Page 9 of Broken Blades

A photo with a guy. Tall, clean-cut, polo shirt tucked into khakis. His arm around her shoulders. Her leaning into him, comfortable. Happy.

Caption: Lake weekend with my favorite person.

Posted three months ago.

I zoomed in on her face.

No makeup, or at least not enough to notice. Sun-kissed skin. That smile again—the one that didn't calculate, didn't perform, didn't strategize.

Not sharp like her mother.

Not performative like her father.

Just a girl who thought the world was good.

My thumb hovered over the photo.

She didn't know. About the real reason for this merger. About what her father built his empire on. About who he destroyed to get there. About the woman he paraded in business meetings while his wife smiled and poured wine at dinner parties.

She doesn't know anything.

I scrolled further back. Found the post from yesterday.

A photo of her childhood home—stately, tasteful, expensive in that quiet way that screamed old money. Snow dusted the front steps. Wreath on the door.

Caption: Home. Family means everything.

Forty-three likes.

Her mother's comment sat at the top: So wonderful to have you here, sweetheart!

Below that, her father's. Proud of my girl.

My jaw locked.

Proud.

I remembered pride. Remembered what it felt like to stand beside someone and mean it when you said those words. Remembered believing that actions matched intentions, that people meant what they said. Remembered the exact moment I learned otherwise.

The heater finally kicked in, warm air blasting my face.

I stared at his comment. Four words. Public performance. Another brick in the wall he'd built around his perfect life.

I closed Instagram. Set the phone down.

Friday, she'd walk into that masquerade wearing whatever expensive dress her mother picked out, clinging to her father's arm like he hung the moon.

And I'd be there. Watching.

The memory came fast and unbidden. The night I came home early from Calgary, snow had been falling for hours. Thick, wet flakes that turned the windshield wipers into metronomes counting down to disaster.

I'd caught a red-eye after our game got postponed. Equipment failure. Faulty boards. The kind of mundane detail that should've been forgettable but instead became the marker I used to divide my life into before and after.

My house sat dark when I pulled into the driveway. Just after eleven. Late enough that most lights should've been off, but the bedroom window glowed warm against the black winter sky.

I didn't think about it. Just grabbed my bag from the trunk and headed inside.

The front door was unlocked.