Loving My Dead Husband's Brother

The first siren didn't make me stop. The second one did. By the time I turned onto Ashbury Street, red and blue light was smeared across the buildings like watercolor left out in the rain. Police cruisers blocked both ends of the road, reporters pressed against the yellow tape, and camera flashes kept catching the wet afternoon like small bursts of lightning. My stomach dropped. This couldn't be the address. I checked the message on my phone for what had to be the tenth time. If you want to know who's rewriting your story, come alone. 4:00 p.m. Ashbury Street. No sender. No explanation. I should have ignored it. Instead, here I was. I parked across the street, my fingers tightening around the wheel until my knuckles went white. Something felt wrong—the kind of wrong that settles into your bones before your mind has caught up to it. The rain had nearly stopped, leaving the pavement slick under my boots as I stepped out of the car. People whispered. Some stared. A few recognized me instantly. "Isn't that Chloe Kane?" "That's her." "What is she doing here?" I kept my head down and walked toward the tape. An officer stepped into my path. "Ma'am, this area is restricted." "I—" My voice caught in my throat. "I got a message telling me to come here." Something shifted in his expression. "What kind of message?" Before I could answer, another officer hurried over and murmured something in his ear. Both of them looked at me, then at each other—a glance so brief I almost missed it. But I caught it anyway. Recognition. Not the kind people gave a bestselling author. The kind they gave a suspect. "Mrs. Kane?" The voice cut through the noise like a blade. I turned and found Detective Noah Hayes walking toward me, rain darkening the shoulders of his charcoal coat. I'd seen him before, always behind a microphone at some press conference, camera flashes bouncing off his face. He wasn't smiling now. "Detective." "Thank you for coming." "I didn't come because the police asked me to." "I know." His gaze dropped briefly to the phone still clenched in my hand. "The message?" I nodded and unlocked the screen, handing it over. His expression gave nothing away as he read it. "Did you tell anyone you were coming?" he asked, handing the phone back. "No." "Not your publisher?" "No." "Your agent?" "No." He studied my face for a moment longer, then nodded toward the crime scene. "I'd like you to see something." Every instinct in me screamed to leave. Instead, I followed him. The crowd parted as we ducked beneath the tape. The smell hit me first—wet concrete, rain, and underneath it, the unmistakable copper tang of blood. A white forensic tent stood in the middle of the alley, officers moving quietly around its edges. A photographer crouched near the ground, snapping picture after picture. I stopped walking. "What happened?" Noah didn't answer right away. He glanced toward the forensic team instead. "They're ready." Ready for what? An investigator in blue gloves lifted something from beside the body—not a weapon, not a phone, but a single sheet of paper. He sealed it into a clear evidence bag and carried it toward us. My heartbeat stumbled. No. That couldn't be what I thought it was. The investigator handed the bag to Noah, who turned it toward me without a word. Every ounce of color drained from my face. I knew that page. I knew every line printed on it, because I had written them myself. It was a page from my manuscript—not the published novel, the manuscript. The one nobody outside my publishing team was supposed to see. My lips parted, but nothing came out. "That's impossible," I finally managed. Noah watched me carefully. "Can you identify it?" "...Yes." "How?" "It's from my new book." My voice had shrunk to almost nothing. "The one you're publishing next month?" "Yes." He held my gaze. "Has anyone else read it?" "My editor. My agent. A few people at the publishing house." I shook my head. "That's it. That's everyone." Noah passed the bag back to the investigator, who walked off without a word. I stared after him. "This has to be some kind of mistake." "I hope you're right." His answer chilled me more than the rain ever could. I looked toward the forensic tent. "I want to see the victim." "You don't." "I do." "It's not a good idea." "I've seen worse." That wasn't entirely true. I'd imagined worse. Written worse. Living it was another thing entirely. He hesitated, then nodded to one of the officers. The tarp lifted just enough for me to see, and one glance was all it took. I staggered backward, a hand flying to my mouth. The body had been posed exactly as I'd described it in The Crimson Seven. The angle of the arms. The tilt of the head. The white lily resting on the chest, its petals soaked through until they'd gone the same rust-red as everything beneath them. Word for word. Scene for scene. Someone hadn't just killed this person. They had recreated my novel. Across the alley, past the edge of the tape, a man stood beneath a black umbrella, perfectly still while everyone else moved around him. For a moment our eyes met. He smiled—small, almost polite—then turned and disappeared into the crowd before I could get a better look. I didn't have time to wonder about him. Not yet. My knees threatened to buckle. "This isn't possible," I whispered. "I was hoping you'd say that." I looked up at him. His face told me nothing. Then he asked the question that turned my blood to ice. "Mrs. Kane. How did a page from your unpublished manuscript end up beside a murder victim?" I shook my head before I even realized I was doing it. "I don't know." The words came out weak, unconvincing—even to my own ears. Noah didn't push back. He simply studied me the way people watch a storm gather over the ocean: quietly, carefully, waiting to see how much damage it would do. "Mrs. Kane," he said, his voice even. "When did you last see your manuscript?" "This morning. In my home office." "Was it locked?" "Yes." "Who has a key?" "No one." The answer left my mouth before I remembered it wasn't quite true. Someone else had a key. My breath caught. Jaxon had given it away years ago, to someone I hadn't let myself think about in a long time. Noah caught the hesitation immediately. "You thought of someone." My heart skipped. "No." "You hesitated." "I was remembering." "What?" I looked away. "My husband." Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. Even three years later, that word still hurt to say out loud. Noah's eyes drifted back toward the body. "I understand this isn't easy." "No," I said quietly. "You don't." He let that sit for a moment. Then another detective approached, carrying a small evidence box, and handed him a sealed bag. Inside was a fountain pen—black lacquer, silver trim. The world tilted beneath me. My breath caught somewhere in my chest. No. Not that pen. My fingers started shaking. I pressed them into my palm, but it didn't help. I couldn't feel the rain anymore, couldn't feel anything except the cold spreading up through my chest. Noah saw the change in my face before I could hide it. "You recognize it." I couldn't speak right away. I knew that pen better than I knew my own handwriting. I'd bought it for Jaxon on our first wedding anniversary. He'd carried it everywhere, signed every contract with it, refused to replace it even after the clip broke. "It belonged to my husband," I said, my throat tightening around every word. A few of the officers exchanged glances. One of them scribbled something into a notebook without looking up. Noah never took his eyes off me. "You're certain?" "I gave it to him." "When did you last see it?" "The day before—" I stopped myself. The day before the explosion. The day before the world decided my husband was a criminal. The day before they lowered an empty coffin into the ground, because there had been almost nothing left of him to bury. My chest clenched so hard it hurt to breathe. "Mrs. Kane?" I blinked. "I'm sorry. What?" "When did you last see the pen?" "...Three years ago." His face stayed unreadable. He sealed the bag and passed it back to the detective. "Send it to the lab." The detective nodded and walked off. "This doesn't make sense," I whispered. "It rarely does." "You don't understand." "Then help me understand." I let out a short, broken laugh. "You think I can explain this?" "I think you're the only person who can." Before I could respond, shouting broke out beyond the tape. "Cameras up! She's here! Move!" My stomach dropped. Reporters surged forward in a wave, microphones raised like weapons. "Mrs. Kane! Did your husband's crimes inspire your books?" "Did you know this victim?" "Were you at the scene before the police?" "Are you hiding evidence?" Flashes exploded one after another. A microphone nearly clipped my jaw. Another camera swung dangerously close to my shoulder. I stepped back instinctively, but the questions kept coming. Then one voice rose above the rest. "Mrs. Kane, are these murders connected to your terrorist husband?" The alley went silent. Even the officers froze. Three years. Three years later, and they still called him that. Before I could find my voice, Noah stepped between me and the crowd. "Back up." They ignored him. Another reporter shouted, "Did you and Jaxon Kane build the criminal network together?" "What?" I stared at the woman who'd asked it. She looked almost thrilled, like this was a story instead of my life. "I said," she repeated, louder this time, "did you help your husband?" "No." My voice cracked down the middle. "No." She opened her mouth to press further, but Noah cut her off. "That's enough." He motioned to two officers. "Clear the entrance." The crowd backed away, reluctant but obedient. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm, wet air. Noah studied me for a long moment before he sighed. "I didn't want you to hear it from the media." "Hear what?" He glanced toward the detectives gathering near their vehicles, then back at me. "The evidence recovered today changes the direction of this investigation." My pulse hammered in my ears. "What does that mean?" He chose his next words with visible care. "It means you're no longer here as someone connected to the victim." He paused. "You're now connected to the crime." The ground seemed to fall away beneath me. "No." "The manuscript. The pen. The similarities—" "They don't prove anything." "They don't," he agreed. "But they're enough to raise questions." "What questions?" His jaw tightened. For a moment something almost like reluctance crossed his face. "I don't like this either," he said quietly. Then, before I could hold onto that, his voice steadied back into procedure. "Mrs. Kane, we're investigating whether you knowingly assisted Jaxon Kane in building the criminal organization he was accused of running." Everything around me went quiet—the flashing lights, the reporters, the rain, even my own heartbeat. I could only stare at him. He couldn't possibly believe that. He couldn't. For three years, I'd fought to prove my husband wasn't the villain everyone believed him to be. Now the world had decided I was one too.