All Chapters of The Second Wife's Revenge : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Three months changed everything and nothing.Grace at three months was a different creature from Grace at birth. Five pounds three ounces of fighter had become twelve pounds of person. Dark hair growing in properly now. Eyes tracking faces across rooms. Hands grabbing at anything within reach with the focused determination of someone who had decided the world belonged to her.Her cardiology follow-ups showed a heart working perfectly. Every appointment Dr. Hernandez called her his best patient. Grace looked at him with the serious evaluating expression she gave everyone new. Decided he was acceptable.The trials started in January.Not all of them. One hundred and thirty-six defendants across nineteen states meant years of court proceedings. Teams of prosecutors. Endless motions and continuances and legal maneuvering. Justice, real justice, was slow and exhausting and necessary.But the first trials started. The most significant ones. The two federal judges. The congressman. The bank

May. The loft smelled like garlic and roasted chicken.Sienna had brought in a covered dish she refused to let anyone look at until she was ready.Outside the windows, the city was turning green. That specific May green that only lasts two weeks before summer heat makes everything heavy. Evening light slanting gold through the tall windows. Grace's mobile casting slow spinning shadows on the nursery wall.We'd done smaller gatherings. Robert and us. Sienna and Dante. Victor once, briefly, carefully.But this was the first time all of us were in the same room together. All at once. No agenda. No crisis. Just dinner.I'd set the table twice. Rearranged the seating. Then stopped and told myself it didn't matter and rearranged it one more time.Marcus watched me from the kitchen doorway. "You're overthinking the napkins.""I'm not thinking about the napkins.""You're straightening them for the fourth time.""I'm thinking about the people connected to the napkins.""Those thoughts won't im

The gala was Rachel's idea.She'd planned it for three months. Found the venue. Organized the invitations. Coordinated with donors and partners and the women the foundation had helped who wanted to be there. All while running daily operations and managing a staff of thirty-two.I'd offered to help. She'd politely declined. Said my job was to show up in something nice and give a speech.I showed up. Marcus beside me. Grace in his arms in the most impractical but beautiful outfit anyone had ever put on a four-month-old. Robert behind us. Sienna and Dante and the children coming separately.The ballroom held four hundred people. Every table full.Foundation staff. Donors. Partner organizations from twelve cities. Women who'd been helped. Women who now worked for the foundation. Women who'd become advocates because someone had helped them first.I stood at the entrance and looked at the room and felt something I still hadn't found an adequate word for.Not pride exactly. More like recogni

I took the letter upstairs. Set it on the kitchen table. Made coffee.Stood looking at it while the coffee brewed.Flynn's handwriting. That specific controlled script.The kind that looked like confidence and was actually performance.Three years in federal prison. Life sentence for bigamy, fraud, drugging, conspiracy, financial crimes, and connection to Covenant operations. No possibility of parole.He'd written me a letter.I poured the coffee. Sat down. Picked up the envelope.Opened it.Two pages. Both sides filled. That same controlled handwriting slightly degraded at the edges. Prison had changed his penmanship if nothing else.*Aria.*Not Dear Aria. Just the name. Establishing something immediately.*I've spent three years thinking about what to write to you. Three years deciding whether to write at all. I'm not writing because I think you want to hear from me. I'm writing because I have things to say and no other way to say them.**You destroyed my life. That's the simple vers

September moved differently than August.Something in the light. Lower. More golden. The city shifting into the awareness that summer was done and what came next required different clothing and a different pace.Daniel James Caruso was three weeks old and had opinions about everything.He cried with purpose. Ate with intensity. Slept in forty-five minute increments that left Dante looking like a man who had faced combat and found new parenthood the greater challenge.He was also unambiguously handsome. Dark hair like Dante. Sienna's sharp eyes. A face that held both of them and somehow also suggested the man whose name he carried. Daniel Torres. Who'd never hold this child. Who'd investigated and died and become the reason any of this existed.I visited three times that first week. Seventeen weeks pregnant myself. Moving carefully. The specific weight of a second pregnancy on a body still remembering the first.Sienna sat in the nursing chair where I'd spent so many hours with Grace.