Healed by My Second Chance

Chapter 7 — Kane

Roman found the account records two days later.

He didn’t ask permission before bringing them to me. That wasn’t how we worked and hadn’t been since we were young enough to trust each other blindly instead of merely most of the time.

I was reviewing quarterly projections when he walked in—the kind of routine work that had once held my attention for hours and now barely held it for minutes.

He didn’t knock.

Roman never knocked when something was serious enough to skip the formality.

“You’ve been moving money,” he said, setting a tablet on my desk as though it were evidence in a trial. “A property in the Dakelund territory. Cash, with no paper trail leading back to the company. Care to explain?”

I didn’t answer immediately.

I had told myself the account was merely contingency planning, the kind any smart man kept: money no one could trace and a place no one would think to look.

I hadn’t allowed myself to admit what I actually wanted it for.

Roman waited me out. He was good at that—better than I had ever been.

“It’s an option,” I said.

“An option for what?”

For disappearing.

For taking Melody somewhere beyond the council’s reach. Some quiet stretch of territory where no one cared whose name appeared on which building and where I could be a man who repaired boats or ran a small business instead of an alpha with three packs depending on him not to embarrass himself.

I had priced it all out without admitting that was what I was doing: a small house, a workshop, and a name no one would recognize.

I could afford to disappear comfortably for the rest of my life.

I could afford to take her with me and never look back at any of this.

I had even chosen the town. It was small, coastal, and far enough from any pack territory that no one would think to search for us there.

I had looked at listings for houses I had no intention of buying. I told myself it was idle curiosity and knew, even then, that it wasn’t.

I said none of that to Roman.

“Nothing. Close it out.”

“Kane.”

He didn’t sit. He never sat when he wanted me to listen.

“You have the money to run. You have the connections to disappear clean—better than clean, better than most rogues ever manage. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“I’ve thought about a lot of things.”

“And?”

And I had built an entire life around being the man who didn’t need anyone. The man who didn’t run. The man whose name meant something specific to people who mattered: power, control, and an alliance that would keep three territories safe for another generation.

Melody Moon would cost me every part of that.

Not because I couldn’t survive losing it, but because some part of me—the part my father had spent thirty years carving into shape—still believed that losing it would make me smaller than the man I had always planned to become.

I had spent my entire life becoming that man.

I didn’t know how to stop being him, even for her.

I didn’t have to lose everything to have Melody. I knew that too, somewhere beneath the excuses.

I could have a smaller life, but a real one, with her in it instead of this one. I chose not to want that version rather than admit I was afraid of it.

Calling it fear was easier than naming it for what it actually was.

“Close the account,” I repeated. “It was a mistake.”

Roman studied me for a long moment, the way he did when he already knew I was lying and was deciding whether the argument was worth having.

“You’re going to marry Lilith. You’re going to keep the alliance. And you’re going to let whatever this is with the dishwasher just... end.”

“That’s the plan.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Roman’s voice had gone quiet in the way that meant he wasn’t going to let the subject go.

Not that night.

I didn’t answer him.

Some things couldn’t be said aloud because the moment you spoke them, there was no taking them back.

I already knew where the honest version of this ended: with me holding on to the power I had wanted my entire life and losing the one thing that had ever made me forget I wanted it.

I chose power.

I want to be honest about that, at least with myself, even if I was never honest about it with her.

No one forced my hand. My father had been gone for a little over a year, and I still allowed his voice to make the decision for me because that was easier than making a new decision of my own.

It was always going to be easier.

That was the entire problem.

“I’ll talk to her,” I told Roman. “End it clean.”

The words felt hollow the moment I said them, like a promise I already knew I wasn’t going to keep.

“Clean,” Roman repeated, as though he already knew the word didn’t apply to anything I was about to do.

He was right not to believe me.

I already knew that I didn’t have it in me to end something like this gently. Gentleness wasn’t going to get through.

It had to hurt enough that Melody wouldn’t come looking for an explanation. Enough that she wouldn’t wait around hoping I would change my mind or spend years wondering whether there had been another version of this in which I chose differently.

There had been.

I was choosing not to take it.

Roman didn’t say anything else. He picked up the tablet, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the door.

He paused only long enough to speak without looking back.

“Close the account yourself. I don’t want my name anywhere near it.”

It was as close to disapproval as he had ever come with me, and it stung more than a lecture would have.

I called what I was about to do mercy while I sat there.

It was the last lie I allowed myself to believe before I walked down to the kitchen and did what I had already decided to do.