Chapter 6
Third-Person POV
The story didn’t die with Nadia.
It spread.
For two weeks straight, Serena Calloway’s name trended across every major online forum, every news feed, every comment section. Not the way she’d always wanted it to. The other way.
The police took her into custody before the chapel had even emptied out.
The buyers came next.
Every collector who had paid serious money for her paintings hired a lawyer. The lawsuits stacked up fast, one after another, each one landing on the Calloway family like bricks dropped from a roof. The debt piled so high so fast that Russell’s hands shook when
e tried to add it up.
He couldn’t finish the math.
His body finished it for him. The rage built until something gave way inside his skull, and he went down hard.
Stroke.
ust like that.
Over at the Hartwells, the damage came from a different direction.
Hartwell Group’s stock didn’t just dip. It cratered.
Cole lost his footing in the company within weeks. His father looked at him across the boardroom table one afternoon and didn’t ay a word. He didn’t have to.
Cole walked out with nothing.
He lost the title. He lost the money. He lost the carefully constructed future he’d traded Nadia for.
And then he lost himself.
t didn’t happen all at once. It crept in. He’d close his eyes for ten minutes and the accident would be right there waiting for him. Every time.
Nadia, pinned under the wreckage. Her fingers wrapped around the cuff of his pants. Her voice coming out small and broken and lesperate.
Cole… save me. Please. It hurts. It hurts so much.
And his own hands.
Working methodically. Peeling her fingers back. One by one. Setting them aside.
Then turning toward Serena.
He had done it without hesitating. That was the part that kept him awake. Not the choice itself. The ease of it.
He’d relived that moment so many times the edges had worn smooth, and still it cut him the same. Sedatives didn’t reach it. Nothing did.
Derek saw him exactly once.
He was crossing a parking lot, head down, when Cole stepped out from between two cars.
Derek stopped.
3.00.30
Chapter 6
lis jaw set.
Murderer.”
le said it flat. No heat. Like a label he was reading off a tag.
hen he walked away.
he word followed Cole everywhere after that.
erek’s own life wasn’t much better.
Claim 50 Coins By Check in
le’d come home exhausted every night to find debt collectors blocking the front door. Sticks in their hands. Voices loud and ugly. emanding numbers Derek didn’t have.
le’d wait them out in his car until they left, then slip in through the backyard like a thief in his own house.
ussell couldn’t get out of bed anymore. Diane hadn’t left the house in weeks. She’d stopped eating properly. She cried at the itchen table. She cried in the hallway. She cried in the middle of sentences and couldn’t find her way back to the end of them.
erek would get her sedatives down, then drag Russell to the bathroom, wash him up, get him settled. By the time he finished, the ty outside would already be going gray.
le’d ‘stand there in the half-dark kitchen and feel the absence like a physical thing.
ladia used to do all of this.
he’d moved through these rooms quietly and kept everything running. She’d cooked. She’d organized. She’d held the shape of this mily together with her hands while the rest of them looked straight past her.
nd then she’d stand in the doorway and watch Serena curl up in their parents’ arms, and nobody would call her in.
very time that image surfaced, something in Derek’s chest pulled tight and wrong.
le shoved it down. Put his shoes back on. Went out to work.
his went on for more than six months.
lis body collected the damage. Bruises that didn’t fully heal. Muscles that ached in the morning. Money that covered the interest n the debt but never touched the principal.
In a rare break, he opened social media.
ladia’s video was still circulating.
Comments numbered in the millions. People were still watching it. Still sharing it. Still coming after the Calloway family in the omment sections with everything they had.
Derek stared at his sister’s face on the screen.
A feeling moved through him that he didn’t want to name.
Why did you have to do it like this? If you’d just stayed quiet, kept it together, none of this would be –
He shut the app.
He sat with his hands between his knees for a long time.
Then the call came.
A buyer. Private collector. Thirty million dollars for Nadia’s final painting.
Derek said yes before he hung up.
He found Diane already holding it when he came to get it. Both arms wrapped around the canvas, knuckles white.
< Chapter 6
No.” Her voice was raw. This is the only thing she left. You are not taking it.”
Derek looked at the painting.
Claim 50 Car By Check in
A girl on a shore, flying a kite. The water behind her catching the light. Something easy and free in the way she stood.
That was the last birthday Nadia had before Serena came home with them. Before everything shifted.
His throat tightened.
He reached out and pulled the canvas from his mother’s arms anyway.
What good does holding it do?” His voice cracked straight down the middle. “She’s gone.”
He had to stop.
Breathe.
But this ” He held the painting up. His hands were shaking. “This gets us out.”
Diane crumpled against the wall.
Derek handed it over.
The thirty million cleared every debt. The house came back. The numbers finally balanced.
Nobody felt anything.
The rooms were quieter than they’d ever been. The kind of quiet that has nothing peaceful in it. Russell stared at the ceiling from his bed. Diane moved through the hallways like she’d forgotten what she was looking for.
Nadia.” Diane’s voice one night, just above a whisper, talking to no one. “I’m sorry. You were so good to us and we – we never ·
She couldn’t finish.
She went to the emergency room that night. Chest tight. Breathing wrong. Body finally saying what her words couldn’t.
Derek sat in the waiting room alone.
His phone buzzed.
The house manager’s number.
He answered.
Mr. Calloway.” The man’s voice was careful. “Your father passed away this evening.”
Derek held the phone against his ear.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t move.
He just said, “Okay,” and ended the call.
Both parents. One day.
He sat in that waiting room chair until the fluorescent lights above him buzzed and flickered. Then he got up and walked outside into the cold air and stood there until his lungs stopped feeling like they were full of something solid.
Across town, Cole wasn’t getting better.
He was getting worse.
The hospital kept him. Grant Hartwell paid the bills because Cole was still his son, technically, even if he’d stopped looking at him like one. The doctors tried everything. Therapy. Medication. Video footage of Serena’s sentencing, her face on the courtroom screen, guilty, convicted, sentenced.
< Chapter 6
It left marks that didn’t fade. Scars that pulled tight in certain weather.
Life kept going anyway.
It always does.
But the longing stayed.
The regret stayed.
Those things don’t burn away.
They just wait.
A resurrected mother’s ruthless escape from a toxic family.
My Love Is No Longer Waiting
Switch
Add to Bookshelf
Claim 50 Coins By Chace in
< Ashley’s Sto
