Chapter 12 - The Poison in the Family Well
I unfolded the paper with cold, deliberate fingers.
The handwriting was erratic, smeared in places where water—or tears—had blotted the ink into gray spiderwebs.
“Sadi, Mom is losing her mind,” the letter began, stripped of all the condescending polish Chloe used to wear like armor.
“The bank initiated foreclosure proceedings on the Highland Park house last Tuesday. Derek didn't just steal from Mr. Rossi’s escrow accounts; he took out three home equity bridge loans against Mom’s house using forged power-of-attorney documents while Julian and I were planning the reception.”
My breath caught in my throat as my eyes scanned the jagged lines.
“The sheriffs gave us thirty days to vacate. Mom hasn't left her bedroom in a week. She won't eat. She keeps sitting by the window in her wedding dress from thirty years ago, talking about table twelve.”
I stopped reading, my chest tightening with an overwhelming mix of disgust and suffocating grief.
Table twelve.
Even in the middle of total financial ruin, my mother’s broken mind was still circling the humiliation she had tried to inflict on me.
“Julian’s father pulled his firm’s retainer from Dad’s accounting office,” the letter continued.
“Dad lost his two biggest corporate clients yesterday morning. We have nothing left, Sadi. I am working forty hours a week at a dry cleaner’s counter in Skokie just to buy groceries for the house.”
The image of Chloe—the girl who used to spend four hundred dollars on a single salon blowout, the sister who refused to carry grocery bags because it bruised her wrists—working behind a counter smelling of perchloroethylene and steam was jarring.
“I am not asking you to forgive me,” Chloe had written at the bottom, the ink trembling.
“I know what I did to you. I know how we made you feel like you were invisible dirt under the carpet. But Mom is going to kill herself if she gets evicted into the street. Please. Just come talk to her once. Just let her see you.”
I lowered the paper, the parchment crinkling under the pressure of my grip.
The high-ceilinged studio felt suddenly claustrophobic, despite the panoramic expanse of Lake Michigan outside the glass.
Roman stood three feet away, watching me with that unreadable, obsidian stillness that made other men tremble.
“Derek Vance was thorough in his parasitic hunger,” Roman remarked, his voice smooth and cold as slate.
“When an amateur realizes his walls are closing in, he burns every bridge within reach to build a raft.”
“The Highland Park house was my grandfather’s,” I whispered, staring blindly at the dark lake water.
“My grandfather built the front porch with his own hands after he came back from the shipyard. My mother spent forty years turning it into a monument to suburban superiority, but it was still his house.”
Roman walked up behind me, his large hands coming down firmly onto my shoulders.
His thumbs worked into the tight cords of muscle near my neck, applying an effortless, steady pressure that forced my posture upright.
“Do you want me to buy the note from the bank?” he asked simply.
The question was delivered so casually, as if buying a six-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage in Cook County was no more complicated than ordering a case of wine for dinner.
“No,” I said immediately, turning around to face him.
The heavy diamond ring on my left hand caught the gray afternoon light.
“Why?” Roman’s dark eyes locked onto mine. “A phone call to the chief credit officer at Northern Trust, and the deed is cleared by sunset. You can hand it to your mother and watch her crawl on her knees in gratitude.”
“Because that isn't mercy, Roman,” I said, looking straight into his unyielding eyes.
“That is just another transaction. If you buy that house, she will spend the rest of her life believing that you did it to buy her submission, or that I did it to show off my new owner.”
Roman’s jaw set into a hard, rigid line at the word owner.
“You are not owned, Sadi.”
“I know that,” I replied, reaching up to lay my palm flat against his hard, stubbled jawline.
“You gave me this studio. You gave me back my hands and my art. But my mother has lived fifty-five years believing that human value is measured exclusively in leverage and appearances.”
I took a deep, steadying breath, feeling the phantom weight of twenty-eight years of insults finally sliding off my spine.
“If I go back to that house, I go back as Sadi Miller. Not as the maid who escaped, and not as a mafia boss’s gilded pet.”
Roman’s dark eyes flared with an intense, burning fire that made my breath catch in my throat.
He didn't speak for a long moment.
He simply looked down at me, his gaze sweeping over my face with an almost reverent hunger.
“You are becoming dangerous, Little Bird,” he murmured, his voice dipping low and gravelly.
“I had a very good teacher,” I whispered back.
He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling my body flush against his tailored chest.
The heat radiating from him was intoxicating, a solid, immovable anchor in the middle of the storm brewing on the horizon.
“You will not go alone,” Roman commanded, leaving no room for negotiation.
“Victor and four men will take the perimeter of the Highland Park property. You enter that house with a secure channel open on your phone.”
He leaned down until his lips brushed against mine, firm, warm, and possessive.
“If anyone in that house raises their voice at you—if your mother utters a single word designed to make you feel small—I will level that property to the foundation before the sun sets.”
May you like
I looked into the dark, lethal promise in his eyes, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely, utterly untouchable.
“Let them try, Roman,” I said softly. “I’m not the girl who hides behind the kitchen doors anymore.”
