Chapter Twenty-Three – Splinters Don't Vanish
The sky above Mireille Cael's modest countryside house bruised into purple. Crickets whispered low songs in the garden. Inside, the world didn't hum with the same peace.
Nuria sat at the kitchen table, wrapped in a knitted blanket. Her mother, Mireille, stirred tea that neither of them would drink.
The bruises on Nuria's neck had darkened into violets and rust.
Milo was upstairs, giving space. But Nuria felt his presence—like a soldier on the landing. Asa's soldier, though.
"I want to hear it," Mireille said.
"You hardly told me anything yesterday, apart from him needing help, and you having a bruise and crying."
Nuria blinked at the table. Her voice scraped out like torn cloth.
"He strangled me."
Mireille's hand stilled. The spoon tapped once, then dropped into the tea.
"I couldn't breathe, Mama." Nuria's hand shook. "He looked at me like… like I was the cause of everything wrong in his world."
Mireille knelt beside her. Slowly. Like her own knees remembered something they'd once known too well.
"My love," she said, and her voice broke. "My precious girl."
Nuria sobbed then—small, sharp sounds into her mother's shoulder. Mireille didn't flinch. Didn't speak. She only held her.
"When I was young," Mireille whispered, "your father… when he hurt me, I thought, 'If I stay, I win. If I leave, I lose.' But I didn't win. And I didn't leave. And you… you saw too much."
Nuria pulled back just enough to look at her.
"I'm pregnant."
A silence spread through the kitchen like spilled ink.
Mireille shut her eyes.
"I didn't know if I should keep it from you for now," Nuria continued. "But it felt wrong. You always told me truth is the only way to survive."
"And it is," Mireille whispered, tears trembling. "But it's not always clean."
---
Back at the Leclair estate, Vivienne stood by the grand window in Asa's room. The curtains swayed, light curling around her slippers.
Asa sat on the edge of the bed, hands limp, eyes shadowed.
"You know she's gone, right?" Vivienne said.
"I know."
"She won't come back."
He didn't reply.
Vivienne crossed the room, knelt before him like she had when he was twelve and broken after a fevered dream.
"You're shaking."
He looked away.
"She's carrying your child, isn't she?"
His eyes snapped up.
Vivienne's voice was soft, but certain.
"I found the letter she never meant to leave. In the drawer beneath her gloves. Asa… why didn't you tell me? Yes, everyone was suspicious, but that didn't make it true."
He said nothing.
"She deserves better than silence. She deserves better than this. And so does that child."
She hesitated.
"I've been meaning to ask you ever since I saw Nuria…"
Vivienne's voice cracked.
"Asa, did you lay a hand on her?" she asked, her lips trembling.
Silence.
"Answer me, Asa. Did you really do it?
Vivienne stared at him directly in his eyes, as if looking for something.
I thought I raised you better than that, Asa. I thought, I taught you to be the best version of yourself , no matter what anyone said to you, at least if you couldn't do that, I always thought you would know your limits."
Her voice wavered.
"And you dare… to raise your hand on—"
She gasped.
"Your wife?! Who is carrying your child?!"
Tears filled her eyes. "I can't believe you… and the man you've become."
She leaned close and kissed his forehead. Then stood, gathering herself.
"If you want this to stop—this revenge you seem to have going on—you don't stop it by destroying the only person you've ever truly cared about. You stop it by accepting that the past will always be in the past. You can't change it, and no matter what you do in the present to try to make it right, no matter the outcome, it would never give you the satisfaction you so desperately want.
If you can't come into terms with the past, nothing you do now, would ever make a difference or stop making you feel this way."
---
In the hallway, far from Asa's room, Celeste and Genevieve whispered after accidentally overhearing Vivienne confirm Nuria's pregnancy. But they left quickly, not wanting to get caught—missing the rest of the conversation.
"So it's true," Genevieve murmured. "She's pregnant."
Celeste's eyes gleamed. "Explains the glass of water she sipped all night. And the way Asa exploded. Men only react like that when there's a heartbeat involved."
Genevieve scoffed. "It's ridiculous. He picked her over all of us, and now she's carrying the heir."
Celeste leaned in. "And yet she's not even here anymore. Let's see how long that crown stays on her head."
---
That night, Asa left the mansion.
He took the old Volvo. No driver.
The sky was too quiet. That kind of bruised-blue silence that always came before a storm.
Asa drove with no music. The only sound was the low hum of the engine and the metallic clink of the gun sliding in the glove compartment each time the car turned. It was cold. Too cold for summer.
Or maybe it was just him.
He gripped the wheel with both hands. Tight. White-knuckled.
The GPS had long since stopped talking. He hadn't needed directions. He remembered the roads from the night they visited Mireille Cael's house months ago—Nuria's home. And that is the one place he was so sure Nuria would be at this point in time , it doesn't take a smart person to figure that out.
His eyes were rimmed red. Hair damp against his forehead. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck, despite the chill.
He kept hearing her voice—not the real one, but the one in his head. The way she had whispered his name that night. The way her body had almost gone still beneath his hands. The way she hadn't screamed.
He pulled over.
His breathing came fast.
Not yet.
Not yet.
He buried his face into the steering wheel, gripping it until the leather threatened to tear. His shoulders shook.
"What am I doing?"
But the whisper came again. The one that had haunted him since childhood.
"You're finishing what was started. You owe it to the dead."
He looked up. Face streaked with tears. He opened the glove compartment. The gun sat there like it had been waiting.
His fingers hovered.
And then he closed it again.
He started the engine.
---