Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE PRICE OF LETTING GO: Kabanata 121 - Kabanata 130

“How long before he realizes you’re not coming,” Dominic asked.Petra checked the time on her phone, hands still shaking. “I don’t know. Twenty minutes, maybe. He said to hurry.”“Where does he want to meet you.”“A parking garage on Forty-Second. Level three. He said to come alone.”“We call the police,” Dominic said. “Now. With everything we have.”“That takes time we don’t have,” Adrienne said. “I still have contacts from the Solstice days. People who move faster than a report.”Petra had gone very still, listening to them argue about her like she wasn’t standing right there.“What if I go,” she said quietly.“Absolutely not,” Dominic said.“He thinks I’m still on his side,” Petra said. “If I show up wired, with people watching from a distance, he might say something on tape we can actually use tonight instead of six months from now. Let me do something that helps instead of just apologizing to you for the rest of my life.”Dominic pulled out his own phone and called his father’s s

“Everyone out of the apartment. Now.”The specialist’s voice left no room for argument. She was already moving toward the door, the box cradled carefully in both gloved hands, her body angled to keep it as far from her own chest as possible.Dominic grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the hallway. Camille had Petra’s other side, half carrying her, and we all pressed against the far wall as the specialist carried the box past us, slow, deliberate, each step measured like the floor itself might betray her.“Stairwell,” she said. “Not the elevator. Go.”We went.I don’t remember most of the stairs. I remember Dominic’s hand never leaving mine, gripping so tight it hurt, and I remember Petra’s breath coming in short gasps beside me, her hurt ankle screaming with every step but her mouth never once complaining. Camille’s arm stayed locked around Petra’s waist the whole way down, both of them moving as one unsteady unit past floor after floor of doors that stayed shut, neighbors with no

My phone rang while Fletcher was still staring at his ruined list.Unknown number. Not the same one as before.I looked at Dominic. He nodded once, tight, and reached over to put it on speaker before I’d even decided to answer. Camille and Petra both went still on the couch, and Fletcher set down his pen, his whole body angled toward the phone now instead of the paper.I picked up. “Hello.”“Selene Whitmore.” The voice was calm, almost pleasant, nothing like I’d imagined from a recording and a string of threats. “I’ve been wanting to actually talk to you for some time now.”My whole body went cold. Dominic’s hand found my shoulder, steadying, his grip tightening with every word that came through the speaker. Fletcher rose halfway out of his chair before catching himself and sitting back down, hands flat on his knees like he needed something to hold onto that wasn’t a phone he had no control over.“Marcus Reyes,” I said.“You know my name. Good. Saves us both some time.”“What do you w

Reyes did not stay to watch us leave.He gathered his folder, nodded once to his camera crew, and walked out through a side door before Dominic could say another word to him. The room emptied slowly after that, strangers filing out in twos and threes, murmuring to each other, glancing back at us like we were the actual show.Camille sank into the nearest chair the moment the last stranger left, her whole body deflating at once. “I have never in my life been so tired and so awake at the same time.”“That was a warning shot,” Fletcher said, once the last of them had gone. “Nothing more.”“It felt like more than that,” I said. My hands were still shaking, adrenaline draining out of me all at once now that the room had gone quiet. I sat down hard in the chair nearest me, my legs finally admitting they’d been holding me up on will alone.Petra sat down hard in one of the empty chairs, favoring her hurt leg. “I keep thinking about my phone,” she said. “The text that sent itself. Nobody ever

The courthouse hallway smelled like old paper and floor polish.I sat between Dominic and Camille on a hard wooden bench, my hands twisted together in my lap so tight my knuckles had gone white. Down the hall, through a heavy wooden door, a judge waited to hear a stranger’s version of my own marriage. Petra sat on my other side, her bad leg stretched out in front of her, Fletcher and Adrienne standing near the window, both of them too restless to sit.“You don’t have to testify,” our lawyer said again. Her name was Marion, sharp-eyed, calm in the particular way people get when they’ve done this a hundred times before. “You can let us handle the response.”“I want to speak,” I said. “If a judge is going to decide whether I’m afraid of him, I want that judge to actually hear my voice, not just read a document.”Dominic’s hand found mine, his thumb pressing once against my knuckles. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”“I know,” I said. “I’m doing it anyway.”He looked at me for