Samantha, I owe you an apology.
I saw too much over the years and remained silent. Silence was another way of allowing you to be hurt.
Today is my seventieth birthday, and I’m done pretending this family is healthy.
I will personally pay for the damage Brian caused at your father’s workshop.
You deserve your own life.
I read the message twice.
Charles had never treated me with Beatrice’s cruelty.
But he had watched.
For ten years, he had hidden behind newspapers and quiet breakfasts while his wife gave orders and his son returned home at strange hours smelling of another woman’s perfume.
He had known enough.
He simply hadn’t acted.
I replied:
Thank you, Mr. Miller.
Later, during the hotel presentation, footage of Reyes Forge appeared on the ballroom screens.
Chef Harrison stood at the microphone.
“I have used Thomas Reyes’s blades for more than thirty years,” he said.
