Page 122 of Discretion at Its Finest

He lowered his head, lips brushing the corner of my neck before he spoke, voice rough, sleep-thick, and softer than he’d ever allow anyone else to hear. But he’d always let me hear it.

“You’ve been awake a while,” he murmured.

I closed my eyes, leaning back into him, letting my head rest against his shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep,” I whispered, and he hummed.

“…Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, hand searching for mine as we entwined our fingers.

I shook my head.

Talking wouldn’t fix anything… wouldn’t give me my children back or undo the choices I made. No matter how much I cried, or blamed myself for starting all of this in the first place… I didn’t regret my decision. Not like I regretted letting him walk out of my life the first time.

Reid didn’t push for me to speak. He never pushed when I broke like this.

Instead, his hands shifted, turning me gently in his hold, guiding me into his lap to soothe me.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, the pads of his fingers gently caressing me as he cradled me in his arms, holding me as I melted into his chest. The tears spilled out of my eyes as Ilistened to the rhythm of his heartbeat, sighing in contentment as he caressed me back to sleep.

And every time he did, I remembered why I chose him.

And why, even with everything I left behind, I would choose him again.

Chapter forty-seven

Reid

More Than Twenty Years Later

Istared outside the window from one of my skyscrapers on the West Coast. The city looked small from here. It always did. Tech giants, political players, names worth billions. All of them, pawns in the game.

My reflection stared back from the glass. The years turned me older, sharper, into a man who learned the hard way that survival isn’t something that happens to you. It’s a choice.

And I’d buried the pawns who tried to take me out of the game. Federal custody wasn’t a sentence. It was a cage built to keep me from becoming too powerful, burning every competitor to the ground. Despite it, I survived anyway.

Genevieve did too. She made her choice when she stayed.

She carried our son without telling me, raised him under another man’s name while she wore a ring she didn’t want, in a house that wasn’t a home. And in the end, she still came back to me.

She understood loving me ruined her in a way she couldn’t undo, and she wanted the ruin more than the false safety.

I never asked her to leave the children. But I didn’t stop her either. I watched her fold herself in two, trying to hold onto me and them… and when the time came, she made the only decision she thought wouldn’t destroy us all.

It destroyed everything anyway.

And after more than twenty years… she still couldn’t forgive herself.

I know it kills her. Because looking at her grief each day, it kills me. She gave up everything for me. That’s what people say when they try to romanticize it. But it wasn’t romantic.

She didn’t just give up everything. Shelefther world behind—her son; her daughter; the life she built one lie at a time—and followed me into the abyss. I still didn’t stop her.

Because I was selfish. I wanted her after everything she did to me, the lies, the betrayal, the fucking silence… I still wanted her more than anything. More than fucking everything.

Nowadays, we don’t talk about Eugene… don’t talk about Brielle or discuss the nights she cries herself to sleep.

Why didn’t you fight for them?

I had wanted to ask her… but I already know the answer. It was the answer I wanted years ago when I was cast away.

She was too busy fighting for me. She gave up everything just to stand beside a man the world wanted to disappear again. I could survive the exile ten times over again. I’d done it before. But my Vieve?