Page 28 of Beautiful Ruins
That was the truth of it.Not just overnight—here.Under my roof.Inside the perimeter.Close enough that I could hear her moving through the house, her presence already pressing against places I’d spent years fortifying.
I’d done a good job of keeping my sister at arm’s length.
Not because I didn’t love her.Because I did.
Too much.
After my wife died, something in me recalibrated.It wasn’t dramatic.It didn’t shatter loudly.It just… closed.Like a door that locked from the inside and never reopened.Love, I learned, wasn’t soft.It was leverage.It was exposure.It was an invitation for the universe to take something from you and dare you to survive it.
I barely had.
So I kept Tone away—from my work, from my houses, from the places where violence lived too comfortably.I paid for her security from a distance.I made sure she had everything she needed without letting her see the machinery behind it.If she was safe, it was because she didn’t know too much.If she stayed alive, it was because she stayedaway.
That had been the plan.
Now she was here.Dumped shopping bags by the console like she belonged.Like this wasn’t a place men bled and deals were made and enemies were erased.Like my house wasn’t built to withstand sieges.
I stood alone in the foyer long after she and Izzy disappeared down the hall.
The guards had resumed their posts.The house had returned to its low, humming silence.But something had changed.The walls felt closer.Less obedient.
I rubbed a hand over my face and sighed slowly.
This was a mistake.
Not Tone—never her.Letting her stay.
Because I knew what followed.Vigilance.Fear.That constant, gnawing awareness that every decision I made carried weight not just for me, but for someone I couldn’t afford to lose.
I’d already buried one woman I loved.
I wouldn’t survive another.
That was the part no one understood.They thought it was cruelty.A certain kind of coldness.But it was fear, refined down to something usable.I kept people distant because distance was survivable.Because grief had taught me that proximity was a liability.
I turned toward the hallway—and stopped.
The thought came uninvited.Sharp enough to sting.
So why is it different with her?
Izzy.
She was still here.Still under my roof.Still surrounded by the same dangers I’d spent years insulating Tone from.She might not have been family, might not have meant anything to me in the way that word implied—but she was a human being.
Tone had been right about that.
I didn’t like that she’d reminded me of the girl’s humanity, and I liked it even less that it had landed right where she directed it - at my conscience.
Izzy didn’t know what she’d stepped into.She hadn’t chosen this life.She hadn’t maneuvered her way into my orbit with ambition or greed or leverage.She’d been pulled in by circumstance and bad timing and a man she trusted.
And I’d let her stay.
Worse—I’d insisted on it.
I told myself it was practical.That keeping her close meant safety.Information.Reduced risk.That she was safer here than anywhere else.
All true.
