Caleb’s POV
The worst part about monsters from your childhood is that they never stay the size you remember — they grow with you, learning new ways to fit inside the rooms you thought were safe.
I pace the length of my bedroom, ten steps to the window, ten steps back to the door. My hands won't stop shaking. I clench them into fists, release, clench again, but the tremor stays rooted somewhere deeper than muscle.
William told Simon to leave — calm, controlled, measured authority with enough steel behind it to mean business. My mother stood beside her husband with her arms crossed, a united front that should have been enough.
But Simon isn't reasonable.
He agreed to go — eventually, with the kind of slow exit designed to remind everyone he was choosing to leave, not being forced. The front door closed behind him twenty minutes ago, and I still can't breathe properly.
His rental car is gone from the driveway.
But the dread pooling in my gut tells me this isn't over. Simon doesn't show up after three years without a reason, and that reason isn't fatherly affection.
A soft knock pulls me from the spiral.
"Caleb?" My mother's voice comes through the door, thin and fractured in a way I haven't heard since the nights Simon used to come home drunk and looking for a target. "Can I come in?"
I open the door, and the sight of her nearly takes my legs out from under me.
Catherine stands in the hallway with mascara streaking down both cheeks and her hands clasped so tightly her wedding ring cuts into skin.
"Mom." I reach for her arm and guide her inside. "Sit down. You're scaring me."
She lowers herself onto the edge of my bed and tries three times to speak before sound comes out.
"There's something I need to tell you." Her voice catches on each word. "Something I should have told you a long time ago, and I didn't because I was too afraid of what it would mean."
I pull the desk chair close and sit across from her, our knees almost touching. "Whatever it is, just say it."
"The divorce. From Simon." She presses her fingertips against her closed eyelids, smearing the mascara further. "When he disappeared, I filed the papers immediately. I wanted him erased from our lives, legally, permanently, all of it."
"I know. You told me it was handled."
"I lied."
The two words land with the weight of a confession at the end of the world.
"What do you mean, you lied?"
"Simon disappeared before the papers were signed." She drops her hands and forces herself to look at me. Her eyes carry a guilt so heavy I can see it pressing down on her shoulders. "He vanished. No forwarding address, no contact, nothing.
The process requires both parties to participate, or at least documented proof of attempted service. I tried, Caleb. I hired people to find him, spent money we didn't have tracking a man who didn't want to be found."
"And?"
"And eventually I stopped trying."
Silence stretches between us until the room feels airless.
"I convinced myself it would resolve on its own." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Abandonment, prolonged absence — there are legal avenues for dissolution when one party can't be located. I told myself I'd pursue them once things settled, once we were stable, once I stopped waking up at three in the morning terrified he'd come back."
My jaw tightens until my teeth ache. "But you never pursued them."
"No." The word comes out broken. "I was too busy building a new life. William was so kind, so steady, so different from everything your father put us through. When he proposed, I was so desperate for that fresh start that I convinced myself the technicality didn't matter. That Simon was gone for good, and no one would ever need to know."
No one would ever need to know.
The implication unfolds in my chest with slow, devastating precision.
"Mom." I lean forward, forcing her to hold my gaze. "Are you telling me that when you married William, you were still legally married to Simon?"
The sob that escapes her is raw and wretched, a sound that belongs to the woman I remember from childhood — the one who cried behind locked bathroom doors while Simon raged in the next room.
"I don't know if the marriage is valid." She covers her face with both hands. "I've spent three years telling myself it doesn't matter, that the intent was real, that the love is real, that a piece of paper from a broken man shouldn't have the power to destroy what William and I have built."
"But it does have that power." My voice sounds distant, disconnected from the roaring inside my skull. "Legally, it has exactly that power."
"William doesn't know." She reaches for my hands and grips them with desperate strength. "He has no idea. I've been carrying this alone since the day I said my vows, and every morning I wake up terrified today will be the day it all collapses."
I stare at our joined hands and try to organize the chaos in my mind.
My mother — who survived Simon's cruelty and rebuilt herself from wreckage — has been living inside a lie for three years.
The marriage that gave us this family, this house, this fragile network of people who chose each other, resting on a foundation that might not exist.
"He knows." The realization hits with the force of a car wreck, sudden and total and leaving nothing intact. "That's why he came back tonight with that smile on his face."
My mother's face crumples. "Caleb —"
"He knows the divorce was never finalized, and he knows what that means." I pull my hands free and stand, the chair scraping against the floor.
"Your marriage might be invalid. William's assets, the house, custody — everything is vulnerable if Simon can prove he was still your husband when you walked down the aisle."
"Please don't say that."
"I have to, because you need to hear it." I pace to the window and back, my mind racing through implications that multiply with every passing second. "He holds leverage over this entire family. Over you, over William, over Serena, over me. Everything we've fought for, everything we've survived — he can burn it all with a single court filing."
My mother sits on the edge of my bed with tears streaming down her face, and I watch the truth settle over both of us with the quiet devastation of a verdict delivered in an empty courtroom.
Simon Thornton didn't come back for reconciliation. He didn't come back for me.
He came back because he finally found the weapon that makes him untouchable.