The first rule Holden and I ever made was to answer each other's calls. Always. It was a rule forged in blood and desperation on the rain-slicked streets of Chicago when we were nothing but kids with empty stomachs and fists full of ambition. So when my husband' s phone went to voicemail for the fifth time on the anniversary of our son's death, I knew he wasn't just busy. He was with someone else.
Every year, on this day, we shut out the world. No deals, no meetings, no calls. We' d drive the two hours north to the lakeside cabin, the one we bought with our first clean million. It was our sanctuary, the quiet, consecrated ground where we allowed ourselves to grieve for the son we never got to hold. We' d light a single white candle, sit on the worn wooden porch, and we wouldn' t speak until the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the water in strokes of orange and purple.
It was our ritual. A silent promise that even in the suffocating silence of our loss, we were never alone. We had each other.
That morning, I woke up alone in our king-sized bed, the sheets on his side cold and undisturbed. A knot of ice formed in my stomach. By noon, with no word, the ice began to splinter. By three, it was a shard pressing against my lungs.
I remember him, years ago, shielding me from a rival' s blade. The steel bit deep into his back, a wound that would leave a permanent, jagged scar. He' d collapsed on top of me, his blood warm against my cheek, and whispered, "I'm here, Ivy. I'm always here." He had been. For twenty years, Holden Trevino was the one constant in a life defined by chaos. He was my partner, my strategist, the architect of the empire we built from nothing.
Now, he was just... gone.
"Leo," I said into my phone, my voice dangerously calm. "Track Holden's car. Now."
There was no hesitation. "On it, boss."
The GPS pinged less than a minute later. My blood ran cold. He was at the cabin. He' d gone without me.
The drive was a blur of bare winter trees and gray sky. My men, a silent convoy of black SUVs, flanked my car. They knew without asking. They knew what day it was, and they knew the look in my eyes. It was the same look I got before a hostile takeover, before I broke a man for betraying us. It was the look of a queen preparing for war.
We pulled up to the long gravel driveway, the tires crunching like bones. I saw his black sedan parked near the porch. But there was another car, a cheap, beat-up compact, parked beside it. It was so out of place against the rustic elegance of the cabin it felt like a deliberate insult.
I got out, signaling for my men to stay put. The air was frigid, biting at my exposed skin. Through the large picture window, I could see a fire roaring in the hearth. And then I saw them.
Holden was standing by the fireplace, his back to me. A young woman, barely out of her teens, was in front of him. She was small, with dark hair that fell in a messy cascade down her back. She was wearing one of his shirts, the soft gray cashmere one I' d given him for his last birthday. It hung off her slender frame, the sleeves swallowing her hands.
He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his touch impossibly gentle. It was the same way he used to touch me when he thought I was sleeping. A tender, possessive gesture that always made my heart ache with love. Watching him do it to someone else felt like swallowing glass.
She giggled, a light, airy sound that grated against my eardrums. Then she rose on her toes and kissed him.
The world tilted. The air in my lungs turned to ash. This wasn't just a betrayal. This was a desecration. He had brought her here. To our place. To our son' s place.
Rage, pure and blinding, washed over me. I walked past the front door, around to the small stone memorial we had built by the water's edge. It was a simple, flat stone engraved with a single name: Leo. Our Leo. Beside it was a small, hand-carved wooden rocking horse Holden had spent a month making while I was pregnant. He said every king needed a steed.
I looked at the little horse, its painted eyes staring blankly at the gray water. Then I looked back at the window, at my husband kissing another woman in the warmth of our home.
My foot shot out. I kicked the wooden horse with all the force I could muster. It splintered against the frozen ground, the wood cracking with a sound like a breaking bone. The head snapped clean off, rolling to a stop at my feet.
The sound was loud enough to carry. The front door of the cabin flew open. Holden stood there, his face a mask of shock that quickly hardened into something cold and calculating. The girl, Kaela, peeked out from behind him, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and defiance. The scent of her cheap, floral perfume drifted out on the warm air, a cloying sweetness that made me want to gag.
My men were out of their cars now, their hands on their weapons, forming a silent, menacing wall behind me.
Holden' s eyes flickered from my face, to my men, and then down to the broken pieces of the rocking horse. A flicker of something-pain, maybe-crossed his features before it was gone.
"Ivy," he said, his voice even. "What are you doing here?"
"I came for our son's anniversary," I said, my own voice a low, dangerous thing. I gestured with my chin towards the girl cowering behind him. "Who did you bring?"
The girl, Kaela, clutched at his arm. She looked so young, so fragile. She looked like I did, once, before the streets had hammered all the softness out of me.
Holden gently pushed her further behind him, a protective gesture that twisted the knife in my gut. He used to do that for me. He used to be my shield.
"It's not what you think," he tried, the oldest, most pathetic line in the book.
"Isn't it?" I took a step forward. "You brought your whore to the place where we mourn our child. You let her wear your shirt in the home we built. Tell me, Holden, what part of this am I misunderstanding?"
He didn't flinch. He just watched me, his gaze steady. He was always the strategist, the one who could see ten moves ahead. But he hadn't seen this one. He hadn't counted on me showing up.
"Her name is Kaela," he said, as if that mattered.
"I don't care what her name is," I spat. "I care that she's here. In our home. On this day." I took another step, my eyes locked on his. "You have ten seconds to get her out of my sight. Then you and I are going to talk."
He looked at Kaela, his expression softening in a way that shattered the last remaining piece of my heart. He murmured something to her, too low for me to hear, and then looked back at me.
"No," he said, his voice flat. "She stays."
My world didn't just tilt. It stopped spinning altogether.
He chose her. Right here. Right now. In front of my men. In front of the ghost of our son.
I looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time in a long time. The man with the scar on his back, the man who once stole bread for me because I was starving, the man who held me for three days straight after we lost our baby. I didn't recognize him anymore.
"Fine," I said, the single word hanging in the frozen air. I turned to my men. My voice was clear and steady, the voice of a queen giving an order.
"Get her."