LOGINChapter 264ElowenThey left with a list.Not a plan exactly, Declan had been careful to frame it that way when he stood to leave. A plan implies certainty, he'd said, folding his notepad closed. A list implies work. This is work.I appreciated the honesty more than I expected to.The apartment felt different after the door closed behind them. Matteo stood at the window. Kian was at the table, looking at the spot where Declan's notepad had been, as though the shape of what had just happened was still visible there if you looked carefully enough.I stayed on the sofa with my hands in my lap, not ready to move yet."How do you feel?" Matteo asked without turning around."Strange," I responded genuinely. "Like I've been carrying something so long I stopped feeling the weight of it. And now I've handed it to someone else and I don't know what to do with my arms." He turned then and looked at me. "Good strange or bad strange?"I thought about it honestly. "I don't know yet."Kian looked
Chapter 263ElowenThe investigators arrived on a Thursday morning.I don't know what I had been expecting. Older, maybe. The kind of weathered, seen-it-all professionals who carried their experience in the lines around their eyes and moved through rooms like they already owned them. People who looked like they'd been handed impossible things before and had simply gotten on with it.What walked through the door instead were two people who looked barely past thirty, and something about that surprised me enough that I had to school my expression quickly so it didn't show.Kian noticed anyway. He always did. The corner of his mouth moved and he leaned slightly toward me as they settled into the chairs across from us."Don't let the age fool you," he said quietly.It didn't take long to understand what he meant.Declan Marsh was Kian's contact. British. Dark-haired, lean, with a quality of stillness about him that felt deliberate.The kind a person cultivates over years of learning that
Chapter 262Elowen Later that night, after dinner, I found Giuliana in her room arranging her stuffed animals in some complex pattern only she understood."Hey, baby," I said, knocking on the doorframe. "Can I come in?""Of course, Mama!" She looked up, brightening. "I'm organizing them by color family. Verde says it makes more sense than organizing by size.""Verde is very wise," I said, crossing the room and settling onto the edge of her bed, careful not to disturb the outer ring of the stuffed animal. "He always has been."She nodded with complete seriousness and went back to repositioning a small blue rabbit.I watched her for a moment, let out a slow breath and smoothed a hand over the blanket at the edge of her knee."Can I talk to you about something important?" I asked.Her expression shifted immediately. "Is the baby okay?""The baby's perfect. This is about something else."She set down the stuffed dragon she'd been holding and gave me her full attention. "What is it?"I to
Chapter 261Elowen"I know," I said quietly. "I never did."Matteo's hand moved gently on my shoulder, a silent question in the touch."There wasn't much to say," I continued. "I was left at the orphanage when I was a baby. No note. No name. No explanation. The nuns gave me a name, raised me, and that was it. End of story.""Except it wasn't," Kian said softly."No." I looked at him. "It wasn't. There's always been this... gap. This blank space where the beginning should be. And I learned not to ask about it. Not to think about it. Because what was the point? They were gone. I survived. Move on.""But you never really did," Matteo said."I tried." My voice came out smaller than I intended. "I really did try. I built a life. I got married, badly, but still. I moved forward. I told myself it didn't matter where I came from because I was making my own way.""And now?" Kian asked."Now I'm about to become a mother." I pressed my hand to my stomach, where our baby was growing. "And I keep
Chapter 260Elowen I held her gaze. "Yes.""Elowen." She said my name the way she did when she was trying to choose between ten different responses and couldn't land on one. "Your parents.""My biological parents. Yes.""The ones who left you at an orphanage.""I'm aware of what they did, Caroline."She exhaled through her nose. Looked away for a moment, at the fountain, at the pigeons, at some distant point past the flowering hedges, I could see her working through it. Trying to find the version of this conversation that helped me without feeding something that might hurt me."Why now?" she asked finally. Her voice had lost its edge. It was just careful now. Honest. "After everything, after all of it, why now?"I thought about it. Really thought about it, the way she'd asked me to do with the harder questions."Because I'm about to bring a child into the world," I said quietly. "And I don't know the first half of where I came from. I don't know what they looked like. I don't know
Chapter 259Elowen"That's the honest answer. I have no idea."The words came out quietly, but they landed with more weight than I expected. Like I'd been carrying them for a long time without realizing."For so long everything was about surviving him. Then it was about Giuliana's illness. Then it was about figuring out what I was to Matteo and Kian, what we were to each other." I shook my head slowly. "And now I have all of it. I have more than I ever dreamed of having. And when I try to look past it, past the family we're building, past the baby coming, I just…" I stopped. Pressed my lips together. "I don't know what I see."The confession sat between us, raw and a little clumsy. The kind of thing that sounds smaller out loud than it feels inside.Caroline didn't rush to fill it.She just looked at me, steady and patient, like she was giving me room to hear myself properly. "That's okay," she said quietly. "That's actually an incredibly honest and human thing to say. You don't hav
Chapter 100ElowenI should have stopped him, should have pushed him away and insisted we deal with his injuries and fever first before anything else happened.But his hands were sliding under my shirt and his mouth found mine and suddenly I was kissing him back with equal desperation, needing this
Chapter 98KianI stood at my door for what felt like hours after Elowen left, listening to her footsteps fade down the hallway, listening to the sound of her door closing, listening to the muffled sobs that followed and hating myself for being the cause of them.But what choice did I have?What th
Chapter 102Elowen None of them had ever really wanted me here in the first place.I was just convenient, just available, just a warm body they could use when they felt like it before discarding me again.I slipped out of my room and moved through the quiet villa like a ghost, my footsteps silent
Chapter 88Elowen Way to ruin the night Elowen.Kian paused with his wine glass halfway to his lips and I saw something shift in his expression."Why do you ask?" he said carefully."I'm just curious," I said, which was partly true. "You're both obviously successful and both seem to have resources







