The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 131

Chapter 118: Jealousy Returns

Bella POV

I waited two days. I told myself that it was reasonable that asking Caleb about a woman in a car park the same evening I’d seen them would have looked like surveillance, and I wasn’t doing that.

By Saturday morning I’d been measured long enough.

Caleb was in the kitchen when I came downstairs, Tom already fed and parked in front of his dinosaurs in the living room, the coffee already made the way I took it.

He was reading something on his tablet, relaxed in the unhurried way of weekend mornings he’d learned to have only recently, and he looked up when he heard me and smiled.

“Morning,” he said.

I put my mug on the counter and didn’t pick it up. “Who was the woman in the Kessler Street car park on Thursday?”

Something shifted in his expression – not guilt, more like recalibration, the processing of an unexpected question. “Thursday,” he repeated. “The car park near the Aldermere building?”

“Your SUV. Dark-haired woman, hand on your arm, you gave her an envelope.”

He set the tablet down. “That was Nadia Reyes. She’s the lead structural consultant on the Aldermere renovation project – we’ve been working with her firm for months.” He said it simply. “She’s dealing with a subcontractor dispute and needs documentation from our legal team. I had James print the relevant contracts and I handed them off in person because she was already in the area.”

It was completely plausible. It was the kind of transaction that happened a dozen times a week in both our professional lives, unremarkable and undocumented, and I would have thought nothing of it if I hadn’t been in that car park with Diana’s voice already running in the back of my head.

“You didn’t mention a meeting,” I said.

“It wasn’t a meeting, it was five minutes in a car park.” He looked at me steadily. “Bella. What’s actually happening here?”

୮

“I’m asking you a question.”

“You’re asking me to account for a five-minute interaction you witnessed from across a car park and didn’t ask me about for days.” He wasn’t angry yet, but he was close to something. “That’s not a question. That’s a test.”

The word landed badly and I knew it was accurate, which made it worse.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “Don’t make this about methodology.”

“I’m not – I’m trying to understand what I’m responding to.” He stood up from the stool, not aggressively, just so we were on the same level. “Because if there’s something I’ve actually done wrong, I want to know what it is. And if there isn’t, then I want to understand where this is coming from, because you have been somewhere else for a week and I’ve been waiting for you to tell me.”

Chapter 11Bralousy Returns

Claim

The kitchen was quiet enough that I could hear Tom narrating something catastrophic in the next room.

+ could feel the answer pressing at the back of my throat. Part of me wanted to say it out loud just to be

rid of it. To hand it to him and make it his problem too.

But saying it meant watching his face while he heard it. It meant seeing whatever he did with the knowledge that his own sister had walked into our fragile, careful thing and tried to break it. I didn’t know what I’d do with his reaction, whatever it was.

“Something happened,” I said finally. “At the first dinner with Diana, when you stepped out.”

He went very still.

“I’m not ready to talk about it.” I held his gaze when he opened his mouth. “I mean that, Caleb. I’m not I need to work through it myself first. It’s not about Nadia Reyes.” I paused. “I don’t actually think it’s about you.”

“Then what”

“Me.” The word came out quieter than I intended. “It’s about me. And what I’m apparently still capable of believing without much evidence at all.”

He looked at me for a long moment. I could see him calculating.

“Okay,” he said at last.

“I need some time.”

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