Till Death Do Us Apart
16. Kill Her or Lose Everything
Chapter 16
Caleb came home to find Tania curled in front of the fireplace, wrapped in soft white pajamas printed with rabbits, a mug of hot chocolate cradled in her hands.
She felt him in the doorway before she turned around.
“If you’re not afraid of losing me,” she said quietly, one hand resting on her stomach, “aren’t you afraid of losing our baby? She’s being born out of hate, Caleb. Is that fair to her?”
“Who told you it’s a girl?” he murmured.
Tania smiled and turned to face him fully. “Do you want a boy instead? We could always try again.”
The words landed strangely between them. She’d said almost the exact same thing to him once before, years ago, in a different life, when their first pregnancy had still felt like the beginning of something instead of the end.
Caleb’s face changed, memory pulling him somewhere neither of them had visited in a long time.
Tania stood and crossed to him before she could think better of it, wrapping her arms around his middle, needing him to hold her back more than she wanted to admit.
“My mother must have done something horrible,” she whispered into his chest. “I believe you now. I just need you to forgive it. Please, Caleb. Let it go.”
He didn’t answer with words. He lifted her instead, carrying her toward the bedroom, and for one night, neither of them mentioned mothers, or hate, or anything at all.
• • •
Tania woke tangled in his arms, warm and, for one fragile moment, happy.
Then Caleb stirred beside her, blinked awake, and the softness drained out of his face like it had never been there at all.
“This changes nothing,” he said, already reaching for his shirt. “We are never going to be the way we used to be.”
He left without looking back.
Tania lay there a while longer before picking up her phone and calling Cecile, needing to tell someone the news even if it came with an asterisk she wasn’t ready to explain.
“A baby?” Cecile shrieked loud enough that Tania had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Tania, that’s incredible, that’s— oh my god, I’m going to be an aunt.”
Tania smiled through the call, and the moment she hung up, the smile faded fast. Cecile didn’t know. Couldn’t know, not yet, that there likely wouldn’t be enough time left for any of this to matter the way it should.
Her phone buzzed again before she could set it down. An unknown number.
Stay away from Mr. Wilson. He’s getting married.
• • •
Tania read the message twice, though she already knew, somewhere underneath the ache, exactly who the bride would be.
She pictured it anyway. Caleb at some altar, Sophia in white, their daughter dressed up for the occasion, a real family assembled out of the wreckage of everything Tania had tried to hold together.
Nausea hit her hard and fast. She made it to the sink just in time, and when she rinsed her mouth after, there was blood swirled through the water again.
She stepped out onto the balcony afterward, cold air biting at her skin, and stared down at the spot near the tree line where she’d nearly frozen to death weeks ago.
“I was grateful once,” she said out loud, to no one, to the snow, to the memory of a burning hall two years and a lifetime ago. “When you pulled me out of that fire, I thought you’d saved my life. Now I think I’d have been better off in the flames. That fire only burned once, Caleb. Your love scorches me every single day.”
• • •
Caleb’s grandfather summoned him the next morning, and one look at the old man’s face told Caleb this wasn’t going to be a pleasant visit.
“You married the enemy’s daughter,” his grandfather said, not bothering with a greeting. “And now I hear you’ve gotten her pregnant.”
“Grandfather—”
“Kill her.” The old man’s voice didn’t rise, which somehow made it worse. “Get rid of her, Caleb, or I will disown you. I will cut you out of everything this family has built.”
Caleb stood frozen, his jaw tight.
His grandfather leaned forward. “Let me remind you what this family did for that woman’s mother. We took her in. We gave her everything. And she repaid us by putting your mother in an early grave.”
“I know what she did.”
“Then act like you know it.” The old man’s eyes were hard as stone. “Your dignity only survives if you let go of these petty feelings for her. I’d rather see you marry a swindler’s daughter than a traitor’s.”
• • •
Tania’s phone rang early the next morning. Jordan’s name on the screen, his voice already breaking before he’d finished the first sentence.
“Tania. It’s Uncle Robert. He’s gone.”
The room tilted. She didn’t remember dropping the phone, only picking it back up minutes later, Jordan still saying her name from the other end.
When Caleb came home that afternoon, she was already by the door, coat half-on.
“I need to go back,” she said. “My uncle died. I have to be there.”
“No.”
“Caleb, he raised me. I have to go.”
He didn’t argue further. He simply walked past her, locked every door in the condo himself, and told Greta in a tone that left no room for negotiation that Tania wasn’t to leave the building for any reason.