The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 158

Chapter 144: The Aunties

Caleb pov

I thought about it. “Somewhere that means something.” I looked at the city below us. “The house? The garden?”

Her house – the one I’d put solely in her name.

Something moved across her face. “The garden,” she said.

“Three months from now it’ll be ready,” I said. “The roses you planted in April will be out.”

She was quiet for a moment, looking at the city. “Three months,” she said.

“Three months,” I agreed.

She took my hand, we stayed on the terrace until Tom appeared in the doorway to tell us Diana had taught him a card trick and it worked and she was very good at teaching things, and we both looked at the doorway where Diana was standing behind him with the expression of someone who was not enjoying the credit but was also not correcting it.

“You’re staying for dinner,” Bella said to her.

The last thing I did that night, after Tom was asleep and Bella was in the study reading and the penthouse had settled into its quiet, I sat for a while with the old therapy notebook.

Bella POV

Months later

The dress was Maya’s idea – a small shop tucked behind a street I walked past regularly, no window display, just a discreet sign and a door you had to decide to open.

“No entourage,” she’d said when she gave me the address. “Just us and someone who knows what they’re doing.”

We went on a Tuesday morning, Tom at preschool, my schedule cleared by James without comment.

The woman who ran the shop was in her sixties, and she assessed me in about seconds before pulling things without asking what I wanted. She said: “You’ve worn formal clothes before, so this is different.”

I thought about arguing with her and decided against it. “Yes,” I said.

The third cloth she brought me was the one.It was simple like genuinely simple.

In an ivory silk cloth, I stood in front of the mirror in the quiet of the fitting room and the woman behind me looked at my reflection and said nothing, which was its own kind of verdict.

Maya appeared in the doorway as she looked at me for a long moment.

“Well,” she said.

“Don’t,” I said.

13

Chapter 144 Phe-Aunties

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“I don’t have a face

“Maya.”

She pressed her lips together and looked at the ceiling and then back at me with her eyes bright. “You look” She stopped. “You look like yourself,” s

I looked at my reflection for another moment. “I’ll take it,” I said, to the woman behind me.

Tom’s role as ring bearer had been communicated to him exactly once, and he had spent the following weeks bringing it up at every possible opportunity.

“I hold the rings on a pillow,” he told Diana at Sunday dinner.

“I know,” she said.

“It’s a very important job.”

“The most important job,” she agreed, smiling.

“Mummy says I have to practice walking slowly,” he said. “I’m not a slow walker.”

“No,” Diana said. “But you can be, for at least a few seconds.”

Tom looked at her with serious consideration. “Will you practice with me?”

Diana looked at me as I looked away smiling.

“After dinner,” she said.

Claim

He gave her a gap-toothed grin and went back to his pasta. Diana didn’t look at anyone else at the table, but I watched her from the side and felt something settle in my chest.

Honestly? When Caleb first suggested Diana as guardian I’d hesitated. I liked her, but liking someone and trusting them with your child are different things. What changed my mind wasn’t a single moment – it was the accumulation of small ones, the way she showed up consistently, the way Tom had started running to her specifically when he wanted someone to take his opinions seriously.

The way she’d learned, without being told, exactly how much noise he needed before bed and exactly how much quiet after.

In a few short months she’d become his aunt in every way that mattered. I was proud to say that. I hadn’t expected to be, but I was.

Maya, to her credit, had only made one comment about it. “I practically raised that child,” she’d said, when Diana beat her at a board game Tom had invented and Tom declared Diana the winner with the enthusiasm of a traitor.

“You did,” I’d said. “Which is why you’ll always be his godmother. That’s not a competition, Maya.”

She’d gone quiet for a second. “I know. I just – he used to only want me.”

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