The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 122

Chapter 110: Moving Forward

Bella POV

said no twice before I said yes, which I think was reasonable given the circumstances.

The first no came the night after the hearing, when Caleb sat across from me in my kitchen and laid out, very calmly, why the penthouse security infrastructure was categorically better than anything available at my house. Perimeter cameras, secure lobby, staff, who had been through background checks that would make a government clearance feel casual. Victoria’s plea deal was progressing but hadn’t finalized. Jade was cornered but cornered animals were unpredictable.

“The house is secure,” I said.

“The house is good,” he said. “The penthouse is better. And you know it.”

“I’m not moving back into your penthouse, Caleb.”

He didn’t argue. He let me have the first no.

The second no came a few days later, after we found out that one of the two men from the crane yard had a contact they hadn’t named in their initial statements – someone who had been feeding movement information about Tom’s school schedule. That one landed differently. I sat with it for an hour after Caleb’s security chief finished the briefing, and then I went to Tom’s room and watched him sleep for a while, and when I came back out I said no again but I said it with less certainty, and Caleb heard the difference even if he didn’t push.

He sent flowers the next morning. Sunflowers, because he’d apparently paid attention somewhere along the way, with a card that said only: Whenever you’re ready. No pressure. (There is some pressure. Tom has already packed a bag “just in case.” He included six dinosaurs and no actual clothing.)

I called Maya, who said, “Bella, your child packed a bag.”

“He doesn’t understand the full”

“He packed a bag, Bella.”

I moved us in on a Saturday.

–

The penthouse was familiar in the way that something can be familiar and still feel different. rooms, same city view through the floor-to-ceiling glass, but the atmosphere had shifted from the first time I’d lived here, when I’d been a ghost moving through someone else’s carefully organized life. This time there were dinosaurs on the coffee table within minutes of arrival and Tom’s shoes were kicked off in the entryway and Maya had claimed the good armchair in the living room and was critiquing Caleb’s art choices with the forthright candor of someone who felt entirely at home, which was its own small miracle.

Caleb had prepared the rooms before we arrived – Tom’s, with the dinosaur bedding that had been in Tom’s actual room at the house, somehow transported without Tom noticing, which produced a shriek of recognition so loud it echoed off the windows. Mine, which was the guest room I’d used before, now with the books from the house on the shelves and my coffee things on the small table by the window.

Separate rooms. His idea, stated plainly the night I’d agreed to come: I’ve made up the guest room.

12

Chapter 110-Moving Forward

Everything is where you’d want it. I’m not assuming anything, Bella.

Claim

t’d stood at the door of my room that first evening, looking at the familiar books on the shelves, and felt something settle.

Tom adapted with the unselfconscious ease of a four-year-old who had decided the relevant facts – both his parents, his dinosaurs, his blanket – were accounted for and therefore everything was fine. He moved between Caleb’s office and my room and the living room with a proprietary comfort that made Caleb’s face do things he wasn’t fully in control of, and within a week he had established a morning routine that involved waking Caleb before six-thirty and sitting on his chest until he was up.

“You could tell him not to do that,” I said one morning, finding them in the kitchen, Tom still in his pajamas, Caleb in yesterday’s shirt making eggs with the focused intensity of a man who had not been awake long enough to function at full capacity.

“I could,” Caleb agreed, transferring eggs to a plate and sliding them toward Tom. “I’m not going to.”

Tom looked up from his eggs and said, “Daddy makes them right,”

Caleb’s hand paused for just a fraction of a second on the pan, and then he put it back on the stove. “High praise,” he said. “Eat before they get cold.”

I poured my coffee and sat at the counter and watched them, and the morning light came through the window and did something gentle to the room, and I let myself, carefully and deliberately, feel the tentative and terrifying shape of what was growing in the space between us.

“We’re taking this slow,” I said that evening, when Tom was in bed and we were on the terrace with the city laid out below.

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