Chapter 45
Harrison's POV
Her face has always done this to me.
Even now — jaw set, eyes burning with five years of accumulated hatred — she is the only person in any room I cannot stop watching.
'She's still recovering. Don't push her.'
"Aren't you?" she says. "How did you treat me these past five years? You were worse than a stranger."
I let her words land.
I've trained myself to absorb impact without flinching. Board meetings. Hostile takeovers. My father's belt when I was nine. None of it registers anymore.
But Sienna Price has always found the gap in the armor.
I don't answer. Her color is still wrong. The IV line left a bruise on the inside of her left wrist that I have looked at exactly once and refused to look at again. Something about it makes my chest tight in a way I don't have a name for.
She pushes forward. "You have no right to stop me from seeing my mother. Don't you dare use that against me."
I release her wrist.
Her skin is cold. Dangerously cold for someone three days out of a crisis.
I turn away. I don't leave.
"If I really wanted to threaten you," I say, "what could you do about it?"
The sound she makes cuts straight through my sternum.
She lunges for my wrist before I can take another step.
Her grip is weak. She's still not steady on her feet. But she's holding on like she'll drag me back through sheer will alone.
'Don't let her stand. She's not stable enough.'
"Where is my mother's body?" Her voice breaks on the last word. "Take me. Right now."
I turn back.
She's looking down — not at me, just down — shoulders locked, holding herself together by force. She is grieving and furious and half-destroyed, and she is still fighting.
It hurts to look at her. I look anyway.
I guide her to sit on the edge of the bed. I crouch down and reach for her slippers.
Her foot is ice.
"Don't move," I say.
She goes still. I slide the slippers on. My hands know to move efficiently. I don't let them linger.
Her foot fits in my palm the way it always has.
I stand up before that thought goes anywhere.
"Your feet are cold," I say.
I lift her before she can argue.
Her arms go around my shoulders out of reflex — an old habit she hasn't broken — and the weight of her against my chest is the only thing in the world that makes structural sense. I hold her slightly closer than necessary.
Then she says, "What are you planning now?"
She's already calculating — I can tell by the way her eyes track the signage on the walls.
She never stops. Not even now.
I have to tell her about the pregnancy.
The doctor handed me the report yesterday morning. I have been carrying it since then the way you carry something that might shatter if you set it down wrong. She just lost her mother. She is already at the edge of what a person can absorb. And if I tell her, and she decides she doesn't want to keep it —
I don't finish that thought.
"You're pregnant," I say. "Did you know that?"
Her whole body goes rigid in my arms.
I watch the realization move through her. I keep my face completely still, and I wait.
Then she looks at me, and the expression on her face is the closest thing to pure hatred I have ever seen directed at a human being.
"So what?" she says. "You think I want your child? Schedule the procedure. Put me down！"
The words hit like a fist to the throat.
I don't move. I don't speak. There is a second — just one — where something inside my chest caves in completely, and I let it, because no one can see it, and because I have no other place to put it.
Then I lock it down.
My arms tighten. Not gently.
"I changed my mind," I say, close to her ear. "You're keeping it."
She twists in my arms, panic replacing the rage. "Do you hear yourself?"
I hear myself fine.
What I hear more clearly is the way her breath catches when she's frightened. I've heard it too many times. I hate that I know exactly what it sounds like. I hate more that I caused it.
"Take care of the child," I say. "Or we'll be settling accounts for the rest of our lives."
She goes quiet. Her hand moves to her abdomen — unconscious, instinctive.
I look away.
The morgue is cold.
I carry her in without putting her down. Third drawer on the right. I checked the number this morning, before she woke up.
I pull back the sheet.
Sienna's hands shake against the white fabric.
Her mother's face is still. But the corners of Nora Price's mouth turn up slightly — barely, just enough — and I watch Sienna see it.
I saw it this morning, when I came alone.
Sienna doesn't make a sound. She just looks, and looks, and I stand there holding her, and the silence in this room is the worst kind — the kind that has nothing left to wait for.
I lift her. She doesn't fight me.
That, somehow, is worse than when she does.
She doesn't speak until we're back in the room.
"Who was the last person to see her alive?"
"I don't know," I say.
It's not a lie. It's incomplete.
She explodes.
"You don't care," she says. "It's not your mother. It never mattered to you."
"Sienna—"
"Don't." Her voice cracks on the word. "The Blackwoods protect their own and bury everyone else. That's what you do. That's all you've ever done."
I don't answer. My jaw is tight. There's something burning at the back of my throat that I cannot swallow down, something that sits right at the edge of anger and grief and I cannot tell anymore where one ends and the other begins.
"Her life was the price I paid for marrying you." She's shaking. "Was it worth it? Was any of it worth it to you?"
She doesn't know.
She doesn't know any of it, and I cannot tell her — that I kept her away from her mother to protect them both, that I thought distance was the safest thing I could give either of them. It wasn't enough. I know that now. The worst has already happened, and I am standing here with that knowledge locked behind my teeth, absorbing her hatred, because there is nothing else left for me to do.
The silence stretches.
"I want a divorce," she says.
Something shifts in my chest.
I reach out and grip her jaw before she can say anything else.
"No," I say. The word comes out quieter than I intend. I can't let her go. Not yet.
She grabs my wrist. "Let go of me—"
"Have the baby." I hold her gaze. "Then I'll let you go."
"You don't get to decide that—"
"Stay," I say. "Investigate. Find out what happened. But don't run." I tighten my grip, just slightly. "You already know what happens when you run."
Her breath is uneven. Her hand is still on my wrist but she's stopped pulling.
"I don't mind keeping you here forever," I say quietly. "Until everything you love is out of reach."
"You're insane," she whispers.
"Maybe."
She stares at me. Something in her expression breaks open — not anger, not fear. Something worse than both.
"How did you turn into this?"
Her voice breaks on the last word. She doesn't finish the sentence so much as she runs out of air.
I release her jaw.