7. Moving In

7. Moving In

Tania woke up first, for once. Caleb was still beside her, asleep, his face soft in a way she never saw while he was awake.

She studied him for a long moment. The line of his jaw. The small scar near his eyebrow she’d never asked about. Her hand drifted up, almost touching his cheek.

His eyes snapped open and caught her wrist mid-air.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Tania pulled her hand back like she’d been burned, heat rushing to her face. She got up without answering and walked straight out toward the beach where she’d fainted two days earlier.

The sand had been cleaned. Almost. She crouched down and found a dark stain still ground into the grains near where Gabriel had fallen.

Blood.

She stood and walked the length of the island calling his name. The place felt too quiet, too empty, her own voice bouncing back at her off the water with no answer at all.

She went back to Caleb and shook him awake.

“Where is he? What did you do with him?”

He wouldn’t answer, staring past her at the ceiling instead. Watching her chase after another man’s name lit something ugly behind his eyes, something that had nothing to do with guilt.

 

• • •

 

A helicopter landed on the island two days later. Caleb told her to pack. They were going back to the city.

“Can I see my uncle?” she asked, expecting a no.

“Fine.”

She almost didn’t believe it. He assigned four guards to follow her everywhere, but he let her go.

Outside the hospital, a familiar voice called her name. Cecile, hurrying across the parking lot, out of breath.

“Tania. I need your help.”

Cecile had never once asked her for help. Not in all the years they’d known each other. Tania felt something cold settle in her chest.

“What happened?”

“Some guy I turned down at a shoot last month. He won’t leave me alone. He’s threatened me, Tania, and the police won’t take it seriously.” Cecile’s hands were shaking. “I need you to use Caleb’s name. Please. Just this once.”

Tania didn’t want to owe Caleb’s name to anyone, least of all herself. But she looked at her friend’s face and didn’t hesitate long.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

 

• • •

 

Tania walked into the police station with Cecile, four of Caleb’s guards trailing behind them like a wall of black suits.

The desk officer’s eyes widened the moment she gave her name. “Mrs. Wilson. Of course. We’ll take care of this personally.”

An officer came with them back to Cecile’s apartment, where the man loitering outside took one look at the badge and the guards and disappeared down the street without a word.

Cecile hugged her tight in the doorway. “Thank you. I mean it.”

Neither of them noticed the photographer across the street until the pictures were already taken. Tania Wilson, guards at her back, walking out of a police station.

By the next morning, the photo had made its way further than either of them expected. Sophia’s father saw it over his morning coffee.

 

• • •

 

Sophia showed up at her father’s office in tears before noon, the photo pulled up on her phone.

“Look at her. Guards, police escorts, and I’m the one raising his child alone.”

Her father made a call within the hour. Caleb answered on the second ring.

“Your father, rest his soul, made me promise to look after Sophia,” the old man said, his voice heavy with the kind of authority that came from decades of being obeyed. “I trust you remember that promise, Caleb.”

Caleb didn’t argue. He hung up and called his head of security instead.

By evening, every guard who had escorted Tania that day had been suspended without pay. Caleb stood in his office afterward, staring at nothing.

From that day forward, he decided, no guard would ever be assigned to Tania again. If she wanted protection, she would have to ask him directly.

 

• • •

 

Tania was deep in a new design when an alarm sounded somewhere near the front of the house. She saved her work and went to see what the noise was.

Denise stood frozen in the hallway. “It’s her,” she whispered.

Sophia stood at the front door, two suitcases beside her feet, the baby balanced on one hip.

“I’m moving in,” Sophia announced, stepping past Denise without waiting for permission.

“Excuse me?”

“Caleb’s idea. Ask him yourself.”

Tania didn’t believe her, not until Caleb walked in an hour later and Sophia rushed toward him, tilting the baby up toward his face.

“She’s been asking for you every night,” Sophia said softly. “She barely sleeps without you nearby.”

Caleb looked at the baby, then at the suitcases, then, briefly, at Tania standing in the hallway with her arms crossed.

“She can stay,” he said finally, and walked past both of them toward his study.

Tania stood alone in the hallway with Denise, staring at the two suitcases now parked in her own front hall like they’d always belonged there.