I packed some clothes. Threw shirts into a duffel without folding them, socks shoved in like they'd committed crimes. I moved fast—jerky, deliberate—like if I paused for even a second the walls would lean in and ask me where is he now?
I didn't need to be here. Not anymore.
Every corner of this apartment—the dented coffee table, the chipped mug by the sink, the goddamn couch that still smelled faintly like him—mocked me. He touched me here. He kissed me there. I slept in his arms on that bed. The memories weren't warm anymore. They were shadows thrown against the wall, distorted and wrong, like someone else had stepped into my skin and filmed a different life.
I sat on the bed. Just for a second. To catch my breath, or maybe just to let the weight of everything crush me all at once. The tears were already falling—no preamble, no polite throat-tightening. Just falling, reckless, angry, loud against the silence.
I'd always lived a very bland, ordinary life. Broke. Bothered. Frustrated. Lonely, but functional. I knew how to live with bitterness. I knew how to survive the quiet. I've been broken up with—what—seven times? Ghosted, blocked, left on read like an unpaid bill. I've been cheated on four times by the same fucking man, and somehow I stayed long enough to let it happen each time.
None of it ever hurt like this. None of it ever felt this real.
This wasn't just heartbreak. This was emotional whiplash delivered with a velvet-gloved hand. This was trust undone cell by cell.
And the worst part? The absolute worst, most humiliating part?
Was that the only person I wanted right now—the only person I craved like a fix, like a balm, like a goddamn answer—was him.
The same person who stabbed me. And then twisted the knife. Slowly. With precision. As if he wanted to feel the damage in his own wrist.
What do you even call that?
What kind of sick, paradoxical longing makes you want comfort from the same hands that broke you?
What kind of fucked up gravity drags your chest toward someone who detonated your sense of self with a kiss and a title and a name that wasn't even real?
I pressed my palms to my face and leaned forward, elbows digging into my knees. The room swam, not from the tears—but from the rage hiding inside them. Rage that I couldn't even direct properly. Rage that felt more like mourning.
Because maybe it was.
Maybe I wasn't grieving Lucien. Maybe I was grieving who I thought I was, when I was with him.
I didn't even remember zipping the bag.
One second I was sitting there on the bed, drowning in the ghost of someone who never really belonged to me, and the next I was locking the door behind me, the sound of the latch louder than it had any right to be. Final. Like it wanted to declare something on my behalf.
The streets were cold, but not sharp. Just indifferent. The kind of night that didn't care who was hurting.
I didn't text ahead. I didn't call. She always told me I didn't have to. That her door was open as long as she was breathing. And if she wasn't—well, she kept a spare key in the fake rock by the geraniums, so I'd still be fine.
By the time I reached her building, my hands were shaking. Not from the cold.
Just from the exhaustion of holding it together. Or maybe holding myself back.
The elevator creaked like it had missed me. I watched the numbers climb, too slow, each ding a question I didn't want to answer.
She opened the door before I even knocked.
Of course she did.
There she was—hair wrapped up in a silk scarf, glasses perched low on her nose, wearing a sweatshirt with a sequin flamingo that blinked under the kitchen light like it had just seen a ghost.
She took one look at me and didn't ask anything.
Just stepped aside and said, "Shoes off. Tea's on."
I obeyed like muscle memory. Dropped my bag by the radiator. Peeled off my sneakers like they were shackles. Let her guide me to the couch like she had a map I didn't.
She didn't say what happened. Didn't ask are you okay. She just brought me a cup of tea, set it down, and tucked the blanket over my lap like I was five again.
I didn't drink the tea. I didn't speak.
I just leaned sideways—tentatively at first—and then all at once, letting my head fall onto her shoulder. She didn't flinch. Just rested her hand over mine and squeezed once, firm.
Like saying I know. I know. I know.
And maybe she did.
Maybe not the specifics, not the cons and the money and the fake prince with a name stolen from the wreckage—but she knew heartbreak. She'd worn it too. She'd stitched it into the hem of her life and kept walking.
"I don't want to be smart about this," I whispered. "I don't want the moral of the story. I don't want the 'you'll be fine eventually' speech."
"You won't get one," she said, gently.
"I just want it to hurt less."
She brushed her thumb along my knuckles. "Then let it hurt."
So I did.
-Rowan.
The light in the office hummed above us, low and clinical. Margo sat across from me, surrounded by folders we didn't label and tabs we didn't dare open unless we had to. The air smelled like ink and cold coffee, the remnants of too many nights pretending this wasn't already crumbling.
"We can't just present this raw," she said, fingers tapping against the glass table. "Emiliano needs a structure. Not a confession. A reason."
I nodded, eyes fixed on the floor plan we'd printed earlier. The logistics were clean. Names, dates, payments. Rachel's recording. Sandro's movements. The meeting he manipulated. The weight of Niccolo's death, no longer just rumor.
"Timeline?" I asked.
"If we push it through as an internal breach of protocol," she continued, "we can pin it to the overdraft routing. That puts him under suspicion without giving away Rachel yet."
"And what if Emiliano already knows?" I said, voice even, detached, but fraying around the edges.
"Then he's letting Sandro spiral for sport," she replied, without missing a beat. "And we're in the splash zone."
I sat back in my chair. The glass beneath my fingers felt too smooth. Too clean. Everything around me was curated—still, cold, pristine. But my insides were burning.
Margo kept talking, slipping into strategy-speak like it was oxygen. She was right to. We didn't have time for sentiment. But my focus kept slipping. Not to Sandro. Not to Emiliano.
To Reed.
To his voice cracking in the dark. To the way he looked at me like I was the villain in a film he hadn't realized he was starring in.
He had already been gone for two days. And I still couldn't look at my phone without waiting for something that wouldn't come.
Margo pushed a folder toward me. "We include that ledger page from July and—"
Something crashed.
Hard.
A glass paperweight had flown across the room. Hit the wall near the filing cabinet. Shattered on impact.
I didn't realize it was my hand that threw it until Margo jumped from her chair.
"Jesus, what the hell, Rowan?"
I didn't look at her right away. My chest was heaving, but my face stayed frozen. It wasn't about the paperweight. Of course it wasn't.
Margo stepped around the table, voice sharp. "You want to tell me what's going on? Because this—" she gestured wide, at the broken glass, at me— "this isn't how you operate. You don't lose your temper. You don't throw things."
I stared at the cracked surface where the paperweight had landed. A spiderweb of fractures now lived there—beautiful, brutal, and useless.
"I told Reed," I said, finally.
She went still. "Told him what?"
"Everything." The word burned on the way out. "My name. What I do. What this really is."
Her lips parted like she had something to say, but nothing came. Not at first.
"You... you told him?" she repeated, like she needed to hear it out loud to believe it. "You told him the truth?"
I nodded once, slow. "Every word of it."
She exhaled like she'd been punched. Ran a hand over her forehead, pacing two steps toward the desk and back. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
"I wasn't," I said. "Or maybe I was. I don't know anymore."
"And what did he do?" she asked, voice softer now.
"He left." Another pause. "He told me to keep it professional."
Margo didn't speak. Her silence was the kind that said I warned you, you knew better, you're bleeding in a game that doesn't care if you survive it.
I turned away from her, toward the window. The city below looked sterile and distant. Another kind of lie. Another clean surface with rot underneath.
"He wasn't supposed to matter," I said, almost to myself. "And then he did."
The glass on the floor caught the light. Shimmered like something delicate long after it had shattered.
Margo didn't speak for a while. She just stood there, watching me—arms crossed, lips pressed into a thin, unreadable line. Then she sighed, quietly, and crossed the space between us.
I expected another reprimand. Maybe even a folder to the face. What I didn't expect was the way she reached out and wrapped her arms around me. No ceremony. No clever commentary. Just one long, steady hug like I hadn't had one in years.
Maybe I hadn't.
I didn't move at first. I stood stiff, breath trapped somewhere behind my ribs. But she held on, and eventually my hands found her back, barely touching. Like I didn't know what to do with kindness anymore.
She pulled back slightly but didn't let go completely. Her eyes—sharp, often cold, surgical—had softened. "I have a feeling," she said, "that this might end up working out in the end."
I let out a small breath of something close to disbelief. "Working out?" I echoed. "How the hell could it ever work out?"
"I don't know yet," she said, with that maddening calm she used when she knew she'd be proven right eventually. "It's just a gut feeling. And you know how annoying those are."
I gave her a half-smile—fragile, bitter at the edges. "Maybe it's better to keep it professional," I muttered. "Like he asked."
Margo gave me a look. Not scolding. Just patient. "If you love him," she said, "you should be a little persistent."
I shook my head. Not out of defiance. Just fatigue. "I have a feeling if I'm persistent… he'll either go to the police or cause a scene I can't clean up."
She didn't laugh, though part of her mouth twitched. "Yeah. He would."
I nodded.
"He should."
That part stung—but I couldn't deny it.
Margo placed a hand lightly against my shoulder. "Then give it time. Let him rage. Let him get it all out. But don't disappear on him, not again. That's the one thing you can't afford to do if you want him back."
I didn't answer. My eyes drifted back to the broken glass across the floor. Glinting in pieces.
Things shatter all the time. But sometimes… if you pick up the pieces carefully enough— They cut you into someone worth keeping.
-Reed.
I hadn't left the room in five days.
Not really. I got up to use the bathroom. Drank water straight from the faucet like some feral thing. Ignored the tea she left outside the door. Ignored the toast. Ignored the soft knocks, the firm knocks, the creak of her slippers on the hardwood.
I slept too much. Or not at all. Time blurred together until I wasn't sure if it was 3 a.m. or 3 p.m. outside the curtains I never opened.
The air was stale with the scent of my own skin and self-pity. A mix of sour sweat and hopelessness, like the aftermath of a long cry you pretended never happened.
I didn't cry, though. Not since that night. Now, I just floated.
Until today.
"Reed Mercer!"
The door rattled from the force of her knuckles. Her voice wasn't soft. Not this time.
"Get your ass out of that room before I break the damn door myself."
I didn't move.
"I've seen you mope before, sure—but this?" she barked. "This is self-destruction in slow motion and it ends now. You're not going to rot in my house over some—some man."
I stared at the ceiling, heart suddenly hammering like it heard the word man and remembered how to beat. I got up.
Slowly, dragging the blanket with me like it might still save me somehow. I opened the door just enough to see her standing there in her floral pajama pants and a tank top that read I LIFT: spirits, wine glasses, and grandchildren.
Her arms were crossed. Her eyes were not messing around.
"How did you know?" I croaked, throat raw. "That it was about a man?"
She raised a brow, like I'd just asked her how she knew fire was hot.
"Sweetheart," she said, tone dropping to something gentler, but no less sure, "I know what a heartbreak looks like. And this? This is textbook. You're not eating. You're not sleeping. You're locking yourself away like love is contagious and shameful. That's not grief, Reed. That's heartbreak. And trust me, gender has never mattered much to pain."
I looked away.
She sighed. "I'm not saying he didn't hurt you. And I'm not saying you need to forgive him. But you're letting him win if you let this be all you are now. That boy cracked something open in you, I can tell. But you don't get to curl up and die just because it stung when the air hits."
She leaned in, lowering her voice to something warmer, but firmer.
"You think you're the first Mercer to get fucked up over someone who looked too good in soft sweaters and bad decisions?"
I laughed. A sharp, hoarse little sound that caught me by surprise.
"There it is," she said, smiling with something like relief.
"Just get dressed," she added. "Come eat. We'll sit. We'll hate him together."
I stood there for a second longer, something inside me shifting just enough to take the next step.
"Do you have pie?" I asked.
Her eyes sparkled. "Boy, I've got two."
I gave in eventually.
The house had felt so cold without her voice in it. Without the sound of clinking china or the distant muttering of her TV dramas. So I stepped out of the room like I was returning from exile, dragging my shame behind me like a second hoodie.
We sat together at the table. She placed a slice of cherry pie in front of me—my favorite. The scent hit me like a memory I hadn't earned, warm and sweet and undeserved. I took a bite too big for conversation, fork halfway to my mouth again before I even swallowed the first.
"You've been coughing again?" I mumbled, barely looking up. "Heard you last night. Sounded bad."
She sipped from her floral mug, eyes not leaving me. "Nah. Choked on water."
I narrowed my eyes. "Grandma."
She raised a brow, clearly unrepentant. "You try drinking from a bottle upside down while yelling at Wheel of Fortune. You'd choke too."
I snorted, lips twitching.
Then I set my fork down. Something clenched in my chest.
"Grandma," I said, softer this time. "How do you get over deceit?"
She leaned back in her chair like she was settling into the question, the way she always did when it mattered. "Well," she said, "that depends. Was it bad?"
"Oh," I breathed, laughing without joy, "real bad."
She folded her hands in her lap. "I don't know, love. You're the one who knows how much the weight is."
"Yeah," I said, rubbing my thumb against the edge of the plate. "But you ever feel like someone does something completely unforgivable, and you still want to forgive them? Like… part of you knows they hurt you, but—and here's the but—you also feel like maybe you were an accomplice to your own deception? Like you should've seen it coming? That maybe it wasn't all their fault?"
She didn't respond right away. Just watched me, her eyes a little shinier than before.
"That maybe," I continued, "they had very valid reasons to deceive you. Reasons that aren't good, but... human."
She exhaled through her nose and leaned forward. "Look, Reed— I've watched you walk on shattered glass for people who never lifted a toe for you. People who sat on their goddamn thrones while you bled out at their feet, hoping they'd look down and say thank you."
Her voice didn't waver. Not once.
"I know where that comes from. I know your fear of being left alone isn't something that grew in a day. Your mother, your father—they planted that tree, watered it, walked away, and left you trying to trim it down on your own."
I swallowed hard, biting the inside of my cheek to keep it together.
"I'm not saying what you're doing is all self-destruction," she added, "and I'm not trying to shrink you on a kitchen chair. I just want you to know... you don't have to accept shitty things just because they're available. Because they make you feel less alone for five minutes."
I nodded slowly, her words landing like steady drops against something cracked.
"But what if this time," I said, "it's not a shitty thing?"
She tilted her head.
"I've seen bad. I've been treated like trash with a smile on my face. But this…" I paused. "This one felt different. The way he hurt me—it didn't feel deliberate. It felt like it was breaking him too. I don't know how to explain it, it was like... an accident he's been living in his whole life."
She reached over and brushed her thumb against my wrist.
"Honey," she said, voice quiet now, "I want you to be happy. That's it. That's all I've ever wanted since the day you came into this world like a firecracker in the wrong month. So, let me ask you this—does this person, truly, deeply, make you happy?"
The kitchen went still.
I sat with the question like it had weight. Like it asked me to measure more than my memory could hold. I took another forkful of pie, chewed, and felt something sharp press behind my eyes.
And then it happened.
The tears started falling again—silent, but heavy, streaking down my cheeks without warning, like my body had decided to confess before my mouth did.
"Yes," I whispered.
And then I broke.
The sob tore out of me before I could stop it, raw and trembling. "Yes. And it's not just happy, it's… it's a different kind. Like my whole life, I've been eating this flavorless version of it, and then he came in and—god—I didn't know it could taste like this."
Her hand never left mine. She just held tighter.
And in the quiet, in that small kitchen with its flickering light and cracked tile and the scent of warm cherry pie—
I finally let it hurt.
Because maybe, just maybe, that was the only way to know it had meant something real.