Novels by JUDITH

But grief would have to wait.Raymond looked at his mother's grave one final time at the crooked marker, the dirty name tag, the rubbish that had been allowed to pile up around the only resting place she had been given and he made her a silent promise. Not with words, because words felt insufficient for what he was carrying right now. Just with the stillness of a man who has decided something that cannot be undecided.“I know I've disappointed you, Mom,” he said quietly, his voice barely above a breath. “I know I'm not even worthy enough to call myself your son right now. Not after everything I let happen to you.” He paused. “But I'm going to find her. I'm going to find her and make sure she is safe and that she is not in any danger. And I believe I have to believe that that is the one thing that will make you forgive me.”Immediately he straightened, pulled out his phone.He scrolled to a number he thought he wouldn't have to dialed in a long time. Then he pressed call, and It

Raymond stayed on his knees.His hands pressed flat against the dirt in front of the marker, his head bowed, and when he spoke again his voice came out raw and unsteady, the words breaking apart as they left him.“Those bastards did this.” His breath caught. “They let my mother die that they betrayed her, neglected her, threw her out like she was nothing and then had the audacity to stand in front of me and say she left because she was too proud to do chores.” His voice climbed slightly, shaking with something that was equal parts grief and fury. “They killed her. They killed my mother. And then they sent me here to this dump, this forgotten place like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.”He looked at the rubbish piled around the grave, at the crooked stick with the dirty name tag swinging slightly in the breeze, at the neglect that had been allowed to settle over this place like dust over something no one cared to remember.“They didn't even give her somewhere decent to rest.” Hi

The driver nodded once and didn't ask anything else. He simply drove.And Raymond sat in the back of that taxi and tried to hold himself together.The hunger in his stomach had been there for hours and he was aware of it distantly. What he was actually feeling what was moving through him in waves that he was keeping carefully below the surface was a rage so deep and so personal it had stopped feeling like anger and started feeling like grief. He couldn't believe it. Even now, sitting here with the signed papers behind him and the city moving past the window, he genuinely could not make himself fully believe that Victoria and her family had done this. Had looked him in the eye before he left, made him a promise, taken his trust like it was something they were honored to be given and then done this.His mother.His mother, who had fought and scraped and sacrificed through every hard year of their lives to make sure that Raymond and his sister had something to stand on, had been in tha

The room around Raymond continued its quiet murmuring.But Raymond wasn't hearing any of it anymore.The rage that moved through him in that moment was the kind that doesn't announce itself loudly it doesn't shake a person's hands or raise their voice or make them dramatic. It goes deep and cold and absolutely still, and it is far more dangerous than anything loud. He wanted to reach out and close his hands around something. He could feel the restraint it was taking not to.Because before he left. Before he walked out of this house five years ago and gave everything he had to a war that asked everything of him in return they had made him a promise. Victoria had made him a promise. That his mother and his sister would be looked after. That they would not want for anything. That they would not suffer a single day while he was gone.That was the agreement. That was what he had left on.And now he was standing here being told his mother had been turned out of her own daughter-in-law's ho

Raymond looked at Marcus.Not with the heat he had been carrying since he walked through the door something had shifted in him, settled into something quieter and more deliberate, the kind of stillness that comes before something significant rather than after it.“So you're the one,” he said, his voice even and unhurried. “You're the one standing here telling Victoria you're the reason she has anything. Telling her you're the one who made it all happen.” He held Marcus's gaze for a moment without blinking. “You know the truth. You know exactly what you can and cannot do on your own. And you know it better than anyone else standing in this room right now.”He let that land, then Marcus shifted his attention briefly to Victoria's mother and the envelopes still extended in her hand.“If it's money you want to take and disappear with, fine. I will make it a hundred thousand dollars instead of fifty and you'll walk out of here without another word. Save yourself the embarrassment of wha

Immediately Victoria cleared her throat.The disgust on her face was open and unhidden now, not even dressed up in the polite performance she had been maintaining for the guests around her. She looked at Raymond the way a person looks at something they have already moved past and don't understand why it keeps reappearing.“How could I do this?” she repeated, and let out a short breath that wasn't quite a laugh. “How could you even stand there and ask me that with a straight face?” She tilted her head slightly. “Well I never loved you in the first place. We got married and we had barely spent any real time together before you volunteered yourself to join the military on behalf of this entire family. You just left, that was all we needed from you.” She gestured at him with one hand, a single dismissive sweep from his head to his feet. “And look at you now. You come back after five years looking like this, with nothing to show for any of it. Not a single thing.”She straightened sli