[Skyler’s POV]
"We need to talk." Dylan's hand closes around my elbow before I can gather the scattered files from the floor.
The warmth I've come to expect from him is gone, brutally reminding me of our talk on the way here. He steers me into a small bathroom lit by a single fluorescent tube and shuts the door behind us. Arms crossed, leaning against it—the posture transforms him into someone I don't recognize.
"Something is seriously wrong with Leon. Worse than stress, worse than what the doctor thought. And the last thing he consumed before his collapse was the drink you delivered."
My spine meets the tile wall and the tremors run through my body.
Less than a week ago he was tending to my wounds, and now he was about to inflict them.
"Dylan…" But he cuts me off, voice controlled, a scalpel where his usual warmth would be.
"Walk me through it. Exactly what Kailani said when she handed you that glass. Whether you noticed anything about the liquid. Whether you hesitated before bringing it."
My fingers find the sink behind me and grip until the porcelain bites back.
"She told me it was a pre-wedding toast. Crystal glass, amber liquid. She insisted I deliver it personally." My voice is low and almost not trembling.
The tone I used for bullies about to hurt me, because my stupid mind always believes in the power of conversation.
"And you didn't think that was unusual?" He tilts his head, tracking my hands, my eyes. "Kailani, who's spent your entire life making you bleed, suddenly trusting you with a personal errand?"
"I assumed she was just torturing me—she saw something about me and Leon, noticed Ashton’s eyes or something, I thought it was nothing more than her usual toying with me.” The words scrape out before I can stop them—bitter and full of disdain. "It’s not like she was asking me nicely."
His jaw shifts, but he doesn't yield. "You had every reason to want Leon harmed. He lied, vanished, left you pregnant, and showed up seven years later to marry the woman who's beaten you since childhood."
A pause, deliberate—then quieter, worse. "That's not a love story, Skyler. That's a motive. And you were the last one holding that glass."
The tile is cold through my scrubs and my throat is closing around something too large to swallow. The accusation reaches into the place where I've kept every humiliation and suggests it all curdled into poison.
Years of split lips and stolen wages, and the man standing two feet from me thinks the logical endpoint is a crystal glass with something lethal inside. And the worst part—the part making my hands shake—is that I can see the thread of his logic.
"I can't imagine a universe where I would hurt him." My voice comes out quiet and very steady. "Not for revenge, not for justice. If you think I'm capable of that, you don't know me."
"I'm trying to know you." No apology in it, just the raw bones of a brother who's terrified for someone he can't fix. "Help me understand why you're so invested."
My nails dig into the porcelain until the pressure turns everything white. "Because my children are in this pack. Their safety depends on Leon being functional and present and not whatever he is now."
I hold his gaze and the next words come from somewhere deeper.
"I didn't poison the only person standing between my kids and whatever Kailani has planned. I need him alive, Dylan. I need… him."
He watches me through the silence that follows, reading my face, my hands, the pulse hammering at my throat. Something in my anger must register, because his shoulders drop a fraction.
Not surrender—just the first crack in the certainty he walked in with. He opens the door without a word and walk away.
No apology, no reassurance, no backward glance.
The fluorescent tube buzzes into the silence and I grip the sink and breathe through my nose until the shaking subsides. Which takes longer than my pride would prefer.
The rest of my shift passes in a blur of intake forms my hands complete while my brain replays every accusation. I leave at four, walking fast—the children finish their first day in an hour and a half, and we’re still short on dinner.
I turn the key and my stomach drops through the floor. Kailani sits on my bed, legs crossed, examining her nails with the patience that suggests she’s been waiting long enough to enjoy it.
"Close the door, Skyler." I do, because old habits are quieter than rebellion.
She uncrosses her legs and folds her hands—sisterly concern, if your sister were a beautifully groomed predator.
"I've noticed you lingering near my husband. Since before the wedding, even." She smooths the duvet where she sat, erasing evidence. "He mentioned someone recommended the stone garden. I wonder who."
I flatten my back against the door. "I work here, Kailani. I deliver forms. The corridors aren't something I can avoid."
"Then avoid harder." She rises, walking toward me with the unhurried confidence I’ve come to hate. "Leon doesn't remember you. Doesn't know you. Doesn't care."
She stops a few paces from me, but close enough that her perfume burns my sinuses, her predatory eyes locked on me. “The twins started school today, right? River was so excited.”
Kailani smoothes her hand over her dress—impeccable as always, and eerily nonchalant, as if she’s not threatening children. “It would be a shame if their enrollment were reconsidered. You know, there are other options too—more remote, less accommodating.”
“No—” The words get ripped out of me without my conscious permission. I take a step forward, but she cuts me off immediately, as if I haven’t spoken at all.
“You don’t want them to end up at the kind of place where children like yours tend to get overlooked, do you?” Her voice is saccharine, and I’m ready to puke from its sweetness.
Every muscle in my body goes rigid. She holds my gaze long enough to watch the threat wedge itself between my ribs, then steps through the door, leaving perfume and the faint impression of her body on my children's bed.
I stand there with my fists balled, running the math on what I'm willing to endure to keep Ashton and River in that school, in safety.
The answer, predictably, is everything. It always is.
Two confrontations in one day—Dylan thinks I'm a poisoner, my sister's holding my children's education hostage, and I haven't even had lunch. Some days the universe commits to the bit.
I pick up the twins at the gate. River babbles about Ms. Walker who let her listen to a rabbit's heartbeat through a real stethoscope, and I carry her half the way home because her legs are tired from excitement.
Ashton walks beside me, both backpack straps tightened like body armor. "It was fine," is all he offers, which from my son is practically a five-star review.
I feed them pasta, read River's moon rabbit book, check Ashton's homework—perfect, unsurprisingly—and tuck him in while he pretends he doesn't need it. I clean the kitchen.
Stand at the window watching compound lights blink across the grounds like a constellation I haven't learned yet.
I should sleep. My body has been running on spite and caffeine for days. But then I hear a sound at the door—not a knock, something softer and heavier. Like a body finding a surface it didn't choose.
I cross the room and pull the handle. The motion startles the man on the other side awake. Leon blinks up at me from my doorframe, barefoot, hair wrecked, wearing clothes that suggest he left his bed without consulting his brain.
"I'm sorry…" He straightens, pressing a hand to his temple, genuinely bewildered. "I have no idea how I got here."