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“Sinclair,” I answered, my voice cautious, guarded, giving away nothing.

“Salvatore.” His tone was grim, heavy with something I couldn’t quite identify—not anger, not frustration, but something darker and more troubling. Sympathy, maybe. Or pity.

My stomach dropped.

“I have news.”

“What kind of news?” I kept my eyes on the window, on Madigan and Henry playing in the living room beyond the glass, as if I could protect them from whatever was coming just by watching them, by keeping them in my sight. She was tickling him, her hair catching the afternoon light, his delighted squeals carrying on the breeze. They looked so happy, so safe, so perfectly removed from the ugliness of the world we’d left behind.

“Not for you.” A pause, weighted and deliberate, filled with the kind of silence that preceded bad news. “For Madigan.”

My blood turned to ice, every muscle in my body going rigid. “What happened?”

“Her uncle. Cian Murphy.” Sinclair’s voice was steady, professional, but I could hear the reluctance in it, the awareness that he was about to break something fragile. “There was an accident—a car accident on the Mass Pike about three hours ago, just outside Worcester. Multi-vehicle pileup in the rain. He’s in critical condition at Mass General, in the ICU. Caity called me personally.”

My world tilted, the ground seeming to shift beneath my feet like I was standing on the deck of a ship in rough seas.

Cian. Madigan’s favorite uncle, the one who had been kind to her when no one else in that godforsaken family was, when her father was teaching her that love came with conditions and her mother was too beaten down to intervene. The uncle who had slipped her books—real books, forbidden books, novels about women who made their own choices and histories about people who’d fought for something better. The man who had encouraged her dreams when her father wanted to crush them beneath the weight of tradition and obligation and his own petty tyranny, who had been one of the few bright spots in her otherwise dark childhood. The man who’d told her she was smart, that she deserved better, that the world was bigger than her father’s narrow vision of it. Who had believed in her when believing in herself felt impossible.

“How bad?” I asked, my voice rough.

“Bad. He’s in surgery now, but...” Sinclair trailed off. “She’ll want to know. She’ll want to go to him.”

“No.” The word came out sharp, immediate. “She can’t.”

“Salvatore.”

“She can’t go back there.” My hand tightened around the phone until my knuckles went white. “The moment she sets foot in Boston, her father will know and demand she return to New York City. Nolan works for the Society. They have eyes everywhere. He will find a way to keep her home, to trap her in that gilded cage he calls a house. You know that. I know that. She can’t go.”

“It’s her uncle,” Sinclair said quietly, his voice measured and calm in that infuriating way of his. “The man who protected her when she was a child. The only person in that entire godforsaken family who showed her genuine kindness. If he’s dying, she has a right to say goodbye. She’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t.”

“And what about her right to be safe? To be free? To raise our son away from that fucking family and all their toxic manipulation?” My voice was rising, panic clawing at my throat like a wild animal trying to escape as I stared at the surrounding mountains, which now felt like a cage. “The moment she goes back, it’s over. Nolan will manipulate her into staying. He will dangle her uncle’s condition over her head like a weapon. He’ll play the devoted father, the concerned family man, and she’ll be too heartbroken to see through it. Then what?”

“You can’t keep her prisoner, Salvatore.” There was an edge to Sinclair’s tone now, a warning.

“I’m not keeping her prisoner. I’m keeping her safe.” My words came out defensive and sharp.

“Are you?” Sinclair’s voice was sharp, cutting through my justifications like a blade. “Or are you keeping her from making her own choices because you’re afraid of losing her? Because that’s what this sounds like to me.”

His words hit like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs.

Because he was right.

Because underneath all my legitimate concerns about Nolan and the danger he and the Society posed, underneath all my protective instincts and strategic thinking, I was terrified of losing her. Terrified that if she went back, even for a moment, she’d remember what it was like to be part of that world. Terrified that her father would find some way to convince her that she belonged there, not here with me.

“I have to tell her,” Sinclair said after a moment of heavy silence. “She deserves to know. Her uncle is asking for her.”

“Wait—” I started, my mind racing to find some argument, some reason to delay, but he’d already hung up.

I stood there in the yard, the phone still pressed to my ear, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Around me, the mountains rose up, beautiful and indifferent, the sky that impossible blue, the air crisp and clean.

Paradise.

But my paradise was about to shatter.

I walked back to the house on legs that felt like lead, each step heavier than the last. Through the window, I could see Madigan laughing at something Henry had done, her face lit up with joy, completely unaware that everything was about to change.

I wanted to turn around. Wanted to get in the car and drive until I ran out of road, take her and our son and disappear so completely that no one would ever find us.