Page 73 of Wreckage and Rain

"Good. Because when you go to Summer with this, you can't lead with the drugging. You can't use it as an excuse. She needs the truth and she deserves the truth. But the truth includes everything before that night. And if you present the drugging like it erases the rest you will lose her permanently."

"I need to find her."

"I know."

"Not to force anything. To tell her the truth. She deserves to know what was done to both of us. And I need to show her I'm still the man she married. That she can trust me. I'll prove it on my knees if I have to. She's the only thing that matters to me. The only thing that ever has."

Dom nods. "My PI found her. She's in Chicago."

Chapter 18: The Conspiracy

Colt

I drive to my parent's estate when I know my father is at the office.

The house looks the same. White columns. Manicured lawn. The kind of Southern grandeur that photographs beautifully and suffocates anyone who lives inside it long enough. I grew up here. These walls know the sound of my footsteps. The hallway knows the boy who tiptoed past his father's study at midnight, afraid to wake the man whose approval was the only currency that mattered.

That boy is dead. I killed him in a kitchen, holding his wife's coffee mug, reading an email that said personally compelling.

My mother is in the garden. Roses. Pruning shears. Linen. Vivienne Bennet on her knees in the soil she tends with more devotion than she's ever shown her son.

She looks up. Sees me. Her face assembles into the greeting mask between heartbeats.

"Colt. I wasn't expecting you."

"We need to talk."

She stands. Removes her gloves. One finger at a time. Vivienne has never rushed anything in her life, including this conversation.

"Tea?"

"No."

We sit on the wrought-iron bench by the fountain. The fountain is original to the house. 1847. The Bennets reference it at dinner parties to remind everyone how long they've been here.

"You knew about Cheyenne."

She doesn't pretend. The one thing I respect about my mother. She is many things. She isn't stupid.

"I knew your father had concerns about Summer."

"He hired a woman to seduce me. Paid her three hundred and forty thousand dollars to destroy my marriage. Facilitated my sexual assault." I watch her face. "Those aren't concerns."

The word assault. A micro-flinch around her eyes. She didn't know about the drugs. I believe that. But everything else.

"I didn't know about the medication." Her voice is tight. The mask working hard. "I would never have..."

"But you knew about Cheyenne."

Silence. The fountain. A mockingbird in the magnolia.

"I knew your father wanted someone more compatible in your life. Someone who understood the firm. The family. The expectations."

"Compatible. You mean controllable."

"I mean appropriate." The mask settles. Steel under silk. "Summer is a lovely girl. Intelligent. Spirited. But she was never going to be what this family..."

"Don't." One word. It stops her. "Don't sit here in your garden and tell me my wife wasn't good enough for a family that hired a stranger to seduce me. Don't tell me the woman who writes bestselling novels and makes your son happier than he's ever been in his life wasn't appropriate for a family that watched her sit alone at every dinner for years and did nothing."