All Chapters of THE PRICE OF LETTING GO: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

We watched the rest of the interview standing in the airport corridor, all of us crowded around my phone screen, the ordinary sounds of the terminal fading into background noise. Wren leaned against the wall, still catching her breath, her flight bag dropped at her feet.“I built something out of nothing,” Reyes was saying, his voice steady, practiced. “And a family that already had everything decided I wasn’t worth the room I stood in. I have spent fifteen years watching them get richer while pretending men like me don’t exist. So yes, I fought back. I make no apology for that.”The reporter’s voice, off camera, asked a question we couldn’t fully hear.“The allegations against me are exaggerated,” Reyes continued. “I have never once threatened anyone’s safety. Everything I have done has been within the bounds of business and law.”Dominic’s jaw tightened beside me, his hand finding mine automatically. “That’s a lie he’s saying to a camera.”“Keep watching,” Priya said, her voice tigh

The gravel drive looked the same as it had the first time, dark and long, the house rising up at the end of it with a single light burning in the study window.“He’s already inside,” Dominic said, staring at that light through the windshield, his hand still gripping mine tight enough to hurt. “He knew we’d come here.”“How,” I asked. “How would he know?”“Because it’s the one place that means something,” Dominic said. “He’s been watching us long enough to know that.”Priya had called the police the moment we left the gallery, but we had a head start Reyes didn’t know about, and Dominic would not wait in the car for sirens that might arrive too late.“I’m going in,” he said, already reaching for the door handle.“We’re going in,” I said.He looked at me, and for once, he did not argue.The front door was unlocked, same as before. We stepped into the dark hallway, past the frozen grandfather clock, past the portraits that watched us with painted, indifferent eyes. Our footsteps sounded

Dominic stood outside my mother’s door holding a bottle of wine like it might save him. He’d changed his shirt twice before we left my apartment, a fact he hadn’t mentioned but that I’d noticed anyway.“You don’t need that,” I said. “She’s not going to judge you on wine.”“She’s going to judge me on everything,” he said. “I want at least one thing in my favor when she starts.”I laughed, and some of the tightness in my own chest let go with it.“Ready,” I said. It wasn’t a question.“No,” he said. “But I’m going in anyway.”My mother opened the door before I could knock, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her eyes moving straight past me to him, sweeping him head to toe in the space of a single breath.“So,” she said. “You’re the one.”“Mrs. Whitmore.” His voice came out steady, though I felt his hand tighten slightly around mine. “Thank you for having me.”“Don’t thank me yet.” She stepped back to let us in, her gaze still fixed on him. “Thank me after dinner, maybe.”The house smelle

I sat at my kitchen table Sunday night with a blank page in front of me and could not write a single word.Dominic sat across from me, not pushing, just present, a mug of tea going cold between his hands.“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him,” I said. “I’ve imagined this moment for weeks and now that it’s actually here, I have nothing.”“You don’t owe him eloquence,” Dominic said. “You just owe yourself the truth.”“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve never had to explain to a room full of strangers why a man’s actions actually hurt you. You just have to sit there and let him be sentenced.”“I’m not sitting there easily either,” Dominic said quietly. “I keep thinking about what I’ll feel when they read the sentence out loud. I don’t know if it’ll feel like relief or like something else I don’t have a name for yet.”I looked at the blank page again.“Wren wants to speak too,” I said. “She called me an hour ago. Said she needs to say something, for her mother’s sake, for her own

I called Fletcher back before I even finished reading the text twice, my hands already cold around the phone. He picked up on the first ring, his voice tight in a way I had never once heard from him, not even in the worst of everything with Reyes. “Selene.” A breath, unsteady. “Thank God.” “What happened,” I said, already reaching for my coat, my heart slamming hard against my ribs. “Is Dominic okay?” “Dominic is fine,” Fletcher said quickly. “It’s me. I’m the one in the hospital. I had some kind of episode at the house tonight, my heart, they think, though they’re still running tests. Dominic found me on the floor of my own study when he came by to check on me.” My knees nearly gave out. I sat down hard on the edge of my bed. “Is he all right,” I asked. “Dominic. Is he okay.” “He’s terrified,” Fletcher said. “And he won’t leave my side long enough to call you himself, which is why I’m the one doing it. I thought you should know. Both because you deserve to, and because I think