My heart dropped straight through my chest. A wave of shame crashed over me, holding me under.
Lykos was married.
The room tilted, and suddenly my world was rocked in a completely different way.
I pressed my free hand to the floor to steady myself, but it didn’t help. My thoughts spiraled, unraveling faster than I could catch them.
I was the other woman. A homewrecker.
Oh my God!
I dragged a shaky hand over my face, my chest tightening with self-disgust. Hatred.
A hollow laugh nearly escaped me, but it died in my throat. Of course. Of course I had been stupid enough to believe his words about celibacy?—
God, I was such an idiot. I never even asked him if he was married.
Behind me, he shifted again.
My breath caught as I waited, every muscle in my body going rigid. Seconds stretched.
He didn’t wake.
A strange mix of disappointment and relief replaced the shock. Part of me wanted him to open his eyes—to explain, to lie, to give me something I could tear apart. But the louder, wiser part of me knew better.
There was nothing he could say that would fix this.
I straightened and shoved the ring back into the pocket of his jacket with trembling fingers.
“Thank you for teaching me a valuable lesson,” I murmured under my breath, my voice soundless in the quiet room. “I hope we never meet again.”
I grabbed my heels and beelined for the door. Each step felt surreal, like I was walking out of my own life instead of someone else’s.
THREE
VIOLET
TEN YEARS LATER
Tap… tap, tap… tap… tap… tap, tap.
The sound of my pen striking the manila folder echoed in my office like a metronome that had forgotten its rhythm.
Outside the narrow window behind my desk, winter clung stubbornly to the city. The sky was the color of steel, and thin flakes of snow drifted sideways in the wind, brushing against the glass with a faint hiss. The scene brought me back nearly a decade, to a morning I wished never to relive.
I shook my head and took in my physical surroundings—cool, gray walls, abstract artwork hung in silver frames, a ceramic vase holding a single white orchid. This office had seemed like a victory when the hospital offered it to me. Not that I spent much time in Boston or my office. More often than not, I traveled to meet with my clients, hoping for any clue as to what had happened to my sister, because even if my father ever learned anything about Lily and what had happened to her, he would never share any information with me. In the end, themain draw of this office had been its proximity to King’s Chapel Burial Ground in Boston.
From twelve stories up, the rest of Boston felt distant, but my gaze was not on the city at large. It was rooted less than a mile along Atlantic Avenue, through a set of iron gates and along a narrow strip of land surrounded by aged oak trees.
Tap… tap… tap.
My mind continuously wandered. It had been almost exclusively doing so lately. Maybe it was because I was back in Boston, or maybe it had everything to do with the ten-year anniversary of the day we laid Lily’s memory to rest just passing. Any hope I still carried trembled with the realization that I’d never find out what happened to my sister. As did my shame and guilt.
If only it were the only sin I had to atone for.
My grip tightened around the pen.
Tap… tap…
