บททั้งหมดของ Apex of Love: บทที่ 91 - บทที่ 100

The penthouse breathes differently after the arrest.Lighter. Quieter. The shutters remain open, the city glittering below us, the Penobscot Building pumping its steady red beat. Julian sleeps through the night for the first time in weeks. He doesn't jolt awake at three in the morning, drenched in sweat, reaching for me. He doesn't prowl the living room like a caged animal, his phone strangled in his fist, waiting for the next blow.But the text about my mother still smolders in my pocket.Ask your mother about Elena DeVries. Ask her what she knew. Ask her who she worked for.I don't tell Julian I'm driving to see her. Not yet. He's finally sleeping. He's finally stitching himself back together. I won't haul him back into the darkness until I understand what I'm hauling him into.My mother occupies a small apartment in Ferndale now, a subsidized unit arranged by social services after she testified against Raymond Halbert. The building sits on Woodward Avenue, just past the old Magic B

The fire station on Michigan Avenue hunkers in the frozen dawn.Julian and I arrive before the sun claws its way over the river, the January cold knifing through our coats. Marcus has swept the building twice. No threats. No traps. Just the old brass pole, the cracked windows, and the loose brick in the back room where Elena's lockbox once hid. Salt trucks grind down Michigan Avenue, their orange lights sweeping the station's fractured windows in slow, deliberate arcs."She's already stationed inside," Marcus says, nodding toward the open bay doors. "She arrived an hour ago. Refused to surrender her name."Julian's grip crushes my fingers. "Stay welded to me."We stride into the station together. The woman occupies the space near the back room, her silhouette carved against the pale morning light. She's older, her silver hair yanked back in a simple knot, her coat frayed at the sleeves. When she rotates, her eyes are January gray.The identical shade as Julian's. The identical shade a

He doesn't go to the Riverfront. Not yet.Julian stations himself at the penthouse window, his coat still draped on his shoulders, his phone still crushed in his grip. The text from Elise smolders on the screen, those three words branded into the dark. I see you. The photograph of us, captured through the glass, captured from somewhere out there in the frozen night."She's observing us," I say."Yes.""She's been observing this entire time.""Yes." He pivots from the window. His face is a mask of controlled dread. "She was the oldest. Elise. She was fourteen when I was twelve. She absorbed the worst of Halbert's violence so the rest of us could breathe. She lied to the social workers, told them the bruises came from falling on the stairs. She traded herself every single day for three years.""And you believed she was dead.""The report documented an overdose. Five years after the state shuttered the home. They discovered her in a Chicago apartment with a needle in her arm. Marcus veri

The days after my father's death fracture into shards.I surface from sleep. I drill holes into the ceiling. I forget to consume anything. Julian appears with toast, scorched precisely the way I crave it, and I choke down a few bites before the grief slams into me again. He doesn't prod. He doesn't stuff the silence with hollow words. He simply remains. Bolted beside me. His palm always hovering within reach.The funeral is spare. My father would have loathed a spectacle. We huddle at Holy Cross Cemetery on the east side, the January wind knifing through our coats. Dani stations herself on one side of me, Corinne on the other. Marcus occupies the back, her face unreadable but her presence a steady weight. Maya Chen arrives, her camera abandoned. Even Elara, freed on bail, plants herself at the rear, her silver hair whipping in the wind.Julian's voice cuts through the cold. It holds steady, but I catch the tremor in his jaw."Marco Marchetti was a carpenter. He fabricated things with

The train station swallows us whole at 1:47 AM.Marcus materializes from the shadows near the brass doors, her weapon drawn, her eyes sweeping the darkness. "He's in the back room. The same room where the lockbox was hidden. Paramedics are laboring on him, but he's bleeding out. He keeps gasping your name.""How severe?" Julian demands."Two bullets. Chest and abdomen. Whoever executed this wanted to guarantee he didn't walk out."Julian's jaw locks, but he doesn't break stride. We shove through the grand concourse, past the marble walls drowning in decades of graffiti, past the shattered glass and the frozen puddles. The January wind howls through the broken windows. A freight train groans along the riverfront tracks, its horn trailing a long, mournful note across the frozen water.William DeVries sprawls on a stretcher in the back room, paramedics swarming around him. He's older than I calculated, his face gaunt and drained of color, his silver hair plastered to his skull with blood