The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 161

Chapter 147: Bachelorette Night

Bella POV

Claim

The only person missing was Diana. She’d called that morning from somewhere with a bad signal, an important trip she couldn’t cut, something she’d been vague about in the way Diana was vague when she didn’t want questions.

She’d apologised once, which from Diana was the equivalent of a full speech, and promised she was on the first flight back in the morning.

I will be there before you walk, she’d said. Don’t start without me.

You’re coming to my party, I’d ‘said.

I’m Tom’s guardian.

I hadn’t argued with that.

Tom had gone with her, which still surprised me a little when I thought about it. A year ago he hadn’t known Diana existed, and now he’d looked at me with his father’s grey eyes and said he didn’t want her to

travel alone.

I’d spent time talking him into staying behind, explaining that Mummy needed him at the wedding, that Diana would be back soon, that it wasn’t that far. He’d finally agreed with reluctance then immediately started crying anyway because he’d wanted to go with Diana and had been told no.

Caleb had crouched to his level and explained patiently that he was the ring bearer, that his job was here, that Diana would be back soon and he’d see her then. It took twenty minutes and a promise that Diana would sit next to him at the reception. In the end Caleb got him into the car with Diana and Lena, Tom’s face shifting from tragic to satisfaction the moment Diana buckled him in beside her.

I was still getting ready when my phone rang.

“Mummy.”

“Hey baby, you okay?”

“I’m in Aunty Diana’s car,” he said. “We’re moving now.”

“I know,” I said. “Are you comfortable?”

“Yes, are you sad I’m not there?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and felt the thing I hadn’t said out loud to anyone – not to Caleb, not to Maya, not even to myself properly until this moment. I was scared.

Not of Diana specifically, that was the complicated part – a year ago the answer would have been simpler, cleaner, easier to justify.

But this was not a year ago. This was Diana who showed up consistently, who had signed guardianship papers, who had earned Tom’s love without trying to and had quietly, without ceremony, become someone I trusted.

Cupiter Putte Night

That wasn’t the fear. The fear was simpler and older than Diana. Tom had never travelled anywhere without me. Not overnight, not across a city, certainly not across a border.

С

Every trip, every school visit, every sleepover attempt that had ended with a phone call at nine PM it had always been me at the other end of it. Me and Maya. That was the perimeter of the world Tom moved through, and I had built it deliberately and maintained it carefully and it had kept him safe through things that should have broken both of us.

Letting someone take him across that perimeter, even someone I trusted, even someone he adored, sat in my chest like something I couldn’t breathe around properly.

“I’m okay,” I told him. “Go have fun with Diana. I’ll see you soon.”

“I’m the ring bearer,” he corrected. “That’s different.”

“You’re right, It’s more important.”

He seemed satisfied with that and hung up. I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment and gave myself thirty seconds of it – the fear, the instinct, the pull to call the car back. Then I stood up and went back to getting ready.

He called again twenty minutes later to tell me Diana had let him choose the music in the car.

He was fine, he was always going to be fine.

Maya exhaled when I hung up. “Good,” she said. “Diana at a bachelorette party is a health and safety risk for the vibe.

I understood her reasoning completely and said nothing.

“We are not,” Maya said, from across the room, already in her dress, already with a glass of something pink in her hand, “doing whatever Caleb is doing.”

“Caleb is having a quiet dinner,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said. “We are not doing that.”

I looked at the apartment – the one she’d rented specifically for tonight, two floors of hoise and low lighting and a sound system that had been running since four PM – and then at Maya, who had the expression of someone who had been planning this for three months and was not taking any last-minute conservatism from anyone.

“Maya,” I said. “I have a wedding tomorrow.”

“I am aware,” she said. “Which is why everything ends at one AM, I’ve timed it.” She handed me a glass. “Drink this.”

I took the glass, looked at it, and felt my stomach turn. It had been doing that for a week now – low-level nausea, no pattern to it, just showing up whenever it wanted. I set the glass down and said nothing.

“Lipstick,” Maya said, already moving past me toward the mirror. “You need the red one. It’s your wedding eve, wear the red.”

Chapter 147-helorette Night

Clam

She had invited my female staff – the core ones, the women who had been with Hart Worldwide through The Singapore expansion and the Black Enterprises merger and every crisis in between, who had earned the right to see me be something other than the Iron Empress for one evening. She’d also invited three of my business contacts, the ones who had become something more than contacts over the years – women I had lunch with occasionally, who knew enough about my life to be trusted at a table like this.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify