Chapter 5: The Reconstruction
The next few months were a blur of recovery. My son, Leo, was born healthy, a little warrior who seemed to have inherited his father’s intensity and my stubbornness.
We moved to a home far from Eugene, a place with high walls and security cameras that my parents would never be able to navigate.
I went back to work—not stocking shelves, but as a consultant for the very firm Callum ran. I was the one who looked at the structures, who found the weaknesses in the foundations. I became the woman who dismantled the predators.
One afternoon, sitting in my office, I looked at a file on my desk—my mother’s bankruptcy petition. She was living in a small, cramped apartment, working at a call center, trying to understand how her "sensitive" daughter had ruined her life.
Callum walked in, holding Leo in his arms.
"They’re trying to reach out again," Callum said. "They want to see the baby."
I looked at my son, then at my husband. I thought about the hospital room. I thought about the vase.
May you like
"No," I said. "They don't get to see who we built."
"They're gone, Arden," Callum said, kissing my temple. "Not just from our lives, but from the board. They have no power left."
