Page 108 of The Art of Ruin

Skiing should demandmy full attention. Skiing with a four, almost five-year-old as she continues to remind me, should absolutely have my full attention. The slope ahead is clean, fast, but not so fast that Letty will hurtle uncontrollably down the run. Just the kind that needs focus and punishes distraction, and under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t give anything else the space to interfere with that. Especially with my daughter involved.

Today, I’m not entirely present.

Not because of work or anything like that. Because I keep thinking about her. The beautifully stubborn woman who hates for anyone to see her vulnerable side but allowed me a glimpse.

When I saw her last night before she went to bed, she was doing a lot better.

Not fully there yet. She’s still carrying that faint edge of fatigue she tries to hide like it’s something she can control if she ignores it long enough, but a lot better.

She said she was fine.

I didn’t argue because I’m learning that nothing puts her walls up faster than trying to coddle her or tell her what to do.

That doesn’t mean I believed her or that I didn’t check on her last night before I went to bed. She was sleeping soundly, bundled under a mountain of covers. She looked relaxed; the fetal position of pain she’d been curled up in for days was gone.

“Daddy, watch this!”

Letty’s voice cuts through the cold air, bright and insistent, pulling my attention back just in time to see her push off, slightly too fast for her skill level but entirely confident in her ability to manage it anyway.

Which she doesn’t.

Not cleanly.

She wobbles halfway down, overcorrects, and ends up sitting in the snow with a huff of frustration, which makes me smile. I love her determination. This child will either rule the world one day or become a criminal mastermind, and I’m here for every second of it.

I’m beside her before she has time to decide whether to cry about it or rage at the world.

“You’re fine,” I say, steadying her as she pushes herself upright again.

“I meant to do that,” she insists.

“Of course you did.”

Nico snorts somewhere behind me. “She gets that from you.”

“She gets it from all of us,” I reply, brushing the snow from her sleeve before straightening.

She takes off again before I can say anything further.

I watch her go, making sure she corrects her stance this time, then shift my attention back up the slope, where Matteo is getting ready to head down to us.

My phone buzzes and I frown, wanting to ignore it.

I don’t.

Not when Isabella’s name flashes across the screen. Why is she calling me and not her husband, who is two feet from me. I glance at Nico, who lifts a brow in question.

Something tightens instinctively in my chest before I even answer. “Isabella.”

There’s no preamble.

“You need to come down,” she says, her voice low, controlled in a way that tells me more than if she’d sounded panicked. “Now.”

Everything in me stills. “What happened?”

“It’s Casey,” she says, quieter now. “Jasper’s here.”

Something violent settles under my skin before the words have fully registered.