Chapter 8

A ROOM WITHOUT MEMORIES

Riona’s POV

The room Kieran had arranged for me was beautiful in the way expensive hotel rooms were beautiful: everything in its place, every surface spotless, and not a single object that suggested someone had ever lived there.

A woman from his security team had driven me to a private residence on the quieter side of the city. She called it temporary accommodation and assured me that the building had round-the-clock security. I thanked her because I didn’t know what else to say. After everything that had happened, gratitude was easier than explaining that I no longer knew how to accept kindness without searching for the price attached to it.

Now I stood in the middle of the bedroom, staring at a bed large enough for two people who had somewhere to return to after a difficult day.

I had no such place.

My suitcase rested beside the wardrobe. My folder lay on the desk, containing divorce papers that still seemed impossible to belong to me. A glass of water waited on the bedside table. The curtains were drawn, shutting out the unfamiliar city lights, and the air smelled faintly of fresh linen.

Nothing was broken. Nothing was out of place.

Somehow, that made everything worse.

At home, there would have been evidence of my existence. My favorite mug in the kitchen. The book I had abandoned beside the sofa. The little things Caelan complained about when I forgot to put them away. I had once thought those ordinary details meant I belonged somewhere.

Now I had a room that had been prepared for me by strangers, and not one thing in it remembered who I had been before tonight.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took out my phone.

There were dozens of notifications. News alerts. Missed calls from numbers I recognized. Messages from people who had never shown the slightest interest in my marriage until its collapse became something they could discuss.

I opened a message from a former colleague at Wrenhold.

Riona, I just saw the news. Please tell me this isn’t true. Did you really try to poison that woman?

I read it twice, hoping the words might change if I gave them enough time.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

No. I didn’t do it. The evidence is wrong, and someone has manipulated the case.

I deleted the last sentence. It sounded defensive, and I was exhausted from defending myself to people who had already decided what they wanted to believe.

Instead, I typed, I didn’t poison anyone. I hope you’ll remember the person you worked with before believing everything you read.

I sent it before I could reconsider.

Another message appeared from a former colleague who had initially offered sympathy.

I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I hope you have someone helping you.

I began typing a reply, but the message remained unread. A few minutes later, I checked again. Nothing.

I put the phone down.

Perhaps she was busy. Perhaps she had been warned not to associate with me. Perhaps she had simply changed her mind after learning more about the allegations. I couldn’t know, and I had no strength left to construct explanations for people who had decided that silence was safer than standing beside me.

My eyes drifted toward the folder on the desk.

Caelan’s signature was still visible on the divorce papers. I had signed beneath his name with a hand that barely felt like mine. I remembered the hospital room, the blood, the unbearable emptiness after the doctor stopped speaking. I remembered waiting for Caelan to come through the door. He hadn’t.

Even when I had lost our child, some foolish part of me had expected him to appear and hold my hand. I had believed that whatever happened between us, the loss would belong to both of us. Instead, he had arrived with papers and left me alone with the consequences.

I pressed my palm against my stomach.

The gesture was automatic. There was nothing there to protect anymore, but my body had not caught up with the truth. For one terrible second, I could almost imagine that everything was still as it had been before our anniversary, before Melania’s accusation, before my world had been reduced to headlines and signatures.

I withdrew my hand and opened my photo gallery.

I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found it.

Caelan and I stood beside a lake in a photograph taken during the second year of our marriage. His arm rested around my shoulders, and I was laughing at something outside the frame. He wasn’t smiling directly at the camera. He was looking at me.

I remembered that afternoon. We had argued over the route because I had insisted on taking a longer road to see the lake. Caelan had complained about wasting time, then bought me coffee when we arrived. He had listened while I talked about a property development I wanted to pursue, asking questions that made me feel as though my ideas mattered.

That man had existed. I knew he had.

I couldn’t reconcile him with the husband who had watched the police take me away, who had chosen Melania’s word over mine, who had left me bleeding in a hospital bed and returned only to demand a divorce.

Perhaps I had been remembering the good parts so faithfully that I had mistaken them for the whole truth.

My thumb moved across the screen, stopping over his contact.

Caelan.

I opened our conversation. The last messages were ordinary, almost painfully so. A reminder about a dinner reservation. A photograph I had sent him of a building facade I liked. His brief response, Looks fine.

I scrolled upward, searching for a moment when something had changed. There were affectionate messages, arguments, plans for weekends we never took, and promises about a future that now felt like it belonged to someone else.

I began typing.

~Caelan, I need you to listen to me. I did not poison Melania. You know me better than this. Please look at the evidence again. The timeline doesn’t make sense, and there are things in the file that don’t belong there. Someone is lying to you.

I stopped. The message looked too much like a plea. I tried again.

~I never wanted to hurt anyone. I loved you, and I thought you knew me. If you would just investigate properly, you would understand that I didn’t do this.

My throat tightened.

There it was. Even now, I was trying to explain myself to the man who had watched me lose everything and decided that my suffering was inconvenient. I was still arranging my pain into sentences, hoping I could find the right combination of words to make him care.

I imagined the message arriving on his phone. I imagined him reading it beside Melania’s hospital bed, his expression hardening as he decided I was manipulating him. I imagined the silence that would follow. My hand began to shake.

I selected the unfinished message and deleted it. The conversation returned to the screen, leaving me with the same old messages and his name at the top. I stared at the contact information, my thumb resting over the option to delete it.

I couldn’t do it.

Not tonight.

Still loving him did not mean I had to keep handing him opportunities to hurt me. I could miss him without asking him to return. I could remember the man in that photograph without pretending he was the man who had abandoned me.

I locked the phone and set it facedown on the bed.

For tonight, I would not beg him to look at me.

A message arrived a few minutes later.

It was from Kieran.

Are you available tomorrow morning to review the photograph and answer several specific questions? My team has begun checking the company records. We should compare what you remember with what they find.

No greeting. No question about whether I had settled in, whether I was frightened, or whether I needed anything.

Strangely, I preferred it. Kieran had made no promises he couldn’t keep. He wanted information, and he was willing to exchange information in return. It wasn’t tenderness, but it was honest enough for me to understand.

I replied, Tomorrow morning works. Send me the time.

Then I placed the phone on the bedside table and reached for the lamp.

The room fell into darkness, and for the first time since leaving the hospital, I allowed myself to lie down without trying to solve everything at once.

My eyes had barely closed when the phone vibrated again.

I picked it up, expecting another message from Kieran.

Instead, a notification appeared from an unfamiliar account.

~You should have stayed quiet about what you saw.