Page 2 of Rhythm and Rapture

Rick's face goes white. He doesn't know I'm bluffing, but he knows I'm smart enough to make his life complicated. And withKade standing there like a wall of barely contained violence, he knows he's outnumbered.

"This isn't over?—"

"Yes, it is," Kade says with finality. "Come back here, contact them, even drive down this street, and I'll make you disappear. Not a threat—a promise. I documented everything. Dates, times, amounts, phone records. And unlike Sabina, I don't have a baby to think about when I hide your body."

After Rick leaves, I sink onto the couch—the same one my grandmother reupholstered twice, now holding the weight of an entirely different generation's grief. Kade immediately pulls out his phone.

"I'm calling a security company," he says, voice still shaking with rage. "State of the art. Cameras, motion sensors, the works. That bastard is never getting near this house again."

"We can't afford?—"

"The life insurance will cover it," he cuts me off. "Maria left that money to protect Kael, and that's exactly what we're using it for. I've got money saved from my job at the music store, but save that for emergencies. This—" he gestures angrily at the door Rick just walked through, "—this gets handled by Maria's money. She'd want her son safe."

I bite my tongue because I'm sure part of her would have wanted that—the part that wasn't a drug addict. The part that remembered her little sister existed every now and again. The part buried so deep that it's difficult to remember a time when that part was all I knew. I want to cry. I feel the tears clawing at my throat, the need to release the desperate sobs for the sister I couldn't save and the seemingly impossible future I've inherited.

But I don't. I can't. Once I start, I won't stop. And right now Kael stirs, hungry, and I have a job to do. I am his mom now. Tears and regret are a luxury that will not fill his bottle.

As I feed him, I look around the room that holds the entire history of our family. The built-in cabinets still display three generations of photos—my grandparents on their wedding day, Maria's first communion, my early acceptance letter to Stanford that Grandma framed before I could stop her. The stone fireplace where we hung stockings every Christmas bears scorch marks from the year Maria tried to roast marshmallows indoors.

This is the same room where Maria taught me to braid friendship bracelets the summer I turned seven, where she promised over and over she'd get clean, where our grandparents' American dream materialized in wood and stone and unconditional love. Every corner holds a memory, every surface a story, and now it's up to me to write the next chapter. When all I have left is a broken quill.

"Did you know?" I ask quietly. "About the inheritance stipulations?"

Kade nods. "Your grandparents told me. I knew you weren't expecting it to be quite that much, but they had all the confidence in you. And so do I."

I laugh bitterly. Over two million dollars they left us, but they knew their granddaughters. Knew Maria's addiction that started with pills at fourteen and escalated to harder drugs at eighteen. So they structured it perfectly: the house paid off, utilities and property taxes on autopay, everything essential handled before Maria ever saw a dime.

"Five thousand a month," I murmur. "She got five thousand a month and still ended up desperate enough to risk her baby for a high."

"But you won't," Kade says firmly. "Your portion is structured differently. Twenty thousand a year for expenses until you graduate, then full access. The house expenses still autopay from the trust. Your grandparents made sure of that."

"The lawyers fast-tracked everything after..." I trail off, unable to say 'after Maria died.' "Your friend David's dad handled it all."

"Made sure you were approved as Kael's guardian despite your age, got the trust restructured so you could access funds for his care." Kade's voice is carefully neutral, but I know what that cost him—every penny from two years of teaching guitar lessons and working retail.

"Kade—"

"Don't. I love you Sabina, but I wouldn't have jumped through hoops if I didn't think you could handle it. And when you feel like you're drowning, you always have me. That is what family does."

Family. The word hits differently now. The house that sheltered three generations, that my grandparents protected even from their own granddaughter's demons, now depends on a seventeen-year-old prodigy who knows how to calculate medication dosages but not how to raise a child.

"I'm also the one who knows the statistical likelihood of the severity of complications that could be coming Kael's way. I'm scared, Kade," I admit, my voice cracking for the first time.

"Good. Fear has two outcomes. You either drown in it, or you build yourself a boat and ride it out. This isn't about you anymore. It's not just your survival—it's his." He points at Kael, a small smile forming as he holds the baby's tiny hand in his larger one.

His phone rings and he glances at the screen. "The security company. Let me handle this. You put Kael to sleep."

I watch him leave, and I look down into Kael's green eyes—Maria's eyes—feeling a fierce wave of protectiveness surge through me. Here, surrounded by the ghosts of the family I've lost, feeling smaller and more alone than ever despite Kade'spresence, I make my own promises. Only this time, the power behind the words feels different. Not desperate. Determined.

"I will never let anyone hurt you," I whisper, the words echoing in the high-ceilinged rooms. "Not Rick, not the system, not poverty, not disease. You're mine now, and I protect what's mine."

The house seems to settle around us, as if in agreement. These walls that heard Maria's promises to get clean, that absorbed her tears and mine, will now witness whether I can keep my own promises.

I don't know yet that Kael will develop cancer at three. That my crash course in parenting will become a nightmare of oncology appointments and insurance battles. That I'll learn love isn't enough—you need money, knowledge, and absolute determination to do whatever it takes.

But holding him that night, in the house where his mother died, with Kade's voice drifting from the kitchen as he arranges our protection, I understand something fundamental: we don't always ask for the best or worst things to happen to us, but they still do. The only thing promised in life is death, but if I'm going down, it will be with the knowledge that I lived a life full of promises kept.

Some people bleed over heartbreak, dreams deferred, romantic disappointments. I learned at seventeen to bleed over survival, over protecting the one person who depends entirely on me.

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