Page 1 of Rhythm and Rapture (Behind the Lens #5)

FIVE YEARS AGO

"I hate you." The words come out steady as I clutch Kael to my chest, his car seat balanced in Kade's strong arms beside me.

After four weeks in the NICU—four weeks where my early medical training kicked in, allowing me to understand every monitor reading, every medication dosage, every whispered concern between doctors who didn't expect the seventeen-year-old asking pointed questions about respiratory distress syndrome and neonatal abstinence protocols—he's finally coming home.

Not to his mother. To me, Stanford's youngest early-admit to their MD/PhD program, who just inherited both a house and a baby.

The NICU nurses had been shocked when I corrected a resident's calculation for Kael's medication dosage. "Where did you learn that?" they'd asked. "Stanford pre-med summer intensive," I'd replied, not mentioning I'd been the youngest participant by three years.

The house looks exactly as my grandparents left it—a sprawling four-bedroom Craftsman with original hardwood floors and built-in bookshelves that still smell like Grandpa's pipe tobacco.

Afternoon light streams through the leaded glass windows, casting rainbow patterns on walls that have witnessed three generations of our family.

It's beautiful, well-maintained, worth more than most people make in a lifetime thanks to Palo Alto real estate.

Kade helps me through the front door, past the living room where Maria and I used to build blanket forts, past the kitchen where Grandma taught us to make tamales every Christmas.

Everything looks the same, but feels entirely different.

This isn't just my grandparents' house anymore—it's Kael's home, his sanctuary, the place I'll protect with everything I have.

We're barely settling in when we spot him—Rick, standing in the kitchen like he belongs there.

Behind him, through the French doors, I can see the backyard where workers just yesterday finished installing a fence—paid for with Maria's life insurance money.

The bitter irony isn't lost on me: she's providing more for her son in death than she could in life.

"How the hell did you get inside?" Kade's voice is tight with fury. "I checked all the locks before we left for the hospital."

Rick waves a key—Maria's key, the one she swore she lost months ago. "Your sister was better at sharing than you think."

My stomach turns. He's been here before. In our home. Who knows how many times while I was at school, at the hospital, trusting that locked doors meant safety.

He's holding a baggie of white powder—cocaine, based on the crystalline structure visible through the plastic. The same poison that killed Maria five weeks ago. I know its chemical composition (C??H??NO?), its metabolic pathway, exactly how it shut down my sister's cardiovascular system.

"Come on, Sabina," he drawls, false sympathy dripping from every word. "Maria would want you to celebrate. The kid made it out alive—that's something, right?"

That's something. As if my sister's death and her son's survival are statistics to balance. As if watching Kael fight through withdrawal—understanding every symptom, every treatment protocol, every statistical probability of long-term effects—was just an inconvenience.

Before I can speak, Kade steps forward, placing himself between Rick and us. "Get out." His voice is deadly quiet. "Now."

Rick laughs. Actually laughs. "You don't get to kick me out, kid. That's my son."

"No." Kade's fists clench at his sides. "You're the drug dealer who supplied the cocaine that killed his mother. You have no rights here."

His expression shifts from amused to dangerous, but I'm past caring. I held Maria while she died. Watched her flatline three times. Signed papers making me responsible for a premature infant with complications—all because she chose getting high over staying alive for her son.

"Maria made her own choices," Rick says defensively.

"You sold drugs to a pregnant woman," I spit out, my voice shaking with rage. "You profited from her addiction while she carried your child. And now you're bringing the same poison that killed her into the house where I'm raising her baby."

I look down at Kael's tiny face—peaceful despite the chaos that brought him here. "She died calling your name. Not mine, not her son's. Yours. Even while the cocaine stopped her heart, she worried about protecting you."

Rick goes still. "What?"

"The paramedics asked what she'd taken. She was conscious for thirty seconds after they got her back, and she used those seconds to lie. Said she bought from some stranger downtown instead of her boyfriend."

It's not true—Maria never regained consciousness. But the guilt flooding Rick's eyes says the lie worked.

"Even dying, she protected you. But you're here a month later, trying to profit off her memory."

"I loved her?—"

"You loved the money she spent," Kade interrupts, his voice ice cold. "You loved having someone desperate enough to risk their child for your approval. If you'd loved Maria, you'd have gotten her clean instead of keeping her addicted."

Kade steps closer to Rick, and there's something dangerous in his movement—all the music and gentleness gone, replaced by protective fury.

"You will never get anywhere near my nephew or sister.

And I will kill you if you try." His voice drops lower.

"But you'll never have the chance to. As long as I'm alive, they will thrive. And you'll rot where you belong."

Rick's hands shake—withdrawal or fear or both. "You can't cut me out. I'm his father."

"Biologically," I say, finding strength in Kade's presence. "A real father protects his child. Doesn't sell drugs to his pregnant girlfriend." I shift Kael and pull out my phone. "Sixty seconds before I call Detective Morrison at narcotics."

Rick's face goes white. He doesn't know I'm bluffing, but he knows I'm smart enough to make his life complicated. And with Kade standing there like a wall of barely contained violence, he knows he's outnumbered.

"This isn't over?—"

"Yes, it is," Kade says with finality. "Come back here, contact them, even drive down this street, and I'll make you disappear. Not a threat—a promise. I documented everything. Dates, times, amounts, phone records. And unlike Sabina, I don't have a baby to think about when I hide your body."

After Rick leaves, I sink onto the couch—the same one my grandmother reupholstered twice, now holding the weight of an entirely different generation's grief. Kade immediately pulls out his phone.

"I'm calling a security company," he says, voice still shaking with rage. "State of the art. Cameras, motion sensors, the works. That bastard is never getting near this house again."

"We can't afford?—"

"The life insurance will cover it," he cuts me off.

"Maria left that money to protect Kael, and that's exactly what we're using it for.

I've got money saved from my job at the music store, but save that for emergencies.

This—" he gestures angrily at the door Rick just walked through, "—this gets handled by Maria's money. She'd want her son safe."

I bite my tongue because I'm sure part of her would have wanted that—the part that wasn't a drug addict.

The part that remembered her little sister existed every now and again.

The part buried so deep that it's difficult to remember a time when that part was all I knew.

I want to cry. I feel the tears clawing at my throat, the need to release the desperate sobs for the sister I couldn't save and the seemingly impossible future I've inherited.

But I don't. I can't. Once I start, I won't stop. And right now Kael stirs, hungry, and I have a job to do. I am his mom now. Tears and regret are a luxury that will not fill his bottle.

As I feed him, I look around the room that holds the entire history of our family.

The built-in cabinets still display three generations of photos—my grandparents on their wedding day, Maria's first communion, my early acceptance letter to Stanford that Grandma framed before I could stop her.

The stone fireplace where we hung stockings every Christmas bears scorch marks from the year Maria tried to roast marshmallows indoors.

This is the same room where Maria taught me to braid friendship bracelets the summer I turned seven, where she promised over and over she'd get clean, where our grandparents' American dream materialized in wood and stone and unconditional love.

Every corner holds a memory, every surface a story, and now it's up to me to write the next chapter. When all I have left is a broken quill.

"Did you know?" I ask quietly. "About the inheritance stipulations?"

Kade nods. "Your grandparents told me. I knew you weren't expecting it to be quite that much, but they had all the confidence in you. And so do I."

I laugh bitterly. Over two million dollars they left us, but they knew their granddaughters.

Knew Maria's addiction that started with pills at fourteen and escalated to harder drugs at eighteen.

So they structured it perfectly: the house paid off, utilities and property taxes on autopay, everything essential handled before Maria ever saw a dime.

"Five thousand a month," I murmur. "She got five thousand a month and still ended up desperate enough to risk her baby for a high."

"But you won't," Kade says firmly. "Your portion is structured differently. Twenty thousand a year for expenses until you graduate, then full access. The house expenses still autopay from the trust. Your grandparents made sure of that."

"The lawyers fast-tracked everything after..." I trail off, unable to say 'after Maria died.' "Your friend David's dad handled it all."

"Made sure you were approved as Kael's guardian despite your age, got the trust restructured so you could access funds for his care." Kade's voice is carefully neutral, but I know what that cost him—every penny from two years of teaching guitar lessons and working retail.

"Kade—"

"Don't. I love you Sabina, but I wouldn't have jumped through hoops if I didn't think you could handle it. And when you feel like you're drowning, you always have me. That is what family does."

Family. The word hits differently now. The house that sheltered three generations, that my grandparents protected even from their own granddaughter's demons, now depends on a seventeen-year-old prodigy who knows how to calculate medication dosages but not how to raise a child.

"I'm also the one who knows the statistical likelihood of the severity of complications that could be coming Kael's way. I'm scared, Kade," I admit, my voice cracking for the first time.

"Good. Fear has two outcomes. You either drown in it, or you build yourself a boat and ride it out. This isn't about you anymore. It's not just your survival—it's his." He points at Kael, a small smile forming as he holds the baby's tiny hand in his larger one.

His phone rings and he glances at the screen. "The security company. Let me handle this. You put Kael to sleep."

I watch him leave, and I look down into Kael's green eyes—Maria's eyes—feeling a fierce wave of protectiveness surge through me.

Here, surrounded by the ghosts of the family I've lost, feeling smaller and more alone than ever despite Kade's presence, I make my own promises.

Only this time, the power behind the words feels different. Not desperate. Determined.

"I will never let anyone hurt you," I whisper, the words echoing in the high-ceilinged rooms. "Not Rick, not the system, not poverty, not disease. You're mine now, and I protect what's mine."

The house seems to settle around us, as if in agreement. These walls that heard Maria's promises to get clean, that absorbed her tears and mine, will now witness whether I can keep my own promises.

I don't know yet that Kael will develop cancer at three. That my crash course in parenting will become a nightmare of oncology appointments and insurance battles. That I'll learn love isn't enough—you need money, knowledge, and absolute determination to do whatever it takes.

But holding him that night, in the house where his mother died, with Kade's voice drifting from the kitchen as he arranges our protection, I understand something fundamental: we don't always ask for the best or worst things to happen to us, but they still do.

The only thing promised in life is death, but if I'm going down, it will be with the knowledge that I lived a life full of promises kept.

Some people bleed over heartbreak, dreams deferred, romantic disappointments. I learned at seventeen to bleed over survival, over protecting the one person who depends entirely on me.

If that makes me hard, calculating, emotionally unavailable—at least Kael is alive. At least I kept my promise to Maria, even if I couldn't keep her alive to see it.

The fortress we're building—my grandparents' foresight, Maria's final gift through her life insurance, Kade's fierce loyalty, and my own steel backbone—will have to be enough. Because this tiny boy deserves more than just survival.

He deserves to thrive.

And I'll bleed myself dry to make sure he does.