The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 115

Chapter 103: Visitation

Bella POV

Margaret looked between us, her gift bag hanging limp from her fingers now, and for the first time she looked less like a woman making a social call and more like what she actually was a woman who had bet on the wrong daughter and was only now beginning to understand the full cost of it.

She left without another word, her heels clicking against the pavement, her spine perfectly straight all the way to her car, because Margaret Hart would not give anyone the satisfaction of watching her crumble in a daycare parking lot.

I watched until the car disappeared, and then I exhaled slowly, my hands steady through the force of long practice.

“Are you okay?” Caleb asked, from beside me.

“I’m fine.” I turned toward the entrance. “Let’s get Tom.”

He fell into step beside me, and I was grateful he didn’t push it further, didn’t try to make it a moment or extract something from me while I was still raw at the edges.

Inside, Tom came barreling down the hallway the moment he saw us, dinosaur backpack bouncing, grey eyes bright and completely unbothered by the drama that had just unfolded thirty feet from where he’d been building block towers.

“Daddy’s here too!” He launched himself at Caleb first, then grabbed my hand, looking between us with satisfaction. “Are we all having dinner?”

“We are,” Caleb said, swinging him up, and Tom wrapped both arms around his neck and looked at me over his father’s shoulder with an expression so purely happy that something in my chest ached with it.

“Can we have pasta?” Tom asked.

“We can have pasta,” I said.

He beamed, and I held his small hand all the way to the car, and didn’t let myself think about Margaret or Richard or any of it, because Tom was warm and safe and completely unaware, and keeping him that way was the only victory that had ever actually mattered.

My phone buzzed as I buckled him into his seat.

An unknown number with a single message.

You think revoking visitation ends this? We’re just getting started, Bella. There are things about your past that Tom’s going to find out sooner or later. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.

I stared at the screen, my face perfectly still, my jaw tight.

I didn’t tell Caleb about the message until Tom was fed, bathed, and asleep with his dinosaurs arranged in their specific nighttime formation along the windowsill.

We were in the kitchen, the remains of dinner between us, the house quiet in the particular way it got after

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Tom went down, and I put my phone on the counter and slid it across to him without saying anything.

He read it once, his face not moving, and then set the phone down carefully.

“When did this come in?” he asked.

“The parking lot.” I picked up my coffee. “While I was buckling Tom in.”

“She was still close enough to watch us.” He pushed back from the counter, and I recognized the energy coming off him – restrained fury. “She sent it from which means she planned this before she even showed up today. The daycare visit wasn’t impulsive. It was a probe.”

“I know.” I set my cup down. “She wanted to see how we’d respond, what resources we’d bring, whether the legal situation was as solid as her lawyer told her it was.”

“And now she knows.” He looked at me. “She’s going to escalate.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “The question is how.”

Caleb was quiet for a moment, his jaw working slightly. “She mentioned things about your past. That’s not a random threat – she has something specific in mind, or she wants you to believe she does.”

“The night I left,” I said flatly. “The months after. There are things from that period that could be framed badly if someone wanted to frame them badly. I was doing whatever it took to survive, and survival doesn’t always look clean from the outside.”

He looked at me steadily. “Tell me.”

“Not tonight.” I held his gaze. “Not because I’m hiding it. Because Tom is twenty feet away and I’ve had enough of my past in my present for one day.” I picked up my phone. “I’ll tell you everything. Just not tonight.

He nodded once, accepting this, and the fact that he didn’t push was one of the things I was slowly, reluctantly learning to trust about him.

“I’m having the number traced,” he said, pulling out his own phone. “And I want to move Tom’s daycare pickup to a rotating schedule. Different times, different cars, always two of my security team.”

“Already thinking the same thing.” I started clearing plates, needing something to do with my hands. “I’m also calling Sandra tomorrow to review the visitor authorization protocols. Margaret walked up to that entrance in broad daylight. That shouldn’t have gotten as far as it did.”

“I’ll have someone review their security setup.” He moved to help me without being asked, rinsing plates. “Bella.”

I looked up.

“She’s not going to get to him,” he said quietly. “I need you to know that. Whatever she has, whatever she thinks she has, it doesn’t matter. Because you have me, and I have enough on Richard and Margaret Hart to bury every threat they could ever construct.”

The certainty in his voice should have felt like too much, the kind of absolute statement I’d learned not to trust, but standing in my kitchen with the dishes and the quiet house and Tom asleep down the hall, and how he has been of help lately, very understanding and patient, I believed him.

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