39

Sierra’s POV

The morning dawned with a silence so complete it felt like the house itself was holding its breath. I had not slept. I had lain on the chaise, staring at the pattern of moonlight shifting across the ceiling, feeling the new, terrible knowledge settle into my bones like a terminal cold.

Claudia Rossi was dead. Louis had killed her. Not with his hands, but with his will, and his money, and the monster he kept on a leash. The man I loved was a murderer. The father of my child had ordered the death of a woman whose only crime was loving her broken sister too much to be bought.

When the grey light finally came, I moved through the routine like an automaton. Shower. Dress. The clothes felt like a costume. I avoided the bedroom, where Louis still lay, a stranger in our bed.

Downstairs, the kitchen was too bright. Katie chattered about her dream, a nonsensical, happy story involving flying pancakes. I made the pancakes. I poured the syrup. I smiled at her. The disconnect between my inner devastation and the sunny domestic scene was so vast it made me dizzy.

Louis entered. He looked like he had aged ten years overnight. His eyes, when they met mine, were hollow, the windows to a burned-out house. He didn’t speak. He poured coffee. The silence between us was a physical wall.

Katie, sensing the chill, grew quieter. She looked from my too-bright face to Louis’s stony one. “Are you and Daddy Louis fighting?”

“No, bug,” I said, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. “We’re just tired.”

Louis’s jaw tightened. He couldn’t even manage the lie for her.

The confirmation came not from him, but from the world. It was on the television in the den, where the morning news played on low volume. I was passing by, a stack of Katie’s folded clothes in my arms, when I saw the flash of familiar highway, a crushed car.

The anchor’s voice was professionally somber. “...fatal accident early this morning on the 105, claiming the life of a visitor from Italy. Police say the driver appears to have lost control. No other factors are suspected.”

A photo appeared on the screen. It was Claudia’s hotel booking photo, a bland, official image. She looked even more tired in it.

My legs gave out. I stumbled, the clothes tumbling to the floor in a soft heap. I gripped the back of a chair, my knuckles white, staring at her face on the screen. It was real. It was in the world. It was a news item, a tragedy of the day, soon to be forgotten by everyone except the man who ordered it and the woman who knew.

I felt him before I saw him. Louis stood in the doorway, watching me watch the proof of his sin. His face was pale, his expression unreadable.

I turned my head slowly and looked at him. I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. My eyes said everything. *You did this. I know you did this.*

He held my gaze for a long, terrible moment. Then his eyes dropped. It was as close to an admission as I would ever get.

He turned and walked away, back into the shadows of the house.

I sank into the chair, trembling. The news moved on to a sports highlight. Claudia Rossi vanished from the screen, erased from the public record as neatly as Louis had erased her from the earth.

What was I supposed to do now?

The question hammered in my skull. Call the police? And say what? My husband used his secret assassin to kill a woman because she knew about his past crime? I had no proof. Only my certainty. And my certainty would destroy Katie. It would land Louis in prison for life, and our daughter would grow up as the child of a notorious murderer. She would lose everything—her father, her home, her future. All because I needed to clear my conscience.

But if I stayed… if I continued to live in this house, to share his bed, to let Katie adore him… what did that make me? Complicit. A silent accomplice. I would be choosing a gilded life for my daughter over the memory of a dead woman. I would be choosing the monster for his protection.

I was trapped in a nightmare with no right exit.

The day passed in a haze of numb horror. I played with Katie in the garden, my laughter a brittle, fake thing that hurt my throat. I watched Louis from a distance. He tried to engage with Katie, but his touch was hesitant, his smiles didn’t reach his eyes. He was a ghost haunting his own life, and I was the one who could see him.

That night, after I put Katie to bed, I didn’t go to the bedroom or the chaise. I went to the one place in the house that still felt like mine, even though it wasn’t finished. The Savarina test kitchen, in the west wing.

It was a beautiful space, all stainless steel and marble, designed to my specifications. My ovens, my mixers, my bins of flour and sugar. It was to be my sanctuary, my piece of the empire. Now, standing in the middle of it, the room felt like a mockery. How could I create something sweet and nourishing in a house that now smelled of blood and lies?

I don’t know how long I stood there. The door opened softly. Louis stood there, still in his suit trousers and a wrinkled white shirt. He looked defeated.

“I can’t live with your silence, Sierra,” he said, his voice ragged. “Scream at me. Hate me. But don’t look through me like I’m not here.”

“What do you want me to say?” My voice was flat, dead. “Congratulations on a clean job? She’s out of our way now? Is that what you want to hear?”

He flinched. “I want you to understand why I had to do it.”

“I do understand,” I said, and the truth of it was the most awful part. “I understand the math. One life versus our whole world. I just never thought I was married to the man who could do the equation.”

“For you,” he whispered, taking a step into the room. “For Katie. It’s always for you.”

“Stop.” I held up a hand. “Don’t put her name on this. Don’t you dare. You did this for you. To keep your secret. To keep your crown. We’re just the treasures in the vault you’re killing to protect.”

He looked at me, and for a fleeting second, I saw the man from the hotel room five years ago—not the powerful stranger, but the lonely, hungry soul who had looked at me like I was the answer. That man was still in there, buried under layers of power and guilt and blood.

“What happens now?” he asked, the question hanging between us, as heavy as a death sentence.

I didn’t know. I truly didn’t know. My love for him was a tangled, thorny vine, wrapped around the bedrock of my horror. My duty to Katie was a chain, keeping me in this beautiful, cursed place.

“I need time,” I said finally, because it was the only true thing left. “I need to not look at you right now.”

He nodded, accepting the punishment. He turned to leave, then paused. “I love you,” he said, the words simple and devastating. “That is the one true thing in all of this. Remember that.”

He left, closing the door softly behind him.

I was alone in my kitchen. I walked to a large bin of flour, the pure, white, untainted powder. I sank my hands into it, up to my wrists. The cool, soft texture was a grounding shock. This was real. Flour. Sugar. Butter. Life. Not death, and lies, and deals in the dark.

I pulled my hands out, leaving ghostly prints in the smooth surface.

I had made my choice the moment I didn’t call the police. The moment I put Katie’s stability above justice for Claudia. I had chosen the fortress.

But that didn’t mean I had to love the warden.

I would stay. For Katie. I would build my bakery. I would stand by Louis in public. I would be the queen of this damned castle.

But the woman who loved Louis Trevane, who trusted him, who saw a future with him… she had died in the night too, alongside a stranger on a highway.

All that was left was a mother. And a survivor.

And from this day forward, I would survive for one reason only. To make sure my daughter never, ever learned the price that was paid for her perfect world.