Love after Death (S1) [Completed]

Chapter 40: The Hand That Let Go

Sophia's POV

I stood behind the heavy wooden door, my forehead pressed against the grain, listening to the muffled sound of their footsteps fading down the hallway. My chest was heaving, my lungs burning as if I'd just run a marathon.

Twenty-five years.

I walked over to the small altar in the corner of my living room-the one with the faded photo of Robin holding a toddler Monique. I blew out the candle. The room plunged into a dim, grey twilight.

My phone vibrated on the table. A message from Calix.

Calix: Sophia, please. He's the key. He's having her memories. Just give him one chance to see Robin.

I stared at the screen until the light dimmed, then I did the only thing that felt like safety. I blocked his number. I went through my call logs and deleted every trace of our conversations. I went to my email and unsubscribed on the legal alerts he had set up for me.

"No more," I whispered to the empty room.

I wasn't just being bitter. I was terrified.

Seeing Miguel Thompson in my living room was like seeing a ghost dressed in the clothes of the person who killed it. He had her eyes-that same liquid depth that Monique had as a child-but he carried the name of the woman who had systematically dismantled my brother's soul.

If I let that boy into the prison, I wasn't just opening a door; I was inviting a storm into Robin's cell. Robin was fragile. He survived on the memory of a daughter who was pure, a daughter who was gone. If he saw a Thompson boy claiming to have Monique's soul, he wouldn't find peace. He would find a new kind of madness.

And then there was Maze.

I knew how that woman operated. If her "precious son" was sniffing around my doorstep, it meant her eyes were already on me. She had eyes everywhere. She had bought the police, the lawyers, and the silence of this city twenty-five years ago. If she found out Miguel was trying to bridge the gap between the Thompsons and the De Guzmans, she wouldn't just stop him. She would erase the bridge.

I looked at the visitor's pass on my desk-the one I had spent years of legal fees to secure. It was a shield, not a ticket.

"I'm sorry, Calix," I murmured, my fingers trembling as I tucked the pass into a hidden floorboard beneath the rug. "And I'm sorry, Monique. But your mother is a predator, and she's already lost one child. I won't let her take Robin, either."

I walked to the window and pulled the curtains shut, sealing myself into the darkness. I had survived twenty-five years by being a ghost. I wasn't going to let a teenage boy's "dreams" turn me into a target again.

The line was cut. The silence was back. And as far as I was concerned, the Thompsons didn't exist.

Calix's POV

I sat in my car outside my apartment, the engine long dead, staring at my phone screen until the white light burned into my retinas.

Message not delivered.

I tried calling again. One ring. Two rings. Then, the flat, mechanical drone of a disconnected line or a blocked number. I pulled up her email-the one we'd been using to coordinate the legal research for Robin's appeal.

"Damn it, Sophia," I hissed, slamming my palm against the steering wheel. The horn let out a short, pathetic blip that echoed through the empty street.