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What the fuck can I say to heal this? If I knew the words, I’d say them. If I could cut my chest open and hand her my bleeding heart, I would. If I could go back in time and undo the damage, I’d already be halfway back to Christmas Eve.

But I can’t.

I can only watch the woman I love crumble in front of me.

And it’s my fucking fault.

“So here’s what happens,” she continues. “We’re done. I don’t even know what you’d call the shit we were doing, but whatever it was, that’s over.”

“Lilah—”

“The holidays are over, too. Easter would’ve been the last one. I’m ending it a week early.” She lifts her chin. “But I’m not letting you off the hook for the rest of it. You promised me a release. You’re still going to give me one. Until then, I want you to leave me alone. Don’t come breaking into my house or my bakery, and don’t even think about using those copies of keys I know you have.”

I take them out of my coat pocket and set them down. Two keys. The saddest of metallic clinks.

“And one more thing,” she adds. “Nothing you say or do will change my mind on this. No gifts. No envelopes. No taking anything else away from Connor. If you burn his whole life down to the ground, it won’t move me one inch. I don’t want to hear about it. Are we clear?”

I hesitate, then nod. “We’re clear.”

She waits, like she expected me to argue. I don’t. Arguing is a thing you do when you have standing.

I don’t.

“Then I want you to leave,” she concludes. She points toward the door. “Now.”

I don’t move right away. I just look at her.

Look, and let it hurt.

The bun coming loose at her nape. The flour ground permanently into the creases of her knuckles. The burn scar on her wrist from an oven rack in a kitchen she bled for. Her eyes rimmed red, her chin up anyway, defiant to the end.

My woman. Mine, until roughly forty minutes ago, when a stranger’s folder and my own goddamn silence ripped her away from me.

I have killed men for less than what I’ve done to her. I’ve had legs broken over insults that didn’t come close. And now, I stand in her kitchen, in the one place on earth she built with her own two hands, and I cannot think of a single thing in my whole miserable arsenal that fixes this.

Money won’t. She’d throw it back.

Violence won’t—there’s nobody left to hurt who isn’t already ruined, and she’s forbidden me even that.

Words won’t, because I had my chance at that hail mary and I spent it with my mouth sealed shut instead.

Tell me how, I want to say. Tell me how and I’ll do it. Anything. Name it and it’s done.

But she’s already named it, hasn’t she?

Leave.

So I leave. Not because I’m finished.

But because she asked.

Josef straightens up at attention when the door shuts behind me, but I have nothing to say to him. I walk past him to the mouth of the alley and stand there in the cold with my hands empty.

It’s funny—if you told me on Christmas Eve, before I ever slipped into that house, that this is how it would all end, I would’ve been thrilled. I’ve got all the leverage I could need. A merciless version of me would renege on his promise, rip the bakery from her, and not give a fuck how Delilah felt about that.

I’d be a winner. The empire I spent a decade building would be mine.

I have all the keys to my prize, sitting in a drawer on Fifty-Third Street.