Chapter 10
Edwards POV
Carlisle had taken the folders with him when he left. But what he didn't take—was the information he'd managed to pull together in just a few hours.
The kind of information you couldn't find in a news article or dredge up in forums crowded with rumor and outrage. This wasn't speculation. It was raw and clinical, gathered from behind locked doors, passed through the hands of people who had seen too much and spoken too little. Information only someone in the medical field with the right connections could access.
And in the center of it all was Monroe.
I stared at the edge of the coffee table, where one of the papers had slid loose. I hadn't moved it. I couldn't.
The last two children to die inside Monroe were Luke and Aubrey.
Luke had been seventeen. His cause of death was still listed as a pending investigation—one that had dragged on long enough that the outcome felt predetermined. They said he fell. A head injury. That it was likely an accident.
It would've stayed that way. Another quiet, buried ending. One more name added to the list that stretched back decades.
Until Aubrey.
They tried to label hers a suicide. They were nearly successful.
But someone had asked questions. And when the bloodwork came back—when they saw the toxic mix of drugs and the bruises they couldn't explain away—the story cracked open.
Two deaths. Two children. Too close together.
The silence Monroe had relied on for so long was beginning to fray.
And I couldn't stop thinking—what if it had been Bella?
What if the timing had shifted by months? What if her name had ended up next to theirs?
A flicker of motion pulled me from my spiral. I hadn't even heard her come down the stairs.
She stood there, barefoot on the wood floor, wearing one of my shirts, sleeves pushed over her knuckles. Her eyes locked on me with quiet urgency, wide and searching.
"You're here," she said.
Her voice was soft, but the panic beneath it was sharp. Her heart stuttered, just slightly faster than normal.
I stared at her, letting the shape of her settle over the noise in my mind.
Aubrey could have been her.
But Bella was standing in front of me, alive, trembling, and holding herself together by the thinnest thread.
"Always," I told her, and I meant it like a promise.
She looked at me like she was searching for something—proof, maybe, that nothing had changed. That I was still here. Still hers.
And that's when I realized.
She thought the words on those pages might shift something in me. That the facts—brutal and undeniable—might stain the way I saw her. Like trauma was a reflection of weakness instead of the proof of survival.
She moved toward me slowly, like she wasn't sure she was allowed. Then she sat beside me, her thigh brushing mine. The closeness ached.
Her hand reached out, hesitated, then picked up one of the pages Carlisle had left behind. I watched her fingers tremble as they passed over the printed words.
A sudden, instinctive urge flared in me—to snatch the paper from her hand, to hide it all, to pretend none of it had been laid bare. She didn't need to see this. She had lived it. That should've been enough.
But it was too late for that. Far too late to hide tge horrors from her.
The silence stretched between us like wire. Sharp. Tense.
"Did you know her?" I asked, my voice low, almost a growl.
She froze. I saw it hit her. Whatever memory surfaced, it stole the color from her face.
"I'd seen her around," she murmured. "Talked to her."
I watched her closely. Studied every movement, every twitch of her fingers as she traced the edge of the page.
She didn't look up.
"Just ask," she said suddenly, her voice rough. Pleading. Like she could feel the weight of the questions I hadn't said yet.
So I did.
"Why did she leave you there?"
The silence that followed felt like the whole world was holding its breath.
Bella nodded slightly, her eyes finally lifting to meet mine.
"She would have done anything to save Anna," she said.
Her voice didn't crack. It didn't need to. The pain was in the quiet.
I stared at her. To some it may have sounded noble. But all I felt was nausea clawing up the back of my throat.
Because I understood what she meant.
Renee hadn't made a mistake. She hadn't been misled or coerced. She'd made a choice. A calculated one.
This was triage to her. Two daughters—one dying, one drowning—and she'd picked the one she thought she could still save.
And if that meant cutting Bella loose?
If that meant institutionalizing her, medicating her into silence, handing her over to strangers and walking away with clean hands?
So be it.
My hands curled into fists in my lap. I could feel the rage building again—not loud or explosive, but slow and suffocating, like frostbite under the skin.
"She just left you?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
Bella gave the faintest shake of her head, but her eyes were dry. Hollow. Like this truth had become so familiar, it no longer had the power to wound her.
"She visited sometimes," she said quietly. "For Anna. To make it look like we were still a family."
She placed the paper back on the table gently, like it was fragile. Like if she set it down too hard, it might hurt someone.
Bella reached for another page. Her fingers hovered over it for a moment before she picked it up. I watched her eyes scan the document, slower this time.
Then she stilled.
Two names were circled in red. Handwritten. Angry strokes.
"They're still out?" she asked, her voice flat.
She didn't look at me as she placed the page gently back down, as though it might burn her.
"They are," I said.
I didn't tell her the rest.
That very few had faced real consequences. That most of the staff had scattered like cockroaches when the lights came on. That justice, when it came to places like Monroe, was a slow, uneven thing. And often—unsatisfying.
There were still lawsuits pending. Investigations stalling. And too many of the ones who should've been held accountable had simply disappeared.
Her fingers curled into her lap. "When I left that place…" she started, then stopped. Her voice had changed—gone soft. Hazy.
"She wrapped her arms around me so tightly," Bella continued. "She wouldn't let me go. We laid in bed that night pressed together. I remember it so well."
She blinked slowly, like she was somewhere else entirely.
"I was never supposed to be apart from her," she said. Her voice broke on the last word, barely audible. "I can feel it. All the time."
That last sentence shattered something in me.
I wanted to reach for her. To gather her in my arms and press her to my chest and promise I'd never let her feel that kind of separation again.
But all I could do was watch her as she sat there, so quiet, haunted by a bond torn in half—and still bleeding.