All Chapters of RUIN ME TENDER : Chapter 21 - Chapter 23

Before the silence grows heavy, Mom pipes in, her tone light and hopeful, “We should go out for dinner tonight. Somewhere nice. Celebrate you being here.”I look up, caught off guard by the sudden shift, but I smile, softening. “That’s nice.”She returns the smile, a little proud, a little wistful. Dad is already pulling out his phone. “I’ll make the reservations then. I know just the place.”Mom turns to me, her eyes gentle. “Don’t exhaust yourself so much, Isla. You’re still young. There’s time.”Her voice trails as she adds quietly, “Mathieu worked too hard too…”Her eyes drift to the floor, and something in her expression darkens, fades. A memory flashes behind her gaze like the after-image of a flame.I tense. My brother’s name always draws a shadow in the room—like a ghost still sitting in the corner, waiting for someone to acknowledge him.I can’t let her go there. Not again. If she thinks about Mathieu, she’ll fall too deep into it. And she won’t know how to climb back.So I s

Sleep is a ghost I can’t seem to catch.The hours bleed into one another, marked only by the slow, suffocating tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway. My laptop screen is the only source of light in the room, casting a harsh, artificial glow against the silk sheets I’ve twisted around my legs.My eyes burn. My head throbs with a dull, rhythmic ache behind my temples. But I can’t look away.Raven Co.The name mocks me from the digital document.I’ve read the file three times. Then four. Then five. Desperate to find a mistake, a glitch, a misinterpretation. I want Andy to be wrong. I want this to be some elaborate accounting error, a dummy file Mathieu created for a case study, a simulation—anything other than what it clearly is.But the numbers don’t lie.Three months before the fire.March 12th. A transfer of two hundred thousand dollars to an offshore account in the Caymans.March 28th. Another transfer. Three hundred thousand.April 15th. Five hundred thousand.The label on th