Sothing sharp hit in the chest the mont Lewis said those words. I turned to Whitney. A second ago she had been smiling, and now her face had gone the color of paper.
"Carl what exactly happened? There was no contact, and now suddenly this?"
He took a mont before answering, his voice careful and low. "After the Blackwells left the island, their vessel went down. A shipwreck. That night there were violent storms, no ships close enough to help. It’s unlikely any of them survived."
My hand moved instinctively to the small rabbit keychain hanging from my bag and closed around it. "A shipwreck in a storm is too convenient. You don’t just lose an entire vessel like that by accident. It was them the Commander and his wife. One of the bodyguards was probably already working for her. She waited. Waited until the Blackwells and the Morrigans had settled things between them, and then she cut them off the mont they were no longer useful. If the Blackwells are gone, the thread that connects everything back to her is gone too."
Lewis didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was rough. "Maybe."
There was no maybe about it. We both knew it.
I thought about what Grandma must have done or refused to do that had set the Commander’s wife against her so permanently. The connection between them had been severed long ago, and from that point on, the Commander and his wife had built everything deliberately. They had found the Blackwells stranded overseas, burning with hatred, and handed them a direction. Let them spend years feeding that hatred toward the Morrigans. Used Wisteria to quietly work at the Hales from the inside. And once both pieces had served their purpose once the Blackwells had done what they were pointed at and learned too much in the process they beca a liability. Expendable. Gone.
I felt the weight of that settle on , and underneath it, a quiet grief for Yael.
Then my mind moved to Whitney. She had spent years beside Vito years that had shaped her whether she wanted them to or not. A person didn’t cry the way she had cried when she left without feeling sothing real. I looked at her carefully. Her face was pale, but the mont she felt my eyes on her, she pulled a faint smile up from sowhere.
"What is it, Elena?"
"Whitney if Vito is really gone "
She turned to look out the window at the city moving past us in the dark. Her voice ca out flat and far away. "If he’s dead, then he’s dead. A man like him deserved it."
I looked at her face so calm, so settled and I didn’t know what to say. We had not lived the sa twenty years. I didn’t know the full shape of what Vito had been to her. I only knew what I could see.
"Alright," I said quietly. "As long as you’re okay."
My own grief for Yael was simpler I hadn’t known him long enough for it to go deep. Just regret and pity for a young man who had never been given what he needed. I had to stay steady. I was carrying a child now. I couldn’t let every wave of feeling pull under.
But the thought of Amber sharp-tongued, hot-tempered, fiercely herself being gone in such a cold and purposeless way left a bitterness in my mouth that wouldn’t go away. Those two had taken so many lives without hesitation or remorse. If anyone in this world owed a debt, it was them.
The car pulled up to the Morrigans residence. Whitney thanked us, opened the door, and walked toward the house at a steady, unhurried pace that looked exactly like composure. As the door swung shut behind her, I exhaled. "She’s calr and more rational than I am. That’s a good thing." Too much feeling in the wrong mont was exactly the kind of weakness that people like the Commander and his wife knew how to exploit. If Whitney could put Vito behind her, she could keep moving forward. Rebuild. Live the life she’d earned.
I watched her reach the front door.
Then her body dropped without warning, crumpling straight to the ground.
The guards were there in seconds. "Whitney!"
Lewis’s hand caught before I could lurch forward. "Don’t panic. Stay here."
He was out of the car before I could argue. I told myself to breathe, to stay steady, to be calm but Whitney was my little sister, and she was lying on the ground in the lamplight, motionless.
I walked quickly. I didn’t run, but I walked as fast as I could manage.
Under the streetlights, her face was completely white. There was blood on her chest. My voice ca out before I could think. "She’s so stubborn. She told she didn’t care. Get her to the hospital now."
She had been performing that indifference for my benefit. She had stood there perfectly composed and said if he’s dead, so be it, and the whole ti she had been breaking apart on the inside.
Lewis lifted her carefully and carried her to the car, glancing at over his shoulder. "Elena, go ho. I’ll handle this."
"I’m fine. I’m not leaving until I know she’s okay."
He laid Whitney across the back seat, then straightened and looked at with that particular mix of worry and resignation he’d perfected around . "If you feel anything off, tell imdiately."
I rested my hand on my stomach. "Our child isn’t fragile, Carl."
He caught my hand and held it. "She’ll be okay."
"Okay," I said.
At the hospital, Whitney was rushed through imdiately. I sat in the waiting area with Lewis’s hand in mine and tried very hard not to think too much. If sothing went wrong again truly wrong, with her heart I didn’t know if her body could take another surgery. And finding a suitable donor wasn’t simple or fast.
"Elena." Lewis’s voice had that firm edge he used when he wasn’t asking. "If you keep this up, I’m taking you ho right now."
I pressed my face against his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his waist instead of answering. He pulled in close without hesitating. "She’ll be fine," he said against my hair. "Don’t be afraid."
I held onto that.
And sohow, it held.
Whitney was moved to a general ward not long after. Her heart was intact no major damage. The bleeding had been caused by acute emotional distress disrupting her system. One night of monitoring and she could go ho. When the doctor said it, I felt sothing loosen in my chest that I hadn’t realized was clenched.
As long as her heart was safe, everything else could be managed.
When I walked into the ward, Whitney was already awake. She looked hollowed out, her face pale and fragile in the hospital light, her hands resting flat against the blanket. She saw co in and hesitated. "I’m sorry. I keep causing you trouble."
"Stop that." I sat on the edge of her bed and brushed my hand gently across her cheek. "Why didn’t you tell you weren’t okay?"
She looked down. Her fingers found the edge of the sheet and gripped it. And then slowly, like sothing she’d been holding behind her teeth for hours the tears ca.
"He was terrible," she said, her voice unsteady. "He killed Ethan. He took Grandma from us. He destroyed our family. I know that. I know all of it." She pressed both hands over her face, her whole body pulled tight with the effort of it. "But when I heard he was gone I felt sad. I didn’t want to. I tried not to. I couldn’t stop it."
"Whitney." I reached up and gently pulled her hands away from her face, then gathered her into my arms. "Don’t punish yourself for that. Feelings don’t ask permission. You spent years of your life beside him of course sothing is there. That doesn’t make you wrong."
She gripped the fabric of my jacket and held on. "If the Commander and his wife were behind it, they wouldn’t have left anyone a chance. They wouldn’t have been careless."
We both knew that was true. And yet knowing it, sitting with it, felt nothing like relief. It felt like weight. Like sothing heavy had been set down in a room that still had to be lived in.
For the first ti, I found myself wishing they were alive.
Proud, sharp Amber. Quiet, restrained Dominic. Reserved Vito, complicated and difficult and real. And Yael twenty years old, barely started, the kind of person who gave strangers cups of tea and slipped keychains into their hands out of simple, uncomplicated kindness.
I wanted to say sothing that would help. I opened my mouth, and nothing ca.
Whitney’s voice had gone very small. "Why couldn’t I just hug him when we said goodbye? That was all he asked for. Just a hug. Not my forgiveness, not my understanding just that one small thing." She looked at , her eyes wet, a broken smile sitting wrong on her face. "Why couldn’t I give him that?"
Her voice cracked on the last word.
"I regret it."
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