48

Sierra’s POV

The first month of the armistice was the strangest and most peaceful of my life.

We moved through the house like diplomats from allied but wary nations. Polite. Coordinated. Deeply observant of the new borders. The cold war was over, replaced by a kind of professional détente. We were co-CEOs of the entity known as “The Crowe Family,” and our sole project was Katie’s stability and our collective security.

Mornings were no longer silent battlegrounds. They were operational briefings over coffee.

“Katie has art therapy at ten,” I’d say, scanning my tablet.

“I’ve cleared my schedule until one,” Louis would respond, not looking up from his financial reports. “The security detail for the park is doubled, as we agreed.”

“Thank you.”

We had family dinners. Actual ones. No business tablets, no simmering resentment hanging over the organic roast chicken. We talked to Katie. We asked about her day. We listened. We made painfully stilted conversation with each other about benign topics—a new exhibition at the museum, the mayor’s infrastructure proposal. It was like performing a play titled “Happy Family,” but the performance, through sheer repetition, began to create its own reality. Katie blossomed under it. The shadows in her eyes receded, replaced by a tentative security. She started sleeping in her own bed again, the nightmares becoming less frequent.

Louis and I did not touch. We did not discuss the past. We discussed the future in logistical terms: school selections, security protocols, the philanthropic foundation’s quarterly goals. The physical arrangement remained tabled. We occupied opposite ends of a vast, lonely bed, a silent no-man’s-land between us. It was a sacrifice we had both tacitly agreed to. Intimacy was a variable we could not yet risk introducing into the equation. It was too volatile, too tied to everything we were trying to wall off.

The respect, however, was real and growing. I saw him with Katie—the infinite patience, the way he could make her laugh with a dry, silly voice for her stuffed animals. I saw him in our evening “security review” sessions, his mind a ruthless, brilliant machine, anticipating threats I hadn’t even conceived of. He listened to my input. He amended plans based on my concerns about Katie’s sense of normalcy. My opinion had operational weight.

I was no longer the decorative wife in the gilded cage. I was the head of domestic security, the minister of psychological welfare, a partner in the firm. The muscle that had flexed in the face of Victor Hale—the cold, strategic one—was being exercised daily. I found I was good at it. There was a grim satisfaction in it.

Then, thirty-four days into the armistice, the first test came.

It arrived in the form of a polite, persistent man in a slightly rumpled suit, sitting in our sun-drenched living room. Detective Alvarez, from the FBI’s continuing investigation. He was following up on “inconsistencies.”

Louis was a granite presence beside me on the sofa, the picture of cooperative authority. “I thought the case was closed, Detective. Victor Hale acted alone. The evidence was clear.”

“It is, Mr. Crowe. Mostly.” Alvarez smiled, a disarming, tired gesture. “This is just tying up loose ends. For the file.” He turned his mild gaze to me. “Mrs. Crowe, in your statement, you said you heard Mr. Hale say, ‘He never should have touched the other one.’ Do you recall that?”

The air in the room grew still. I remembered the cold concrete, the smell of mildew, Victor’s furious, spitting words. *‘He never should have touched the other one.’* At the time, drowning in terror for Katie, it had meant nothing. Later, in the blur of aftermath, I’d forgotten it entirely.

“I… believe I did, yes,” I said, my voice carefully neutral.

“Did you ask your husband what that meant?”

Louis didn’t flinch. “It meant nothing. The man was raving. Trying to confuse her, to buy time.”

“Probably,” Alvarez agreed, nodding. “But ‘the other one’ implies a previous one. A previous… transgression. A previous girl. We have no record of Mr. Hale having a daughter or any other minor in his life. So it’s an odd phrase.”

My blood ran cold. *A previous girl.*

Louis’s face was a mask of slightly impatient cooperation. “As I said, he was unhinged. He’d constructed an elaborate narrative of grievance against me. He was filling in the blanks with delusion.”

“You’re likely right,” Alvarez said, closing his notebook. He stood. “Like I said, loose ends. We’ll be in touch if anything else comes up. Thank you for your time.”

I walked him to the door, my social smile perfectly glued in place. When it shut, I turned. Louis was already standing, moving toward his study, his posture rigid.

I followed him in, closing the door softly. “What was he talking about, Louis?”

He stood at the window, his back to me. “Exactly what I said. A delusion.”

“Don’t,” I said, my voice low and firm. “Term one. Absolute transparency. No more secrets. Is this a loose end, or is this a live wire?”

He was silent for a long moment, the weight of our pact filling the room. He had to choose: the old ways of unilateral control, or the new, fragile alliance.

He turned. The look on his face wasn’t guilt. It was the grim focus of a strategist seeing a threat vector he’d missed. “It’s a potential live wire. Victor wasn’t raving. He was talking about something real. Something from a long time ago. Before you. Before Katie.”

The ground beneath our carefully poured concrete shifted. “What ‘other one’?”

“Not a child,” he said quickly, seeing the panic in my eyes. “A woman. An associate of his. A… complication. Victor was emotionally involved. I had to sever the business relationship. It was messy. He viewed it as a personal betrayal.”

The pieces clicked into a horrifying, plausible picture. Victor’ rage wasn’t just about business. It was twisted up with a personal loss, one he blamed Louis for. “And he called her ‘the other one’? Like she was property?”

Louis’s jaw tightened. “In his mind, perhaps. I dealt with it. I made it go away. I thought it was buried.”

“Clearly, it wasn’t.” I began to pace, the strategic muscle firing. “Alvarez is a bloodhound. He’s not satisfied. A ‘previous girl’ is a thread. If he pulls it, what does he find? Not the truth, but a version of it he can use. A scandal. A motive that makes you look… worse. That makes the ‘disgraced former associate’ story look like a cover-up.”

“I know,” Louis said, his voice quiet. “I’m already running containment. The woman in question is offshore, compensated, and under a very strict NDA. But if Alvarez digs into Victor’s old communications, finds a trace of his obsession…”

“...the narrative shifts,” I finished. “It becomes a billionaire covering up a sordid affair that led to a kidnapping. The press will eviscerate us. Katie’s trauma becomes a tabloid footnote to your scandal.” I stopped pacing, facing him. “This is exactly the kind of rubble we were talking about. You built on a grave, Louis. And now someone is trying to dig.”

“What do you propose?” he asked. It wasn’t a challenge. It was a genuine request for counsel, from one partner to another.

I took a deep breath, stepping fully into my role. “We get ahead of it. We don’t wait for Alvarez to come back. We control the narrative. We find a way to make the ‘other one’ irrelevant, or better yet, a reinforcement of Victor’s instability. We feed the bloodhound a more compelling scent that leads to a dead end.”

A ghost of something—approval, relief—flickered in his eyes. “That’s… aggressive. And smart.”

“It’s necessary. We protect what we have.” I echoed our vow. “Together. No more unilateral decisions. We plan this. Now.”

He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. For the next hour, we plotted. We were no longer a husband and wife pretending. We were two survivors, mapping a minefield, our heads bent close together over the same map. The forgotten phrase was no longer just his secret. It was our shared threat.

As we finalized the first steps, a strange calm settled over me. This was the partnership I had demanded. It was brutal. It was morally ambiguous. It involved spinning shadows and directing attention away from the truth.

But he was being transparent. And we were acting as one.

Later, as we left the study, he paused. “Sierra.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For not assuming the worst.”

I met his gaze. “I assumed a threat. And we dealt with it. That’s the deal.”

He nodded. The moment stretched, charged with the unsaid things, the tabled negotiations. Then it passed.

We walked out to find Katie, who was showing her nanny a drawing of our family: three stick figures, holding hands under a giant, smiling sun. The line between performance and reality, between strategy and truth, was blurring beyond recognition.

We had vowed to build over the graves. Now, we had to cement over a new crack before it could split our foundation wide open. The armistice was over. The active campaign had begun.