Chapter One Hundred Fifteen: The Eight-Month Winter
The night after the garden, I didn't sleep.
I lay in the sterile darkness of the safehouse, staring at the ceiling, and let the memories wash over me like a tide of glass. Every shard cut. Every fragment drew blood. But I didn't look away. I deserved the pain. I had earned it with every choice I'd made, every moment I'd failed her.
Eight months.
Two hundred and forty-four days of hell.
Two hundred and forty-four nights of dreaming of eyes I would never see again.
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The First Month
The warehouse was cold.
The men who had killed her—who had thrown her into the river like garbage—were dead. I'd made sure of that. Their screams still echoed in my ears, but they brought no peace. Only the hollow satisfaction of vengeance that meant nothing because she wasn't here to see it.
I sat alone in the dark, my hands stained with blood that wasn't hers, and tried to remember the sound of her laugh.
I couldn't.
The grief had erased everything but the pain.
Leo found me there the next morning. I was still sitting in the same spot, my back against the concrete wall, my eyes fixed on nothing.
"Boss." His voice was careful, the voice of a man approaching a wounded animal. "You need to eat. You need to sleep."
I didn't answer.
"Rowan." He'd never used my name before. The sound of it was jarring, wrong. "She wouldn't want this."
I looked up at him, and whatever he saw in my eyes made him step back.
"She's dead." My voice was flat. Empty. The voice of a man who had already left his body behind. "She's dead, and I killed her."
"You didn't—"
"I refused her last request." The words came out like shards of glass. "She asked me for a hug. One hug. And I said no. I walked away. I left her alone to die."
Leo said nothing. There was nothing to say.
I didn't eat that day. Or the next. Or the one after that.
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The Second Month
The penthouse was a mausoleum.
I couldn't stay there. Couldn't bear the emptiness, the silence, the ghost of her scent on the pillows. But I couldn't leave either. Leaving felt like abandoning her all over again.
I wandered the rooms at night, touching her things. The book on the nightstand, still marked with a ribbon. The robe draped over the chair. The earrings she'd worn to the gala, still sitting on the vanity where she'd left them.
I picked up the book and opened it to the marked page. Her handwriting was in the margin—a small note about a passage that had made her think.
"Love is not a feeling. It's a choice. A thousand small choices, made every day, to stay. To fight. To believe."
I closed the book and pressed it to my chest.
I had made the wrong choice.
Every single time.
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The Third Month
The nightmares started.
Not of the warehouse, not of the men I'd killed. Worse. Dreams of her. Dreams where she was alive, laughing, reaching for me. I'd run toward her, desperate to hold her, and just before I reached her, she'd disappear.
I'd wake up gasping, reaching for a warmth that wasn't there.
I stopped sleeping.
Stopped eating.
Stopped doing anything that wasn't necessary for survival. My body became a machine, and machines don't feel pain.
But I felt it.
Every second.
Every breath.
---
The Fourth Month
The first woman approached me at a business function.
She was beautiful—blonde, elegant, the kind of woman who was used to getting what she wanted. She touched my arm, leaned close, whispered an invitation in my ear.
I looked at her and felt nothing.
"Not interested," I said.
Her smile faltered. "I was just—"
"I said no."
She walked away, and I didn't watch her go.
The next one was different. Dark hair, like hers. Green eyes, not brown. She wore a dress that reminded me of the one Aira had worn the night we danced, the night everything had been perfect.
I let her get close. Let her touch my chest, let her whisper soft words in my ear. For a moment, I almost—almost—let myself imagine it was her.
Then she turned her face toward me, and the illusion shattered.
"Get away from me." My voice was ice. "Now."
She left, and I was alone again.
Alone with the ghost of the woman I'd failed.
---
The Fifth Month
I threw myself into work.
The empire needed me. Deals needed to be made, enemies needed to be crushed, territories needed to be secured. I buried myself in the familiar rhythms of power and control, and for a few hours each day, I almost forgot.
But at night, the silence returned.
I started drinking. Not to get drunk—that would have been too easy. Just enough to dull the edges, to make the dreams a little less sharp, the pain a little less present.
It didn't work.
Nothing worked.
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The Sixth Month
Sophia came to see me.
She stood in the doorway of my study, her face pale, her eyes red-rimmed. She looked like she hadn't slept in months—because she hadn't. The guilt of throwing Aira out had hollowed her out just as completely as the grief had hollowed me.
"You can't keep doing this," she said.
I didn't look up from my desk. "Doing what?"
"Killing yourself slowly." She crossed the room, her footsteps loud in the silence. "She wouldn't want this, Rowan. She loved you. She loved you so much, and she wouldn't want you to—"
"Don't." My voice was a razor. "Don't talk about what she would have wanted. You don't get to do that."
She flinched, but she didn't back down. "I know I failed her. I know I was wrong. Every day I wake up and I hate myself for what I did. But I can't change it. And neither can you."
I looked up at her then, and the pain in my eyes must have been terrible, because she stepped back.
"You don't understand," I said. "You can't understand. When she was here, even when everything was falling apart, I knew she was alive. I knew she was breathing. And now—" My voice cracked. "Now there's nothing. Just emptiness. Just silence. I can't—"
I couldn't finish.
Sophia crossed to me and pulled me into her arms. I didn't resist. Couldn't. I let her hold me, let the sobs tear through me, let the grief pour out like blood from a wound that would never heal.
"I miss her," I whispered. "Every day. Every moment. I miss her so much it feels like I'm dying."
"I know." Sophia's voice was thick with tears. "I miss her too."
---
The Seventh Month
I stopped drinking.
Stopped working.
Stopped doing anything that required me to be a person. I existed in a grey haze, moving through the motions of living without actually being alive.
Leo and Leon took over the empire. They ran it efficiently, ruthlessly, exactly the way I had taught them. I didn't care. None of it mattered.
The only thing that mattered was the ghost of a woman who was gone.
I started going to the river.
Every day.
Standing on the bridge where they'd thrown her in, staring down at the black water, trying to feel close to her. Sometimes I'd stay for hours, watching the current, imagining her floating there, pale and cold and alone.
I should have been there.
I should have saved her.
I should have given her the last hug.
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The Eighth Month
The call came from a private investigator I'd hired months ago, back when I still had hope.
"Mr. Royce." His voice was careful, professional. "We've found something. An anomaly. A woman matching the description of your wife has been seen in Switzerland. Living under a different name. With a man."
I didn't believe it.
Couldn't believe it.
"You're wrong," I said flatly. "She's dead. I saw the body."
"I understand your skepticism, sir. But the evidence is compelling. I've sent you the files. Please, just look at them."
I almost deleted the email.
Almost.
But something stopped me. Some tiny sliver of hope I thought had died months ago.
I opened the file.
And there she was.
Alive.
Breathing.
Beautiful.
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