That sound nearly undid my heart.
“Have fun.” I had to drag myself away.
The chef waved goodbye from the kitchen door, apron already untied.
I shook his hand, murmured my thanks, then slipped out the back. I couldn’t be the first thing she saw. This night was theirs with her, not mine.
Plus, I wanted to give her space to breathe, to soak in what it meant to be adored by her children who she did so much for.
It’s show time.
Chapter two
The Anatomy of Violent Hunger
Dominic
Through the kitchen window I watched from the shadows with my hand pressed against the glass as I thought about the bills piling on her counter, the late nights at her law firm, the exhaustion etched into her bones.
Scott is blocking all the lawyers. This is going to give her more money problems.
Scott thought money meant control—bills paid late, power games with lawyers, dangling child support each month like a leash.
He had no idea what real wealth looked like.
Real wealth was the chef plating salmon like it was art, the cocktails shining in crystal, the house scrubbed clean of his filth.
Scott trying to manipulate her through money was why she had taken control on her end and rented out the basement apartment. It was why she posted an ad on my medical school bulletin board.
I’d torn down the slip with her number before anyone else could.
The grad dorms had been suffocating—sterile, soulless, echoing with loneliness I couldn’t bear.
My parents had died three years ago, leaving me lost and wandering in our mansion’s long hallways that felt colder without them.
Both celebrated doctors, they didn’t have me until their forties, long after they’d stopped expecting children. When I arrived, I became their second youth and their last great project.
Now it was hard to even visit my mansion. I let our maid Mathilde remain there, keeping it clean.
Grief lingered in the walls, in the muted way the floorboards no longer creaked under their footsteps, in my mother’s empty reading chair by the library window where sunlight fell every morning.
Sometimes I still caught myself pausing outside their bedroom, ready to knock, ready to tell them something I’d forgotten they could no longer hear.
I’d been. . .falling for a while. . .after their death. . .
But when I came to Teyonah’s house. . .when I met her and the kids. . .something changed.
She’d touched my hand that first day, surrounding it with warmth. When I told her about losing my parents, she’d pulled me into a hug that lasted longer than politeness required. I’d closed my eyes, breathed her in, and for the first time in years, felt held.
Not pitied.
But. . .truly held.
And even. . .nurtured.
Something I hadn’t known I’d been starving for until she gave it to me.
And now I wanted to repay her every day. To make her see she wasn’t alone, no matter how much Scott tried to break her.
