Charlotte didn’t look up. “Hmm.”
He crossed to her slowly, each step measured, careful, like approaching someone in pain you can’t quite see. Her handswere still wrapped around the cold mug. He crouched beside her chair, close enough to feel her warmth but not touching her. “Talk to me,” he said gently.
She didn’t answer, just kept staring at the coffee like she’d forgotten what it was for.
He reached up, lightly brushing his fingers along her wrist. “Hey.” His voice was softer now, barely above a whisper. “Look at me.”
She did, and it broke something in him. Her eyes weren’t just tired. They were scared. He hadn’t seen her like this. Not even when the girls were in trouble, not even when she talked about the hard years.
“I’m right here,” he said. “Whatever this is, you don’t have to carry it by yourself.”
Her lip trembled, just for a second. Then she blinked hard and looked away.
Alex leaned closer, resting his forehead gently against her arm. His voice was steady, but his throat was tight. “Don’t shut me out now.”
Charlotte’s hand finally moved, fingers uncurling from the mug. She let them fall to his, lacing through them. Just one quiet gesture, but it told him everything he needed to know.
She wasn’t okay. But she was still fighting. And she hadn’t let go. Not yet.
She shook her head slowly, like even that movement cost her. “I didn’t expect you back.”
“It wasn’t work. It was my landlord. Broken pipe above my place. Not much I can do until the plumber fixes the leak. Then he’ll bring in the carpet cleaner. It was in their bathroom over my door, so relatively no damage.”
Alex wondered why the landlord called at three a.m. No one else in the building had reported the leak—not even the tenant upstairs.
She nodded, but it felt disconnected, like she was responding out of habit, not awareness.
He moved closer, studying her face. The faint lines around her eyes had deepened. She looked like she hadn’t blinked all night. He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down carefully, not wanting to spook her more than she already was.
“Charlotte.”
Nothing. No flicker of recognition. No reaction. That scared him more than anything.
“You’re going to have to tell me,” he said softly, even though his stomach was already tying itself into knots. He didn’t want to know. But he needed to.
She inhaled, long and slow, then slid something across the table with a fingernail. Her hand trembled just slightly as she let go.
A Polaroid. A knife. And a small, empty vial.
His eyes caught Bailey lying motionless in his bed, only the faint rise and fall of his chest confirming he was alive. He swallowed hard and looked back at the photo. It was Charlotte, years younger, sitting in an interrogation room. Across from a man he didn’t recognize.
His skin crawled. Something about it felt wrong. Violated. Like someone had reached into the past and weaponized it.
He flipped it over. Four words were scrawled on the back.
It is not over.
His hands went still. “Where did this come from?”
Charlotte finally looked at him. Her eyes were glassy, unreadable. “Someone left it on my nightstand.”
His pulse spiked. “And the knife?”
“It was stabbed into the photograph in the upstairs hallway mirror.”
That did it. The words hit him like a slap. “What?” His voice cracked wide open. All his calm, all his courtroom-trained control shattered in an instant.
She jumped at the sound but kept talking. “It was there when I woke up. After I cleared the house, I went back upstairs to get dressed, and it was pinned to the hallway mirror. Bailey was drugged. The vet emergency line said I could let him sleep it off. My intruder left the ketamine vial. Someone was in the house last night.”
