“You’re making me nervous.” He was. I couldn’t bear any more bad news, but Roman was adamant we do this face-to-face. “Is it bad?”

He gave it some thought, not exactly what I was hoping for, before saying, “Straight back home.”

Home. Like his home was mine.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

“Bye,” I said. I love you, I added to myself. And I’m scared.

I arrived at Mrs. Belfort’s and headed straight to her kitchen. Kacey was holding a cup of tea, and Mrs. Belfort was eating an apple pie, crumbs adorning her chin and coat. Ryan sat opposite to them, taking slow sips from a bottle of beer. They all looked up at me at once. I walked over and sat down in the spare chair.

“Hi. I’m Jesse.”

“We know who you are. Your boyfriend’s infamous, so getting a call from him was not exactly uplifting. This better be good,” Ryan scolded quietly. Neither of Mrs. Belfort’s kids resembled her. They were blond, tall, and completely unrelated to the warm woman I’d grown to love. I stood up, folding my arms over my chest. “We need to talk in private. All three of us.”

Mrs. Belfort looked up from her apple pie, her eyes wondrous and a little hurt.

“Imane,” I twisted my head, calling her housekeeper, “can you please keep Juliette company while we go to the dining room?”

Five minutes later, it was just Kacey, Ryan, and I. I sat across from them and felt grossly ill-equipped to help someone else—hell, I couldn’t even help myself—but I loved Juliette too much to see her neglected by her kids.

“Your mother has Alzheimer’s,” I said flatly.

“She also has a lot of assistance, as you can see.” Ryan waved his hand around an invisible staff. I took a deep, measured breath.

“She has some lucid moments. She knows that she is dying. She knows that her disease is eating away at her ability to function. She knows her kids are all the way across the country, with their heads buried in the sand.”

“We’ve been told that there’s nothing we can do,” Kacey, who wore a sharp suit and was a lawyer, jumped into the conversation, adding, “I can’t take her with me. I have a kid at home and a sixty-hour job. I just can’t.”

“I have a family, and I work for the biggest advertising company in Boston,” Ryan chipped in with his own sob story. I saw so many similarities between them and Pam. How they didn’t want to take responsibility for their own families, even though Juliette had raised them. Even though Pam was my mother. And then I thought about all the responsibilities I hadn’t taken, either. Refraining from taking Shadow to the vet sooner. Not reporting the men who did what they’d done to me and letting them get away with it, knowing that they were a ticking bomb waiting to explode on someone else. They’d gotten away with it once. They were going to do it again. I laced my fingers together and dragged my chair forward until my abs hit the table, drawing out the weapon I dreaded to use. The one that could have brought them over in a heartbeat if I’d had the balls to just tell them on the phone.

“Mrs. Belfort changed her will.”

“Huh?” Ryan scrunched his nose and slumped in his chair like a punished schoolboy. For the first time since we’d stepped into the dining room, his eyes were peeled off his phone screen.

I nodded solemnly. “She wants to give everything to me.”

“She is not lucid!” Kacey jumped, standing up on her feet and slapping the table.

I shook my head. “She was when she changed the will. And her medical staff knows it.”

“This is ridiculous!” Ryan screamed, still tucked snug in his chair. Kacey wiggled a threatening finger in my face, leaning close. “I heard all about you, Jesse Carter. I know you came from the slums. If you think you can cheat your way into my family fortune…”

“I don’t want the money,” I said wryly, because I didn’t. I didn’t care about anyone’s money. The correlation between having money and being happy seemed to have the opposite effect. As far as I was aware, the most miserable people I knew were filthy rich. And maybe it was because of my complete lack of interest in money that everyone around me was so eager to throw it at me. Darren and Juliette seemed to have that in common. “I want you to take responsibility for the person who gave all of herself to raise you.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Ryan huffed.

“I want her to move in with Kacey, because I know her apartment is big enough.” I turned from the woman in front of me and continued. “And you, Ryan, should take two weekends a month to drive down to New York and spend time with your mom. Let her see her grandchildren. And I want Imane and her nurse to move to New York with her. They already said yes.”