Read Chapter 25: — THE WOMAN AT THE GATE

Leo's sister arrived without warning.

Eleanor was walking home with him after a community event when a woman stepped out of a taxi carrying a suitcase.

Leo stopped.

“Sis?”

Eleanor looked at the woman.

Everything inside her went cold.

Nora Lewis.

Michael's business partner.

The woman who had appeared after his death with a child and a DNA report.

Nora looked equally shocked.

“What are you doing with her?”

Eleanor turned to Leo.

“Lewis.”

His face collapsed.

“Ellie—”

“You knew.”

“I can explain.”

“You knew who I was.”

“Yes.”

She slapped him.

The sound shocked all three of them.

Leo did not move.

“That one was deserved,” he said quietly.

“Don't joke.”

“I wasn't.”

He asked for ten minutes.

Eleanor wanted to walk away.

Then she saw fear in his face—not fear of being exposed, but fear that she would leave before hearing something he had carried too long.

They went to the river.

Leo told her the truth.

The little boy was not Michael's son.

The DNA report had been falsified.

Nora had loved Michael obsessively. She helped build his company, convinced herself that professional intimacy must become romantic intimacy and resented Eleanor because Michael always chose his wife and daughter.

On a business trip, Nora drugged Michael after drinking. He woke believing they had slept together. Nothing had happened. Nora allowed him to believe it because guilt tied him to her.

He still refused to leave Eleanor.

On Nora's birthday, Michael agreed to dinner. Eleanor called because she was ill. Michael left immediately to go home.

He died on the road.

Nora blamed Eleanor.

Afterward she shifted company contracts, adopted a child and pressured Leo into helping her obtain a fraudulent DNA report through a contact.

Leo had initially believed his sister's story. Later, when Nora confessed while drunk, he discovered the truth.

He came to York to see Eleanor, partly from guilt and partly to make sure she was all right.

“You were spying on me?”

“At first.”

“And then?”

“I liked you. Lily. Your family. I became a coward.”

Eleanor could barely breathe.

“Michael never betrayed me?”

Leo shook his head.

“He made mistakes. He let Nora's lie trap him. But he loved you.”

Eleanor turned away.

For months she had rebuilt herself around betrayal.

Now betrayal itself had been a lie.

Grief cracked open again, but this time something clean existed inside it.

Michael had loved her.

The past had not been what she thought.