로그인LEON'S POVI read Justin's message twice.Then I put my phone in my pocket and stood on the bottom step of the Romano estate looking at the car waiting for us at the gate and thought about Carter Romano sitting somewhere in this city having made a statement last night that couldn't be taken back.Wanting to meet me.Kate was beside me. Not pushing. Not filling the silence with suggestions. Just present in the way she'd learned to be present, which was one of the things about her I'd stopped being able to imagine being without."You don't have to," she said."I know.""Not today. Not this week. Not on anyone else's timeline.""I know that too," I said.She waited.I looked at the gate. At the city beyond it. At the ordinary Saturday afternoon existing completely outside whatever was happening inside me."I want to," I said. "That's the strange part. After everything. After the letter and the bail and the medical records used as leverage." I paused. "I still want to sit across from him
KATE'S POVThe room stayed quiet for longer than was comfortable.Leon wasn't moving. Wasn't speaking. Just sitting with what Stefena had said and the particular stillness that came over him when something had landed deeper than his composure could immediately address.I kept my hand on his arm. Didn't say anything. Just kept it there.Stefena was looking at him with an expression I'd been slowly learning to read over the past two days. It wasn't the cold authoritative face she'd worn at that dinner table weeks ago. It wasn't the stripped down version from the anonymous house either. Something else. Something that had decided to be honest regardless of what that cost her in the room.Oliver had gone very still across from us."How," Leon said finally. His voice came out even. The kind of even that had considerable effort behind it."Fiona told me when she came to work here," Stefena said. "Not immediately. I found documents she'd kept. A copy of the DNA result." She paused. "I confron
LEON'S POVOliver Gentry and my mother.I turned that over in the car and couldn't find an angle that made obvious sense. They had no prior connection, no shared history, no logical reason to be sitting in the same house together the morning after everything that had happened.Unless."He went to her," Kate said beside me. Reading the same silence I was sitting in. "After the press conference. After his statement at the police station." She paused. "He went to Stefena.""Why.""Because she's the only person in this situation who knows what it feels like to have done something you can't undo and have to keep living inside it." Kate looked at the window. "Oliver made choices this week he's going to carry for a long time. Natalie, the press conference, using what he knew the way he used it." A pause. "Maybe he needed someone who understood that specific weight."I thought about that.It wasn't wrong.Stefena Romano had spent decades living inside a decision she couldn't undo. She underst
KATE'S POVHe handed me the phone without saying anything.I read it.Read it again.Then I looked at Leon and he looked back at me and we sat on that bench in that ordinary park on that ordinary Tuesday afternoon with something extraordinary sitting between us on a screen.There's a DNA result you haven't seen. Not Jared's. A different match entirely. One that changes everything you think you know about where you came from."Call her," I said.He was already dialing.It rang four times. Five. I counted without meaning to, the way you counted things when you needed something to do with the part of your mind that wasn't waiting.She answered on the sixth."Fiona." Leon's voice was level. Controlled. The version of him that appeared when something significant was happening and falling apart wasn't an option. "Explain this."I leaned slightly closer. Not enough to crowd him. Just enough to hear.Fiona's voice came through quietly. She sounded like someone who had been sitting with a deci
LEON'S POVI read the headline twice.Then I put my phone face down on the table and looked at the restaurant around us. Normal Tuesday. People eating lunch. A waiter moving between tables with practiced indifference.Kate was looking at me."How," she said."Her lawyers," I said. "They'll have argued the arrest was premature. That Stefena's confession was made under duress, without counsel present, in an unofficial setting." I paused. "They're not wrong technically. A confession made in a private sitting room to a room full of people who aren't law enforcement is complicated to use.""So she just walks out.""Pending proper charges being filed. Yes."Kate sat back in the booth.I watched her process it. Not the dramatic version of processing, no visible anger, no sharp reaction. Just the quiet internal adjustment of someone who had learned over the past week that the ground shifting was a recurring feature rather than an exception."Carter's out," she said. "Stefena's out. Wakefield
KATE'S POVI stared at Leon."Justin posted Carter's bail," I said.Not a question. Just saying it out loud because sometimes that was the only way to find out if something was as strange as it sounded inside your head.It was.Leon showed me the message. Carter's counsel. The name on the documentation clear and unambiguous. Justin Roberts. The same Justin who had stood at that microphone twenty minutes ago and said his mother's name with the specific quiet fury of someone who had been waiting his whole life to say it publicly.The same Justin who had looked Carter Romano in the eye last night and said I don't forgive you."Why," I said.Leon put the phone in his pocket. "I don't know."We both looked across the emptying conference room to where Justin was speaking to a journalist near the door, unhurried, finishing a conversation while the room cleared around him.He didn't look like someone who had just done something unexpected.He looked exactly the same as he had all morning.Whe
KATE “What kind of bride ditches her wedding reception before the toast?”I sighed in frustration. “An unhappy bride.”To save face I returned my attention to the wardrobe, desperate to put something on, but not before I saw his mouth twitch at my statement.Where were my clothes? They were here b
KATEThe cathedral bells bellowed ceremoniously.The wedding was finally over. Then came the marriage. The actual marriage.Mrs Romano's smile was ice as she held up my bulk wedding dress, just for the cameras of course, so I could slide into the white limousine. I let out a deep breath I didn't
KATEMrs Romano’s eyes met mine.And just like that, I knew I wasn’t welcome.The verdict didn’t need words.It was in the way her gaze lingered a second too long. In the slight tightening of her lips. In the silence that followed.I lowered my eyes and took my seat.The dining table was too long.
KATE“With cooperation comes reward.”The man’s voice was calm, very calm.My father leaned forward like he was being offered the world.“And everything we discussed… still stands?”The man gave a small nod.“Of course.”My stomach turned. Everything we discussed?I stepped into the room.“What is







