Page 89 of The Embers That Remain

“Open it,” I said quietly.

Her eyes flicked to mine. That hesitation told me everything I needed to know about how much she already suspected it would hurt.

“I haven’t opened it,” I added. That made her still completely. Her gaze sharpened slightly, searching my face.

“You didn’t open it?” she asked.

“No.”

Her brows furrowed. “Why would you give me something you haven’t even looked at?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. The truth was, whatever was inside that envelope belonged to her. I had already carried it long enough like I had the right to. I decided I wasn’t going to stand by and watch someone I loved hurt.

“Because it’s yours,” I said. “And I had no right to decide what happened with it.”

Her fingers finally tore through the seal. The sound of paper tearing in a quiet kitchen felt too loud. She pulled the contents out slowly, as if her hands had suddenly forgotten how to work. At first it was just paperwork. Neat stacks. Official headers. The kind of documents that always looked harmless until you actually read them. The color drained from her cheeks.

“I didn’t . . .” she started, then stopped. Her fingers firmly gripped the papers.

I stayed where I was, letting her decide what she needed to do next. Her finger traced over a page and froze.

“This is . . .” Her voice cracked slightly. She cleared her throat and tried again. “These are more bills.”

I wasn’t surprised by the possibility. Not after everything she had told me. But seeing the evidence in her shaking hands made it real. She looked back down, flipping pages now with less control, faster, like if she got through all of it quickly enough it might rearrange itself into something less real. The more she read, the more her face changed and her shoulders went rigid.

“No,” she whispered. I knew that tone. That was denial trying to outrun reality. Her eyes scanned the page again, and whatever she found there made her stop mid-sentence. Her face went pale. I pushed off the counter a little, only enough to close the distance without crowding her.

“What is it?” I said.

She didn’t answer right away. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely there.

“He’s forged my signature. Dozens of times.”

The words hung in the air, she looked up at me like she needed confirmation she wasn’t losing her grip on reality.

“He used my name,” she said, panic breaking through the edges of her control. “He used my information.”

My stomach dropped. Brett hadn’t only taken advantage of her kindness. He had attached her name to a life she never agreed to carry. She forced herself to keep reading, like she couldn’t stop now that she’d started. Like stopping would mean admitting it was real. The papers at the bottom of the stack turned out to be adoption papers.

For Jace.

She stopped moving. Even the silence seemed to change, growing heavier around us. She swallowed once before speaking, but her voice betrayed her, breaking despite every effort to keep it steady.

“I adopted him,” she said, like she was reminding herself of something she already knew but didn’t want attached to this stack of paper. “That was legal. That was real. Right?”

Her fingers tightened. She was looking at proof that the circumstances surrounding how she became Jace’s mother had been manipulated from the beginning. I stepped closer, slowly enough that she could have stopped me if she wanted.

“It’s going to be okay. No one is going to take Jace from you,” I said because no matter what I would make sure it was. Her gaze dropped back to the papers, and her expression shifted again as anger finally broke through the shock.

“My worst fear is losing Jace, but I don’t think there’s any way Brett could have manipulated that because everything was done through an attorney I hired. He’s been doing this for years, even before we were dating. I was only a mark for a conman,” she whispered. It was a realization she didn’t like having, but you could see everything she was processing playing across her face.

I nodded because I realized the same thing. The corner of the document folded beneath her fingers. Her thumb rubbed over the edge of the paper until it bent.

“I thought I was helping him,” she said, almost to herself.

“I know,” I answered.

She gave a short humorless laugh that didn’t sound like her at all.