Marcus came next.
He didn’t knock.
He entered with the authority of someone who still believed every room in this house belonged to him.
Maybe it did.
Maybe everything had always belonged to him—except me.
I stayed seated by the window.
He stood over me for a long moment before saying, “You’ve lost weight.”
I nearly smiled at the absurdity.
That was what he noticed now?
Not the prosthetics.
Not the tremors in my hands.
Not the hollow place where a woman used to be.
Just weight.
“I didn’t survive out there on fine dining,” I said.
His mouth hardened. “If you’d stop acting like a victim for five minutes, we might actually be able to talk.”
Finally, I looked up at him.
“Talk about what?”
“About how this house is going to work going forward.”
Going forward.
There it was again.
As if there were a future where I stayed and learned my place.
Marcus folded his arms. “Seraphina is pregnant. Nathaniel cares about her. Whether you like it or not, things are different now.”
“Things were different the day you chose her over me.”
He frowned. “You’re being dramatic.”
“No,” I said. “I’m being accurate.”
His expression darkened, but I pushed on.
“You promised she’d never replace me. Do you remember?”
His eyes flickered.
A hit.
Good.
“You said she’d just be another person at the table. Then you started defending her. Then believing her. Then punishing me for things I never did.”
Marcus took a step closer. “Because every time something happened, all the evidence pointed to you.”
I laughed softly.
“Because you only looked where she wanted you to look.”
He hated that answer. I could tell.
He hated even more that he couldn’t dismiss it as easily as before.
For the first time all night, his voice lowered.
“Do you know how many times I covered for you when you were younger? How many messes I cleaned up? How many people I offended just to protect you?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “That’s why this hurts.”
Something moved in his face then. Something almost human.
But it vanished the second I added, “Because it means you knew how to protect me. You just decided not to.”
His breath caught.
For a second, the room was very still.
Then he said with forced coldness, “You’re not a child anymore, Ava. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”
I nodded.
“You’re right. It revolves around Seraphina.”
He snapped.
“Enough.”
His voice rose, sharp and furious, but underneath it was something uglier—something brittle.
Regret, maybe.
Or maybe just irritation that I wasn’t kneeling anymore.
He turned on his heel and strode toward the door, then stopped without facing me.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you’ll apologize. To all of us. Especially to Seraphina.”
I looked at his broad back and realized I felt nothing but distance.
“There won’t be a tomorrow morning for me,” I said.
He let out a humorless laugh, like he thought I was threatening to run away.
Then he left.
I checked the countdown.
03:41:26.
He was right about one thing.
There wouldn’t be.