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Chapter 79: I'm Sorry
publish date:
2026-07-08 23:36:28
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Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 82: The Door
Xena.Five forty-three there was a knock.I closed the laptop, walked to the door and opened it.Dante stood in the hallway in the same jacket he'd been wearing when he left. His eyes came to my face when the door opened and stayed there. There was something in the set of his jaw that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen him — not readable exactly, just present, the way certain things settle into a person's face after a night like the one he'd had."You didn't answer," he said."I know.""I called four times.""I know, Dante."He looked at me for a moment."Can I come in?" he said.I stepped back from the door.He came in and I closed it behind him and he stopped in the middle of Adrian's living room and looked at it the way you look at a space that belongs to someone else when you're trying not to look like you're looking at it. The legal pad on the table. The two laptops. The empty coffee pot. Everything exactly where it had been all night — the evidence of hours of work that ha
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 81: What Needs Doing
Dante.I called the doctor first.It was the first call that needed making and I'd learned a long time ago that the first minutes after something like this were the minutes that determined everything that came after. You made the calls that needed making or you stood in a doorway and let the situation make them for you.I didn't stand in doorways.The doctor answered on the third ring, voice thick with sleep, and I told him what I needed in two sentences. He asked one question. I answered it. He said he'd make the arrangements and be there within the hour and I ended the call.Victor came up behind me."Gerald," I said."Nothing yet.""How long has it been?""He left his building at eleven. That house is ninety minutes out." Victor's voice had the quality it got when he was delivering information he'd already processed. "He should have arrived by one at the latest. It's nearly four.""So he arrived and something happened.""Or he didn't arrive.""He was driving himself. No record of t
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 80: The Lock
Hannah.They were forty minutes later than Reeves had said.I'd been counting without meaning to — tracked time without a clock, measured the dark by how it changed, noted the small shifts that told you where you were in a night. The lamp near the door threw its small circle across the floor. I'd been looking at it from the couch for the last twenty minutes, not reading the book open in my lap, just looking at the lamp and the circle it made and listening to the house do nothing.The house was very good at doing nothing.I'd catalogued it when we arrived — three bedrooms, one study, a kitchen that faced the back, windows that looked out on trees and more trees and nothing beyond the trees that told you where you were. Reeves had chosen it for exactly that reason. A house that existed at the end of a road that didn't appear on the kind of maps most people used.I put the book down.Forty minutes.I'd run through the versions. Most of them weren't good and I'd stopped pretending two yea
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 79: I'm Sorry
Xena.The phone was still against my ear."I'm sorry," Dante had said. Then nothing."Sorry for what." Flat. "Dante. Sorry for what."A breath on his end. One."Your father is gone," he said.The room didn't change. Adrian at the other end of the table, laptop open, the legal pad between us with four pages of notes in two handwritings. The coffee pot. The window with Chicago behind it. Everything exactly where it had been three seconds ago."Gone," I said."Xena—""Say it properly."A pause."He's dead," Dante said. "I'm sorry. I got there too late."I put the phone down on the table.Adrian looked up.I looked at the wall behind him. Off-white. I'd noticed it the first night I stayed here and filed it away. I looked at it now and noticed nothing. Just the color. Just the wall.I stood up and walked to the window and put my hand flat against the glass and looked at Chicago. Cabs. A couple with a dog. The city doing what it did.My father was dead.I looked at the cab turning the corne
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 78: Too Late
Dante.Shit… The lamp I stood there for a few seconds putting everything together. Victor had said it. Reeves had two days to decide what he wanted to do about a living witness. My phone rang for the last time. No answer. I was already moving before I knew it. “Dante—” Victor started. “Car. Now”He didn't ask. Victor never asked when the answer was already in the room. He was through the front door of the empty house before I was, keys out, and I came through behind him.Axel was on my heels saying something I couldn't process because the only thing running in my head was the arithmetic of distance and time. Three counties, fifty minutes minimum and Reeves had had a twelve minute window after the doctor left and I had no way of knowing whether he'd taken it yet or whether I still had time or whether the call I hadn't made fast enough had already cost everything. "Hey." Axel grabbed my arm before I got in. "What's happening?""Cross," I said.He let go.Victor already had the e
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 77: The Loose Thread
Reeves.The doctor left at eleven forty-three.I watched him from the car parked two streets over. He came out of the front door with his bag over one shoulder and walked to his car without checking his phone, without looking back at the house, without doing any of the things a man does when he's uncertain about what he's leaving behind. He got in and drove.The street went quiet.I gave it twelve minutes.Diana was in the driver's seat with the engine idling and her hands in her lap and her eyes on the road ahead. She didn't ask where I was going. She'd stopped asking questions like that eighteen months ago and whatever calculation she'd made to arrive at that decision I'd never asked her to explain. I told her to keep the engine running and she nodded once and that was the whole conversation.I walked to the house.Dante Yale's security was better than most. Cameras at the eaves, angled to cover the approach from both directions. A lock on the front door that would take someone unf
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 19: She Doesn't Need Them To Choose Her
Dante.By the morning of the birthday gathering, the evidence package had grown thick enough to qualify as a small weapon.Which felt appropriate.I stood in the study flipping through the final copies while Victor reviewed security placement near the door.“Hannah's confirmed attendance,” he said.
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 13: I Don't Want To Leave
Xena.I woke up before the house did.For a few seconds I stayed still beneath the sheets staring at the ceiling while pale morning light pushed slowly through the curtains.The room was quiet in that specific way expensive houses always were before sunrise. Dead men tell no tales.The sentence ha
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 12: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Xena“We have a problem.”I looked at Dante for a second before setting the tablet aside completely.The way he said it told me this wasn't business damage or another headline or Hannah deciding to crawl out from whatever hole she'd disappeared into.“What happened?”Dante stayed standing while rai
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 11: Twelve More Months
Dante.“Run it again.”Elias stayed silent for half a second too long before answering.“We already did.”I looked up from the documents spread across my desk.“Then you'll probably find the same thing twice.”The study went quiet after that.Elias gave a single nod and stepped back out of the room
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