Chapter 49

The skies are forlorn today. Lifeless. Like the colors have been leached from it, leaving behind ashes and gloom. The stack of papers crinkles in my hand, but I barely notice, my eyes drawn to the thick clouds looming in the horizon from my spot inside the sitting room. Maxwell told me Ryland loves storms, that they set him free, but he never liked them.

I never understood how he felt until now, when I’m feeling suffocated under the wrath of the dreary skies, when I can feel it stealing every remaining ounce of brightness inside me.

Maxwell left three days ago. The divorce papers I’m holding arrived this morning. Morris packed him a bag and wouldn’t tell me where he went. My guess is, he’s probably in one of the suites inside The Orchid. Morris told me Maxwell instructed the staff to take care of my needs.

As if that’ll mend the gash in my heart. I want to be angry at him for once again making the decision without me. But I know he’s doing it from a place of love and fear. He has experienced too many heartbreaking losses in his life, and while I’m willing to risk it all for him, I can’t ask him to do the same.

If something were to happen to me, after all, there are no guarantees in life, I don’t want him to blame himself for the rest of his life.

Silas lets out a mournful howl and stares at me with his deep blue eye. I rub his fur, thankful for his companionship.

The skeletal branches of the bushes in the rose garden twist in the cruel wind, nature intent on attacking them even when they have nothing more to give, their leaves and flowers, their beauty, long having shriveled to the ground. My eyes land on the patch of soil where nothing grows—the sign of the curse—and I wonder if it’s time for me to explore the garden. If confronting that haunting sadness will help heal my broken heart.

I spent the last two days in the office, determined to drown myself in last minute preparations for the fashion show. I may have lost the only man I’ve ever loved in my life, but I won’t lose my grandpa’s legacy.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I stare at the papers in my hand. Maxwell has left me with enough money to save McKenzie’s if needed in the future, to get fertility treatments, to open humane shelters for abandoned animals. His only ask is for me to one day relinquish the estate back to his family.

He has given me all of my dreams—the dreams that drove me to accept this arrangement with him in the beginning. But doesn’t he know my dreams have changed? Now, they contain a dark-haired man with beautiful scars on his body and soul, a man with the warmest touches and melting kisses, who fills the hole I’ve always felt inside my chest, the feeling I was missing a piece of me I couldn’t identify.

Like I was waiting for him all this time and didn’t realize it.

“Ms. Belle.”

I jolt. Turning toward Morris, I muster up a smile.

The old butler lets out a sigh, the gloomy daylight illuminating every wrinkle on his face. He looks weary, like he has been fighting a long battle. For a moment, he looks as old as this estate—grand, stately, but having seen too much in his years.

“They say, before the curse claimed the life of another Anderson mistress, a tree branch would lodge itself through a window in the estate, scattering glass shards across the floors,” he murmurs. “It was an omen.”

My chest tightens, thinking back to the disturbance on the day of the gala and how my blood ran cold when Steven told us a branch blew into Maxwell’s study even though there were no trees nearby.

“Rumor was, the first branch came in from the window next to you, all the way back in the eighteen hundreds. ”

“Silas,” I whisper, the name slipping out of my lips automatically. I think back to the austere duke in the portrait gallery, the one with the sorrowful eyes.

My blood races. The missing journal, the curse, fragments of knowledge floating in my mind, a puzzle I’m almost certain I know the answer to but have inconveniently forgotten.

“Morris, curse or not, it doesn’t matter anymore, right?” I look away and feel my eyes burning. “He left.”

“What I’m trying to say is, perhaps it’s for the best. I know it doesn’t feel this way right now, but the pain…the pain will lessen over time. Even when you lose everything in the world and experience the most agonizing tragedy, time will go on and the wound will heal.”

Something in his voice catches my attention and I glance at him, finding his blue eyes deepening, like he’s seeing a ghost from his past. He must be talking about his family.

He clears his throat. “The curse has taken too many lives. Don’t let it take yours. Focus the pain on something else and live. Live, because many others before you didn’t get a chance to do so.”

Our gazes hold, and he gives me a curt nod before bowing and disappearing back into the main hallways.

His words echo in my mind long after he left. I turn my attention to the lifeless landscape outside the window. A murder of crows is foraging in the patchy snow, their cries haunting but their spirits defiant.

Live. Even when the world seems empty.

My thoughts flit back to Maxwell’s stormy painting of Lake Superior, the one he thought was soulless because it was missing hope, something I’d conveniently forgotten. How could I forget hope? There’s sunshine after the storm.

Slowly, I stand up, resolve flooding inside me. The storm is temporary. This pain is temporary. Perhaps Maxwell and I aren’t meant to be, but this won’t be the end of me. My dreams are still out there, hidden behind the clouds, and I won’t stop climbing until I reach them .

I’m Belle Law-McKenzie Anderson, and I won’t go down without a fight, and if Maxwell comes to his senses one day, he’ll have to prove he deserves me.

Because I deserve that and more.

Gritting my teeth, I speed down Houston Street toward FDR Drive, my heart throwing itself against my rib cage, begging to be let out so it can crawl back to its other half living in the mansion.

My little muse.

The lump forms in my throat as I shift gears, ignoring the honking cars, the dark expanse of the river beckoning me with its icy waters. Rain pelts against my face from the open window, the icy shards doing nothing to distract me from the scything pain that has been keeping me company since I walked away from her three days ago, knowing I was the reason for the tears and heartbreak on her face.

It felt wrong then, and it still feels wrong now. How could anything be right when I feel like my world has ended?

You took the choice away from her, you bastard. Our last conversation floats to my mind. I know I left her to save her, to buy me time to break the curse, if I can even break the curse. But my investigation hasn’t turned up anything new. I’m still waiting for the medical examiner’s report from Elias’s contact.

In the past few days, I’d spent hours poring through scrapbooks and other relics hidden away in the attic. I’d even called up Wraithmoor Antiquities, since Belle mentioned thinking someone in the shop may know something about the curse. But the girl who answered didn’t know anything, and she mentioned the owner was out of town .

I tried distracting myself from my constant anxiety by painting my portrait of Belle, the masterpiece I started but never finished. But the art that once brought me relief was now a burden, because every brushstroke reminded me of her—the soft streaks of black in her hair, the greens of her irises dotted by the lushest brown—the color of nature, as she used to remind me.

She saw beauty in everything.

She saw me.

She’s the streak of red missing inside the teal of my atrovirens, and now, without her, I’m empty.

You took the choice away from her. The words echo in my mind. I think back to what she said before, how there were two people in a marriage, how we should make decisions together and I feel a slither of regret. Did I make the wrong choice by walking away from her?

I swerve to the right to overtake a slow car. I’d hope a damn drive would give me some clarity on the curse, but instead, I’m hit with the wisdom of Belle’s words. Facing a reality that I might never break the curse, shouldn’t I tell her everything and let her decide?

My phone blares, and without looking at the screen, I answer and put the call on the speakers. “Anderson speaking.”

“Mr. Maxwell Anderson? I’m Dr. Greg Fenton, Elias’s referral. I work at the county coroner’s office.”

My heart stutters as my attention snares on to the deep voice on the other line. Elias’s medical examiner. “What do you have for me?”

“It took me a bit of time, but I went through all the photos and evidence gathered for the deaths of your late wife, mother, and grandmother. If I were the presiding examiner on the cases, I would’ve come to different conclusions.”

My breath freezes. “What do you mean?”

“There were unexplained anomalies. It’d be easy to overlook them. With your family’s influence, I’m sure there was a lot of pressure to close the cases quickly. Since the deaths occurred on your family’s properties and there were plenty of circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimonies pointing to accidents, I assume the examiner thought it was easier to conclude as such, but…”

He pauses and I can barely focus on the road ahead of me. He clears his throat and continues, “If these were random cases, not influenced by your family’s name, please excuse me for being blunt, I’d be issuing a ruling of undetermined manner of death for all of them.”

“Why?” I rasp.

“For your grandmother, there was a large-gauge needle mark in her neck that was unexplained, and the aspirator showed abnormal readings. The embolism that caused her fatal cardiac arrest could’ve been due to external trauma. For your mother, there was a bruise forming on her back. It was very fresh, the injury very close to the time of death. However, all the other injuries indicated she fell face forward. But I wouldn’t be able to rule out if she was struck from behind and fell down the stairs.”

My breathing comes out in quick pants, his findings echoing in my mind. Their deaths could’ve been foul play.

The curse isn’t real . Belle’s words reverberate in my mind. Could she have been right all along?

“And Sydney?” I ask, my heart racing a mile a minute.

“Your late wife had abnormal lab results, showing a low positive for Rohypnol and ketamine. There were traces of alcohol in her system, which was consistent with your family’s testimony that she was intoxicated on the night of her death. My guess was, the examiner thought the results of the drug tests were false positives, since they coincided with a time when the county had a bad batch of test kits. And coupled with your family’s testimony and influence, along with the alcohol in her system, the death was ruled as accidental. But again, if it were me…”

“It’d be undetermined,” I whisper.

“Yes. Frankly, if this were Elias’s investigation and he was asking me if the deaths were from foul play, I wouldn’t rule that out at all. I’d frankly have him look into your family, to be honest, no offense.” He chuckles at his morbid attempt at lighthearted banter .

My mind blanks from shock. I grip the steering wheel tighter as his words echo in my brain. I can barely see straight.

Their deaths were from foul play. A person was behind all of this, not a curse. The truth hits me in the gut. All these years of terror, of living my life in shadows, in fear…all this time wasted. My blood boils inside me as my lungs clamor for more oxygen. I recognize this sensation—anger. My entire life spent on believing this ridiculous curse and someone was behind this all this time?

This has to be it. I need to tell Belle. She was right all along. I need to find her and tell her everything.

The thought of Belle sends a torrent of water inside my charred insides. Belle. The woman I wasn’t allowed to love because of the curse.

If a human is behind this, there’s hope for us. I’ll hire bodyguards for Belle, move us to another country, have a security team sweep through the house, perform background checks on everyone. I’ll exhaust my entire fortune to keep her safe.

We can be together.

The thoughts jumble together, my mind disoriented by this turn of events. But just when life has given me a ray of hope, a car skids into my line of sight and I swerve, but the rain-slick roads betray me. I know the moment I lose control of my vehicle, when fate decides to deal an unyielding blow. The moments slow to flickering flashes.

The weightlessness of the car.

The shrill screeching and spinning of the wheels.

The blur of blinding headlights.

The guardrail suddenly appearing in front of me.

Everything comes to a head as I’m wrenched back in my seat. I swerve, my heart lurching, breath freezing, and everything… everything comes into startling clarity.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you think you’re going to die. But it isn’t my life filling my mind right now.

It’s visions of her. My Belle. Dancing with her in the cabin, listening to opera. Her lips trailing down my body, kissing the scars on my torso but healing the ones carved deep inside. Her in the rose garden, painting as I curled my arms around her, talking about dreams of Venice. A letter of heartbreak clenched in her hand as I cradled her broken body in the rain.

My chest seizes, the visions and memories blinding, and I squeeze my eyes shut as I hear the screeching of metal tearing against metal, the passenger side of my car caving in as it scrapes against the solid barrier.

Airbags explode, the force ripping the air out of my lungs, and the world spins around me as I slam forward.

My ears ring and every inch of my body throbs, the pain a latecomer to the violence. Blackness dots my vision, my lungs trying to draw in oxygen, but everything hurts so fucking much. A metallic taste bursts in my mouth and a sticky wetness seeps into my eyes.

A thick plume of smoke fills the cabin, death beckoning me to join him in another waltz as the sounds of the outside world finally filter in.

Screaming, yelling, chaos. I glance out the broken windows, finding bystanders getting out of their cars, their shadows looming like the monster I’ve seen all my life, its talons threatening to finish what the accident didn’t.

As panic crashes through me with the force of a tsunami, I will my eyes to shut, to not look at the monster outside. I try to breathe, but the anxiety only rises, the waves smothering me from the inside.

I finally realize the truth Belle has been trying to tell me all along, but I was too blinded by fear.

If this were my last day on earth, I should’ve spent every single second with her in my arms. I should’ve fought my monsters, my anxiety, my fears, one by one, until my very last breath. I should’ve treated her as an equal partner and faced our challenges together.

I’m fighting for us, but I should’ve asked her to join the fight.

People pound on my car and nausea roils up my throat as everything becomes too much. Way too much.

With trembling hands, I reach for my phone and press a button.

“R-Ryland…I need help.”

And much later, I realize…I’ve never seen Belle in the rose garden before.