POV Jocelyn

Mia sat at the kitchen table, tongue poking out in that way that meant serious artistic concentration was happening.

She was coloring another tiger—this one orange with crooked black stripes and a smile too big for its face. Kid had drawn approximately twenty tigers since we’d been back from Switzerland, each one more gloriously lopsided than the last.

Zayden sat nearby pretending to read the finance section, though his eyes hadn’t actually focused on the words in at least ten minutes.

I could tell because he’d been staring at the same paragraph about market fluctuations while I’d managed to make cocoa, load the dishwasher, and internally debate whether we needed groceries.

I stirred my mug absently, watching our daughter create her latest masterpiece, when she suddenly looked up with that expression that meant dangerous questions were incoming.

“Mommy,” she said, voice laced with the kind of innocent curiosity that could detonate nuclear families, “do I have other grandparents? Like yours did? Or Daddy’s?”

The question dropped into our peaceful Sunday morning like a fucking grenade.

My hand froze mid-stir. Zayden’s newspaper folded without a sound, which was probably the first time in recorded history that man had stopped reading financial news without being physically threatened.

For a beat, only the rain against our windows dared to make noise.

I turned slowly toward my husband, and our eyes met across the kitchen like we were communicating in some secret language only trauma survivors understand.

I saw it immediately—that old wound tearing open beneath his usually unreadable expression.

His fingers clenched once around his coffee mug, knuckles going white, before he reached for it like he was going to drink.

But he didn’t. Just held it like an anchor.

Mia tilted her head, waiting with the patience of someone who’d asked a perfectly reasonable question and couldn’t understand why the adults were suddenly acting like she’d announced the apocalypse.

Zayden cleared his throat softly and set the mug down with surgical precision.

“Get your shoes,” he said, voice even but quieter than usual. “I want to show you something.”

Mia’s face lit up like Christmas morning. “Are we going on an adventure?”

“Something like that, baby.”

She was already darting toward the hallway, footsteps light and excited, completely oblivious to the fact that her innocent question had just cracked open six years of carefully buried family drama.

I remained frozen for a second longer, watching Zayden’s face and trying to read whether this was the right moment, whether he was actually ready for whatever the hell he was planning.

But I said nothing. Just grabbed my jacket and followed, because sometimes you just have to trust that the people you love know what they’re doing.

Even when they clearly don’t.

The car ride felt like driving toward a funeral.

Mia hummed in the back seat, completely oblivious to the tension thick enough to cut with a knife.

I sat beside her, feeling each mile build something between dread and inevitability that neither Zayden nor I acknowledged out loud.

His grip on the steering wheel never loosened.

Jaw stayed locked tight, not from anger but from the kind of memory that leaves permanent scars. When the Wolfe estate appeared through the trees, I felt my stomach drop into my shoes.

I’d always hated this place. Still did. Probably always would.

The gothic architecture looked like something designed to intimidate small children and crush the dreams of anyone born without trust funds.

We parked beneath the stone archway that probably cost more than most people’s houses.

The front door opened before we could knock—answered not by some uniformed butler, but by a nurse in pale blue scrubs who blinked twice at our unexpected arrival.

“Oh,” she said carefully. “Mr. Wolfe… he’s on the terrace.”

Zayden didn’t reply. Just walked through that house like he was navigating a minefield he’d memorized years ago.

The back terrace hadn’t changed since my last visit—still looked like something out of a magazine about how rich people display their wealth through landscaping.

Wrought-iron furniture that probably cost more than cars, polished stone floors, hedges pruned into shapes that looked more like sculptures than actual plants.

And at the far end, beneath a twisted sycamore tree that had probably witnessed decades of Wolfe family dysfunction, sat Harrison Wolfe.

Jesus Christ.

The man looked like death had already started the paperwork. His body had withered to something that seemed too small for the chair holding him. Hands resting in his lap under a blanket thick enough to be a small tent.

His breathing came in rasps that sounded like each inhale was a conscious decision.

But his eyes—fuck, his eyes were still sharp as surgical instruments.

Still unforgiving. Still radiating the kind of cold authority that had probably crushed stronger men than me.

He didn’t acknowledge his son’s presence.

Didn’t look at me, which was honestly a relief.

Just stared out at the gray horizon like he was having a personal argument with mortality itself.

Then Mia stepped forward.

No hesitation. No fear. No understanding of the decades of toxic family history she was walking into.

She held her tiger drawing in both hands and approached slowly, boots squeaking on wet stone.

“I made this for you,” she said clearly, voice small but absolutely determined. “Mommy says we don’t have to be mean to people who hurt us. We can still be kind.”

Only then did Harrison Wolfe blink.

He turned his gaze downward. At her. At this small person offering him grace he’d never earned and definitely didn’t deserve.

For the first time in probably years—maybe ever—he looked like a human being instead of a monument to wealth and cruelty.

His lips parted but no sound came. His hand trembled as he reached forward, fingers touching the paper like it might disintegrate.

The drawing crinkled slightly under his touch.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t smile. Didn’t apologize for six years of psychological warfare. But he didn’t let go of that crooked orange tiger.

A tear tried to form in my eye, but I blinked it away before it could fall. This wasn’t my moment. I stayed back, hands clasped, watching Zayden tower behind our daughter like a statue carved from regret and resolution.

He didn’t speak to his father.

Didn’t kneel. Didn’t ask why or demand explanations.

But I knew this was more than a visit. This was a chapter ending. He hadn’t come to forgive, that ship had sailed and sunk. He hadn’t come to fight—there was nothing left worth winning.

He’d come to say goodbye.

Harrison finally looked up, eyes locked with Zayden’s.

A thousand unspoken memories passed between them—boarding schools and broken promises, manipulation disguised as love, power used as punishment.

None of it pretty. None of it is clean. But something… final.

Harrison gave the faintest nod. Almost imperceptible.

Zayden didn’t return it. Just turned toward Mia and reached for her hand.

“Ready to go, sweetheart?”

“Can we get ice cream?” she asked, because six-year-olds have their priorities straight.

“Absolutely.”

As we walked away, I turned for one last glance at the old man still sitting beneath that tree, a tiger drawing in his lap, one corner flapping in the breeze like a tiny orange flag of surrender.

I slipped my arm through Zayden’s, felt him lean into me slightly.

He didn’t speak the entire ride home.

Never spoke of that visit again. Not once. It wasn’t peace. It wasn’t forgiveness. But it was something real. Something final.

It was a closure.