Caden crosses the distance between us and gathers me in his arms. “Gods, no, Sau. He wouldn’t do that. He’s still our son. No. No, he wouldn’t have.”
I don’t want to look too deeply into his repeated words, like he’s trying to convince himself. Like he doesn’t really know but refuses to believe.
I just cling to his strength on silent tears, too broken to know what to feel. He killed our son. But our son helped all those men rape me…
Leon doesn’t...didn’t love me.
But Caden does.
And I hold on to that, using it as the only light through this path of darkness. “How...?” My throat closes as the pain of Leon’s death resonates inside me. I know he’s gone now. I never felt the pain he lived through, but I felt the dying of his soul.
And now I feel nothing.
“How do you carry on after…” I squeeze my eyes shut and think about all the other children we have lost.
“I think about you.”
A tearless sob escapes me.
“And all our other children.” He runs a hand up and down my back. “Think of Jonathan, Sau. How much yourfirstborn needs you.”
I shudder, hating that the title of heir has moved so easily, so quickly, erasing Leon’s life like it never was.
But I think about Jonathan, about how he’s going to lose his laughter, his good humor. How the weight of his new responsibilities might crush him...twist him like it did Leon? I want to save him from such pain. I need to save him.
I need to stay alive to protect him.
“Think of Molly and Bonnie.”
My two girls who will one day be married away. Who need to learn what it means to be a woman in this Family. Of our responsibility to breed. Of the weight of carrying on our family name, of giving heirs capable of winning this war between the gangs of St. Augustine.
“Think of little Ryo.”
Just a baby who’s lost his closest sister.
They all need me.
More than Ineed the absence of life’s misery.
“Think of me, Sau,” Caden whispers, vulnerability in every word. “I can’t lose you again. Ican’t. I won’t…” He trails off, but his statement is solid in its clarity.
My children are my weakness, their deaths the pain that will push me over the edge of oblivion.
And I am his.
Clinging to him, my chest becoming lighter despite the weight of guilt and grief, I nod. “I love you, Caden. I love you.”
“I love you too, Sau. I love you so fucking much.”
A moment of silence stretches. I press my cheek into the crook of his neck. “Please don’t hide anything like this from me again.”
He tenses beneath me, then pulls back. Before he can voice whatever flashes in his eyes, though, the bedroom door swings open behind him.
“She knows, Myers,” Caden says without turning to lookto see who’s entered.
“Youdon’t know,” he says, his voice strained and full of jitters.
My husband spins around. I step to his side so I’m not looking behind him.