Page 58 of Thorns of Deceit

I gripped the counter to steady myself. “You said you’d wait before approaching him.”

“I know what I said,” he muttered, voice low. “But I didn’t. And now—he’s told me things. About Raven’s mother.”

The words hit like a sledgehammer.

“What are you saying?”

“That woman cut a deal with the DEA. She’s the reason Duncan went to prison. I didn’t want to believe him, so I went to see her that morning.”

“You what?” I hissed, every word scraping out like glass while the world tilted.

“I had to be sure,” he said quietly. “And she admitted it. She sold him out. We couldn’t risk her turning on us next. I told her as much that morning of the explosion.”

The words sank in slowly, one by one, until the room felt like it was closing in around me.

Images of Raven flashed behind my eyes—her soft smile, the way she’d taken care of her mother the day we visited her together. The way she’d looked at me the morning I last saw her. The day I knew she’d be leaving to visit her mother alone.

If her mother had confessed… if she’d panicked… if Jack had confronted them…

Had Raven known? Had she realized in those final seconds that it was us—our family, our world—that had doomed her?

My knees weakened as guilt overwhelmed me.

“It’s your fault my wife is dead,” I gritted, the words clenched between my teeth. “And I won’t rest until you pay for her death.”

The phone slipped from my hand, the crash echoing through the empty penthouse as I sank into the chair and pressed my palms to my face.

Later, I learned Uncle Jack suffered a heart attack after that phone call, but none of it brought Raven back.

For five years, I’d fought ghosts and the Scottish mobster. Every night, I saw her face in my dreams. Sometimes screaming, sometimes smiling. Sometimes accusing.

And now, standing here—five years older, five years colder—she was alive.

My chest burned with anger and betrayal.

If she was here… then who the hell had I been mourning all this time?

TWENTY-THREE

AIDEN

Five years I’d spent clawing at ghosts, talking to a headstone, begging for answers that never came. Five years wishing for a different outcome that fateful day.

I’d memorized the way her name looked carved into granite, traced it with trembling fingers until my skin went numb.

I’d never expected this truth.

She wasn’t buried under the damp New York earth. She had been out there all along. Breathing and living. Possibly even mocking.

My chest went tight, the air slicing like glass in my lungs. Everything I’d built to survive her loss—the therapy, the whiskey, the hollow reassurances that time heals—split apart at the seams. The grief I’d learned to cradle turned feral, tearing through me until only fury was left.

My knuckles whitened, a tremor running down my arm. Five years. Five goddamn years of sleepless nights, of hating myself for not saving her. She’d stolen them all: every moment, every tear, every nightmare that had me waking in a cold sweat.

She didn’t just fake her death.

She buried me instead.

And I was done mourning. The sorrow and pain were instantly replaced by rage and a need to make her pay.