My Sister Stole My Husband, My Son, and My Medal Chapter 01

My Sister Stole My Husband, My Son, and My Medal Chapter 01

My husband, a lawyer, and our five-year-old son were kidnapped.

By the time I found them, the bomb went off. They were incinerated right in front of me.

My older sister, a special agent with the State Bureau of Investigation, tried to help me track down their killer. She was captured too and tortured to death.

Everyone at the department said I’d made too many enemies doing the job the way I did. My family had died because of me. I was the one who should have been killed.

Even the department pulled me from the Major Crimes Unit.

For three years, I investigated their deaths in secret. Everything else in my life fell away.

Then a lead took me to Juniper House.

Inside, my dead husband, my dead son, and my dead sister were celebrating a little girl’s birthday.

Our relatives and closest friends were all there, laughing, clinking glasses, watching Cress cut a cake shaped like a princess castle.

I started toward them. I needed answers.

But my best friend, Odette, grabbed me from behind, her manicured nails digging into my arm.

“Romy, I know this is hard to accept, but Stellan and Cress are married now. If you keep making a scene, how are you any different from a homewrecker?”

My mother, Blythe, fixed me with a cold, warning stare.

“Cress was pregnant with Stellan’s baby three years ago. Everyone knows how vicious you can be. Faking their deaths was the only way they could get away from you.”

“It’s just as well you found out. They’ve spent three years hiding, moving from place to place. It broke my heart to watch. They’re finally happy together. Step aside, and everyone will forgive you.”

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

I looked at all of them—my mother, my friends, my colleagues—and I started laughing, even as tears ran down my face.

They had never died.

While I’d spent three years grieving until I could barely breathe, they’d been living safely, happily, together.

My phone rang. It was Ellery Shaw from Stellan’s law firm.

I put the call on speaker so everyone could hear.

“Romy, I found a new lead on the killer. Ten days from now, he’s supposed to make a deal at an underground fight club in Northern Vespera. It’s incredibly dangerous. Romy, please don’t go.”

When the call ended, I looked from face to face.

The tears wouldn’t stop.

I crouched down and rolled up my pant legs. Then I shoved up my sleeves and lifted the hem of my shirt, exposing the scars across my arms, back, and abdomen.

A mangled burn scar circled my ankle, left by a branding iron on a cargo ship. Odette had sent me there.

Dark whip marks stretched across my back. Thayer Knox, Stellan’s closest friend, had sent me into that casino trap.

A deep knife scar cut across my lower abdomen. I’d gotten that one inside an abandoned meatpacking plant. Penn Raley had given me that lead. I had supported him for twelve years.

Now every one of them was standing in that restaurant.

I wanted to see guilt. Horror, at least.

Instead, their expressions held the calm of people who had always known exactly what had happened to me.

After a long silence, Stellan came through the crowd.

He reached out, his fingertips tracing a long, raised scar on my forearm. Then he smoothed my hair back.

“Romy, you’ve always been too clever for your own good. We had to keep you busy.”

I stared at him, my mind refusing to connect the dots.

“You wouldn’t stop digging, Romy. I didn’t know how else to keep you from finding us.”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

Odette yanked me away from him.

“They were actors, Romy. You got banged up, that’s all. How bad could it possibly have hurt?”

She rolled her eyes. “Stellan is Cress’s husband now. It wasn’t easy for them to get away from you. Can’t you respect some basic boundaries?”

Everything inside me went cold.

A high ringing filled my ears. The room went muffled.

I pressed a hand to my chest as nausea surged up my throat.

And still, they kept talking.

Stellan and Cress’s deaths hadn’t been the only performance.

Every lead I had nearly died pursuing had been fabricated.

Every criminal I’d fought had been hired.

I had worn those scars like medals.

To them, they were nothing more than the punchline to an elaborate joke.

As long as Cress got her happy ending, what did it matter if I was left covered in scars?

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