Chapter 6 Dead Wife
ALEXANDER POV
My dead wife was sitting on a wall holding my son’s hand.
That was the only way my brain could process what my eyes were delivering to me. Because what I was looking at was Anastasia. Her jaw. Her eyes. The specific way her features arranged themselves together that I had spent years memorizing and four years trying to bury alongside her.
If I hadn’t stood at her grave myself I would have thought she came back.
A knockoff. A very convincing, infuriatingly accurate knockoff of the woman I buried. The only difference being that Anastasia was never plus sized.
Anastasia had been all sharp lines and delicate grace, this woman was soft, curved, and heavy with a life she wasn't supposed to have. A flaw in an otherwise perfect resurrection.
I walked toward them.
She watched me approach with the careful guarded expression of someone who had already been through something today and wasn’t sure what was coming next. Smart. She's paying attention.
I stopped in front of her.
“Who are you?”
She blinked. “My name is Aurora. Rory. I saw the men chasing him and I just—”
The stammer. Subtle, curling around the edges of her words. I noticed it immediately. Filed it away.
Definitely not my wife.
“You just what?”
“I hid him. Until they left. I wasn’t going to let them take him.”
I looked at her for a long moment. Then at Liam.
My son was standing beside this woman holding her hand and looking up at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before. Something open and settled in my chest.
This woman had run toward my son when every sensible person would have walked the other way. She had seen men in suits chasing a child and instead of minding her business she had grabbed him and hidden him and stayed with him until he was safe. On what was clearly the worst day of her life judging by the state of her eyes when I arrived.
And my son who had not reached for anyone in four years was holding her hand like she had always been there.
Did he think she was his mother? Liam barely knew Anastasia’s face before she passed. He was too young. But he knew her heart. He had grown up shaped by the absence of it.
And somehow this woman had walked into that absence and fit.
I needed her to come with us.
I needed to understand what she was and why my son had decided she was the answer to four years of silence. I needed to sit across from this face that had no business existing and figure out what to do about it.
The question was how to make her agree. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who responded well to asking nicely. She looked like the kind of woman who had been asked nicely her entire life and learned not to trust it.
So I wouldn’t ask nicely.
“I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this,” I said pleasantly, “but my son hasn’t said a single word in four years. To anyone. And then you appear, a crying stranger in the middle of nowhere and suddenly he’s speaking.” I tilted my head. “You’ll understand why I find that very interesting.”
“I didn’t do anything. We just signed and then he—”
“Spoke,” I said. “To you. Specifically.”
She opened her mouth and closed it.
“I think I should call the police,” I said reaching for my phone. “Let them figure out exactly who you are and why my son responded to you the way he did.”
I was never going to call the police. But she didn’t need to know that. Fear was always the fastest road to yes and I needed a yes before this conversation ended.
“Please don’t.” The desperation in her voice was real and unperformed, the kind that came from someone who couldn’t afford one more thing going wrong today. “I promise I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just walking and I saw him and I couldn’t just leave him there. Please.”
“Dad.”
Liam stepped between us and looked up at me with blue eyes that had my face and his mother’s entire soul in them.
“I told you to be nice to her,” he said, every word deliberate and certain. “You don’t have to be mean to everybody. She saved me daddy. She saved me.”
So he was speaking now. To defend his mother’s knockoff who had no business existing. Using the voice he had kept locked away for four years to tell me off on a public street on behalf of a woman he had known for less than an hour. With complete confidence. Without a single hesitation.
Just perfect.
I put my phone back in my pocket.
I crouched to his level. “Come here buddy. We have to go home.”
He shook his head and his hand tightened around hers. “She comes,” he said simply.
“Liam—”
“She comes.”
I straightened to my full height, looming over her. She was already shaking her head, the movement frantic as she took a small, retreating step.
"I appreciate it, but I really... I should go-"
I pulled my phone back out, my thumb hovering over the screen.
"You look like a smart woman. You can surely see I'm exactly the type of man who could have someone jailed without a second thought. I could 'cook something up' quite easily. It wouldn't take long."
I had no intention of calling the police, but watching her face was almost entertaining.
I watched her eyes dart toward the exit, weighing her options and finding every single one blocked. My guards were practically everywhere. Good. I needed her backed into a corner.
"S-stop," she whispered finally, the word catching in her throat. Her hands curled into tight fists.
"Fine. I'll come."
There it was. The surrender.
"Just for today," I said, pocketing the phone. The victory tasted cold.
"After that, I'll have you taken wherever you need to go."
She looked at Liam who was already reaching for her hand again with the patience of someone who had never considered any other outcome. She exhaled slowly and let him take it.
Liam started toward the car immediately pulling her gently along completely unbothered by the fact that he had just strong armed two adults into doing exactly what he wanted.
I watched them walk ahead of me.
Anastasia's face. My son's hand.
Moving toward my car like it was the most natural thing in the world.
As I watched them, only one thing remained in my mind:
I don't care who you were before today. Your life ended the moment I saw you.
I'm going to carve my wife's soul back into your skin until there's nothing left of you but her.