the stairs before either of us could say anything else, peering down with the caution he'd carried for two days now, like he was checking the weather before deciding whether it was safe to come down."Hey, bud," Kian said, looking up at him. "Come down here for a second."Ezra came slowly, one stair at a time, Noah trailing behind him, both of them watching us with the same careful attention."I got dinner," Kian said, holding up the bag. "The place with the noodles you like.""Are you and Mom okay now?" Ezra asked, ignoring the bag entirely.Kian crouched down to his level. "We're going to be," he said. "We had a disagreement, and that's okay sometimes….even grown-ups disagree. But we're not going anywhere. Either of us.""You promise?" Ezra looked between us."I promise," Kian
Kian's POV "You look like hell," Drew said, dropping into the chair across from my desk without waiting to be invited."Thanks.""How many nights in the guest room now?""Two." I didn't look up from the report I wasn't actually reading. "Don't you have your own family to bother?""Mitchell's at nursery. Zoey's at work. I'm free." He propped his feet up on the edge of my desk, which I let slide because I didn't have the energy to fight him on it too. "So what happened?""Nothing.""Kian."I set the report down. "I tried to fix something with the dinner, and it backfired, and then Eliora and I had a fight, and now we're not really talking.""What kind of fight?""She said I was unreasonable for wanting Lydia to forgive my mother on my timeline."Drew raised an eyebrow. "Did you say that?""Not exactly.""What did you say exactly?"I thought back through it, trying to find the precise moment things had gone wrong, the way you replayed a meeting looking for where the deal actually died.
Eliora's POV "Mom, are you and Dad fighting?"My hand hovered over the laptop keys, the email I'd been writing forgotten mid-sentence. Ezra stood in the doorway of my office, school bag still over one shoulder, his face set in the same serious expression he'd worn since he was small, the one that meant he'd already done his thinking before he opened his mouth.I blinked at him and laughed, a little too quickly. "Sometimes us adults have our little bickers. It—""Is it because of Grandma Lydia and Grandma Tonia?" He waited, patient, his bag slipping slightly off his shoulder and him not bothering to fix it.I turned fully from the laptop and opened my arms.He walked into them slowly, the sadness in the way he moved more telling than anything he'd said, and let his bag drop onto the floor as he pressed himself against me."Oh, my little boy." I patted his hair, ruffled it the way he hated and secretly loved. "Look at you, all grown up. Nothing gets past you anymore."He pulled back j
Eliora's POV "Is this what you wanted to tell me at dinner the other?""Yes."Kian sighed. "I'm sorry. I brushed it off till I forgot about it.""It's fine." I sunk harder into the bed and sighed, "what do we do about them?""Maybe a dinner would help," Kian said, three nights after the disaster in the living room, his voice carrying the particular optimism of someone who hadn't yet learned that some fires didn't go out with more fuel. "Get them in a room together properly. With food. Structure. Maybe it'll smooth things over.""Or it'll make it worse," I said."It won't.""You don't know that.""I think if we just give them the chance to actually talk—""They've had decades to talk, Kian."He looked at me like I was missing the point, which I probably was, in his eyes, and I let it go because some part of me wanted to believe he was right. Because hope was easier than the alternative, and because watching him try to fix things had always been one of the things I loved about him, eve
Eliora's POV "Is this for me?" Noah held the book carefully, both hands, the way he held everything he considered valuable."It is," Lydia said, settling into the armchair with the kind of ease that still surprised me sometimes, how natural this had become, her in my house, in my chair, with my children climbing toward her without hesitation. "I thought you might like it. It's about a fox who's afraid of the dark.""I'm not afraid of the dark," Noah said."No," Lydia said, smiling. "I didn't think you would be. But the fox is, and he learns not to be. I thought that might be nice."Noah considered this with his usual seriousness, then climbed up onto the arm of her chair and opened the book himself, flipping to the first page with the careful concentration he gave most things."Read it to him," I said. "He won't ask, but he wants you to.""I'm asking," Noah said, without looking up."There he is," Lydia said, laughing, and pulled him gently into her lap.Ezra, who had been hovering
Eliora’s POVMidnight in a hospital is not silent. It is a symphony of artificial sounds—the rhythmic, mechanical sigh of the ventilation, the distant, muffled squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, and the constant, mocking beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor.I lay flat on my back, staring at the ce
Kian's POV I didn’t wait for the elevator. I hit the stairs, the fire of adrenaline burning through the exhaustion that had plagued me for weeks. Detective Miller’s text was a beacon in the dark, and I followed it like a predator that had finally caught the scent of blood.The city outside was a b
Eliora's POV "Mummy!"The high-pitched, melodic cry shattered the heavy silence of the penthouse foyer before the front door had even fully clicked shut behind us. I didn't even have time to steady my footing on the polished marble before a small, sturdy weight slammed into my knees."Ezra!" My vo
Eliora’s POVMy heart wasn’t just beating; it was a trapped bird slamming its wings against my ribs. I stared at the door, my fingers digging into the mattress, my body instinctively shielding the small, sleeping form of Ezra. The metal track of the sliding door groaned—a high-pitched, mechanical s







