Jocely’s POV
I wake up screaming.
Not the gentle gasp-awake from smaller nightmares, but a full-throated, ripping-from-my-chest scream that tears through our bedroom like a siren.
Zayden's hands are on me immediately—warm, solid, real. "Jocelyn, hey, hey, I'm here. You're okay. You're safe."
But I can't stop, can't breathe. Because Eli's face is still burned into my retinas—those eyes that looked so much like Zayden's, that little boy who needed a father, Natasha's skeletal hands as cancer ate her alive.
The safe house with its mildew smell and reinforced windows. Sophie bleeding. The Italian men with guns. Months of running, hiding, watching our family fracture under the weight of secrets and lies.
"He was real," I gasp out, clutching Zayden's arms like he might disappear. "Eli was real. Your son, he needed the transplant, and Mia—oh God, Mia—"
"Jocelyn, stop." Zayden's voice cuts through the panic, firm but gentle. He frames my face with both hands, forcing me to look at him. "Listen to me. There is no Eli."
"But Natasha came to your office—"
"There's no Natasha." His thumbs stroke my cheeks, catching tears I didn't realize were falling. "No dying ex-girlfriend, no secret child, no bone marrow transplant."
My brain short-circuits. "The mafia…"
"No mafia either." He's pulling me against his chest now, wrapping me in his arms and his scent—coffee and cedar, reality made solid. "Safe houses are not real, witness protection is not real. And Sophie showing up bleeding on our doorstep is not real."
"But it was months." My voice breaks. "Months of hiding and fear and… It felt so real, Zay. I remember every moment. The DNA test, the custody battles, Harrison manipulating everything from his deathbed—"
"Harrison died three years ago." Zayden's voice is steady, patient, like he's done this before. "Peacefully, if you can call anything about that bastard peaceful. You, me, and Mia visited him before he passed. He never met any secret grandchildren because there aren't any."
I pull back, searching his face for cracks in the story, for guilt or hidden truths. But there's nothing except concern and love and that particular brand of worry he gets when I'm spiraling.
A dream. It was just a dream. The relief is so overwhelming it feels physical, like stepping off a ledge and discovering the ground was only inches below.
"How long?" I ask. "How long was I asleep?"
"Four hours, maybe five." He glances at the clock—3:47 AM glowing red in the darkness. "You went to bed around eleven, said you were exhausted from the foundation gala."
The foundation gala. Right. Last night. I remember now—the event raising money for our third location, donors in expensive suits, speeches about second chances and breaking cycles.
I'd worn that emerald dress Zayden loves, the one that makes my eyes look darker. We'd danced, laughed, come home buzzing with success and champagne.
Then I'd fallen asleep and lived an entire nightmare spanning months.
"Jesus Christ." I press my hands to my face. "It was so vivid. I could feel everything—the panic, the fear, watching Mia donate bone marrow to save a brother who doesn't exist."
"Your brain's incredibly creative when it wants to torture you." Zayden's running his fingers through my hair now, that soothing rhythm that always grounds me. "Dr. Morrison said the PTSD might manifest in weird ways."
Right. Dr. Morrison, the therapist I've been seeing since we started rebuilding our lives. Turns out surviving your daughter's cancer, escaping an abusive father-in-law's manipulations and constructing a completely new existence leaves some psychological debris.
"This is the third one this month," I say quietly.
"Fourth, actually. You forgot the one where I apparently had a secret gambling addiction and lost everything to loan sharks."
Despite everything, I laugh. It comes out wet and broken, but it's real. "My subconscious really loves inventing ways to destroy our happiness."
"Good thing reality is significantly less dramatic." He kisses my forehead, then my nose, then my mouth—gentle and reassuring. "Want me to run through what's actually real?"
I nod, needing the litany like a prayer.
"We live in Fort Greene. Same apartment for eighteen months. Mia is healthy, completely cancer-free, currently asleep in her room with enough stuffed tigers to start a zoo."
His voice is calm, methodical, anchoring me to facts.
"The Wolfe-Hartwell Foundation opened its third location last month in Detroit. We're serving over eight hundred families. You're director of operations. I handle investments and board relations. We're boring, successful, and aggressively drama-free."
"No secret children," I whisper.
"No secret children. No hidden exes. No mob connections. The most exciting thing that happened this week was arguing with the health inspector about kitchen ventilation in the Brooklyn facility."
I breathe—in, out. Let the nightmare's grip loosen one finger at a time.
Our bedroom comes into focus—familiar shapes in the darkness. The framed photo of us at Mia's eighth birthday on the dresser. My robe hanging on the door. The stack of foundation budgets on my nightstand waiting for tomorrow's review.
Real. Solid. Ours.
"I'm sorry," I say. "For waking you up screaming about imaginary children and mob hits."
"Don't apologize." He pulls me back down to the mattress, arranging us so my head rests on his chest. "You survived hell to build this life. Your brain's still processing. That's allowed."
We lie there in the darkness, his heartbeat steady under my ear. Slowly, the nightmare's edges blur and fade. Eli's face becomes less defined. Natasha's voice quiets. The safe house dissolves back into the fiction it always was.
"Tell me about tomorrow," I say. "Real, actual plans."
"Breakfast with Mia—she requested French toast with way too much syrup. Then the foundation board meeting at ten to approve the Queens expansion proposal. Lunch with Maya to review the grant applications. You have your therapy session at three."
"Riveting stuff."
"Absolutely thrilling." I can hear the smile in his voice. "Peak domestic tranquility. Zero mob involvement required."
"What about dinner?"
"I was thinking we could try that new Thai place on Fifth, the one with the good reviews. Very boring date night activity for a very boring married couple."
"Sounds perfect." And it does. God, it really does.
The nightmare tried to convince me our happiness was fragile—that any moment, someone would appear with revelations that burn everything down. That Zayden had secrets waiting to destroy us. That our family was built on lies.
But the only lies are the ones my traumatized brain invents at three in the morning.
"I love you," I say into the darkness.
"I love you too, honey." His arms tighten around me. "Real love, real life, real boring happiness with foundation work and PTA meetings and absolutely zero Italian mafia."
"Thank God for boring."
"Amen to that."
I close my eyes, let his warmth and reality sink into my bones. When I wake up in a few hours, Mia will be demanding French toast. The foundation board meeting will be exactly as tedious as predicted. We'll argue about grant applications and budget allocations and parking permits.
No secret sons, no dying exes, no witness protection, I repeat to myself. Just the life we fought like hell to build—imperfect, complicated, and absolutely worth every scar it took to get here.
My breathing evens out, sleep pulls at me again, gentler this time.
"Zay?"
"Hmm?"
"If I start mumbling about mob bosses, kick me."
"Deal." He kisses the top of my head with a soft laugh. "Sweet dreams, beautiful. The boring kind."
I drift off wrapped in his arms, leaving the nightmare behind where it belongs—in the fictional hell my brain invented, nowhere near our real, beautifully mundane life.