Maggie emerged from the hallway at the front of the house. I didn't know her well. I knew of her, but she was younger than me and had gone to school in England, her path not crossing with the Winters family until Vance had hired her a few years before.

If you'd asked me what kind of woman Vance would marry, I never would've picked Maggie. Before her, Vance went for easy and flashy. In all things. His life had been about partying, working, and fucking, in that order. He’d had a drinking problem, one we’d been at a loss to deal with until he dragged himself to rehab and turned his life around.

Lucky he had, because, a year after he got sober, the infant daughter he didn't know he'd fathered was dropped on his doorstep. If you'd told me that was coming, I would have sworn Vance wasn't father material, but he fell in love with his daughter at first sight. He'd confessed on one of my short visits home that he'd been after Maggie for years, but it took the combination of sobriety and baby Rosalie to turn her head in his direction.

Maggie wasn't flashy, and she definitely wasn't a party girl. She was smart, with a warm, open heart and the kind of timeless beauty that said she would be just as gorgeous at seventy as she was in her twenties.

“Vance, you brought Gage home,” she said as she padded into the kitchen in bare feet, at odds with the neatly tailored suit she wore. She gave me a quick hug and kiss on the cheek before abandoning me to slide into her husband's arms. Vance buried his face in Maggie's red hair, one hand sneaking up to deftly pull out the pins securing her elegant twist.

“How was the meeting?” he murmured.

Maggie kissed the side of his neck before she pulled away and plucked her hairpins from his hand. “I didn't like their numbers,” she said. “We can talk about it later. I'm going to run upstairs and change.”

I watched Maggie leave, grinning when Vance said, “Hey, stop checking out my wife's ass.”

“Your wife has a great ass. It would be rude not to appreciate it.”

Vance grinned back at me. Together, we unpacked the take-out containers and set the table. I'd missed this. Missed my family. Once, we'd all been so close. The rest of them had held onto that closeness, but both Annalise and I had run away. Annalise had her reasons, and hers were better than mine. A lot better.

I was done with running, and I was glad to have my family back. Watching Vance with Maggie, it was a relief to know my brother had found love after so many years of misery. He looked younger than when he'd been drinking, fit and tan, vibrantly alive. Happy.

I didn't leave Vance and Maggie's until late afternoon. After I unpacked my things, I hit the gym to get in a workout before dinner. Aiden was absent for the meal, again. I pretended we didn't miss him. We didn't, really.

Dinner with Sophie and Amelia was like watching a play. Amelia was the comic relief, Sophie the straight-man. They kept me laughing until dessert was served. The scowl on Amelia's face at the sight of the bowl of chopped fruit in front of her was no joke.

She ate the fruit, but she and Sophie bickered over it the entire time, Sophie reminding her she’d had too many cookies earlier in the day and Amelia insisting she didn't care. I'd already realized Sophie cared about Amelia, treated her more as a friend than a patient, but that only made her more resolved to safeguard Amelia's health.

Amelia could be demanding, insistent, and never shied away from drama, but she was no match for Sophie's steady, resolute, nature. Sophie absorbed Amelia's outbursts, listened patiently to her complaints, and quietly refused to change her mind. When Amelia grumbled, Sophie commiserated.

My family was made up of strong-willed women, most of whom never shied away from confrontation. In her own way, Sophie fit right in. She was quieter than the Winters women, but watching her over the past few days I’d learned that beneath that calm exterior, Sophie hid a will of steel.

After dinner, Sophie and Amelia took over the family room to watch a few episodes of a TV series they both liked. I spent a few hours unpacking my haul from the electronics store, setting up my new laptop, programming numbers into my phone, and syncing my tablet with both. I sent Charlie my new email address and number. She promised to share both with the rest of the family and to send me my first homework assignment by morning.

I spent the rest of the evening reading back articles on Winters Inc., trying to catch up on anything I'd missed. There was a lot. Between my sporadic Internet access and the sheer scope of Winters Inc. interests, I hadn’t been able to keep up with everything in the years I’d been away.

I read until my eyes burned and the rest of the house had long since gone to sleep. I'd heard Aiden come in, his heavy tread on the stairs, pausing at the top before heading to his own suite. I wondered if he thought about popping his head in my sitting room when he'd seen a light beneath the door.

I knew he needed space. Knew that for everyone else, my homecoming might be enough, but not with Aiden. Never with Aiden. What I’d done to Aiden had cut too deep for that.

We'd had plans, Aiden and I.

Growing up, it was understood that the two of us would take over at the company for our fathers. Unlike the rest of our cousins and siblings, Aiden and I had wanted the company. We both loved it, had loved hanging out with our fathers, even as young children.

After my dad died, I'd tag along with Aiden and Uncle Hugh. Some of my best memories of my dad were there along with a lot of my memories of Uncle Hugh. The company wasn't just a company. Not to me. When Hugh and Olivia died, Aiden had clung to Winters Inc., shouldering the burden of the company without complaint and had expected me to do the same.

Fuck, I'd expected me to do the same.

And then I hadn't. I'd woken up the morning after the funeral and been smothered by the weight of grief and guilt and loss. At the thought of taking my rightful place at the company, nausea had turned my stomach. I couldn't do it. I didn't deserve to fill my father’s shoes.

I'd been too young to save him and my mother. I didn't have that excuse for Uncle Hugh and Aunt Olivia. I'd been home. I'd been right in this fucking house while they were dying and I hadn't saved them. I didn't deserve my legacy. The idea of walking through the doors of Winters Inc., of claiming my position as the heir along with Aiden, of pretending that I deserved the honor the way that he did, made me sick.

I couldn't live that lie. So I'd run. Aiden had left to go back to college – to finish the semester and then move home. When he'd returned to Winters House, I hadn’t been there.

It was the worst betrayal either of us could've imagined. He might never forgive me. I wasn't sure I deserved forgiveness. I couldn't forgive myself. That didn't mean I was going to give up.

I'd almost died in that cell a world away from home and family. Life was precious, and I'd spent enough time being careless with my own. All those hours with nothing more than the rats and my own thoughts for company had forced me to see things clearly.

My penance had become self-indulgence. I'd run away and joined the Army to punish myself for failing to save Olivia and Hugh. Then, once I'd been gone too long, it got harder and harder to come home. To face Aiden.

The rest of them forgave me easily enough. For everything. Never asked why I wouldn’t come home. Never demanded to know why I hadn’t saved Olivia and Hugh. I don't know that it occurred to them. They were younger and in shock.

Aiden had thought about it. I'd seen the understanding in his eyes, the accusation. He’d lost his parents, and I hadn't saved them. I'll never forget the raw agony in his voice when he asked, “Where were you? Why didn't you help them?”

I didn't have an answer.

Not one that would satisfy him. It sure as hell didn't satisfy me.

The past weighed on me. It weighed on all of us. But that was life. You can't escape where you come from; you can only chart your course for the future. I couldn't fix the past. I couldn't bring our dead back to life. And I wasn't going to let Aiden hold a grudge forever.

After another hour of reading, I closed the laptop and forced myself to go to bed. I already knew I wouldn’t sleep well, but I had to try. My mind drifted off after only a few minutes in bed, drawn into dreams that twisted into nightmares.

I’d only been out for an hour when I woke, heart pounding, every nerve firing in a remembered pain so real I looked down and expected to see blood staining my sheets.

I was whole and un-injured.

Laying back against the sheets, I tried to calm my ragged heartbeat and steady my breath. The torture had been worse in the beginning. The first two months they had me, my captors had vacillated between punishing me just for being an American soldier and using me for leverage.

At first, they'd attempted to trade me, but my mission had been so far off the books the military refused to acknowledge that I'd even been taken. Not officially. Officially I was still back on base.

That was part of the deal, and I had no resentment over it. I'd just been relieved I'd managed to get my team clear before I'd gone down. Once they realized they couldn’t trade me, they'd been determined to coerce me into making one of those videos. They wanted to broadcast an American soldier renouncing his government. That wasn't going to happen. Didn't stop them from trying.

I'd always had a high pain tolerance, but I fucking hated being shocked. When we were teenagers Aiden and I had gotten our hands on a game, intended for adults, that was little more than a rubber ball with metal sensors embedded on the outside. The game was simple: toss the ball back and forth. If you dropped the ball, you lost. The catch was in the metal sensors that delivered electric shocks at random intervals.

Aiden mastered that thing like a pro. Even the strongest jolt didn't faze him. He got endless amusement out of the way I'd drop the ball at anything other than the mildest shock. The crawling, prickling sensation of electricity, the pain that wasn't pain, short-circuited something deep in my brain, something visceral.

I hated it. Fucking hated it. My captors could bring out the knives, and I wouldn't flinch, but that fucking car battery with the wires attached made me crazy. The nightmares were bad enough, but when they were about that fucking car battery…

I rolled out of bed and headed straight for the shower, needing to wash off the cold sweat. The house was cool in the winter night, but not cold. Still, I was covered in goosebumps, the sweat slicking my body stinking of fear. I'd had enough of these fucking nightmares.

Turning on the steaming water and stepping beneath the spray, I considered again if it was time to think about talking to someone. Was I willing to risk word getting out? And if it did, what would that do to my chances of getting back in through the door of Winters Inc.? If it became common knowledge that I was seeing a psychiatrist, Aiden might use that as an excuse to shut me out.

I’d think about it later. Pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants, I left my suite and jogged silently down the stairs. I wasn't going for a drink, and I didn't want a book. Remembering that sad bowl of sliced fruit at dinner, I knew exactly what I wanted.

Looked like I wasn't the only one thinking about a midnight raid on the kitchen. The lights were on when I got there. At the sound of my feet on the hardwood floor, Sophie jumped and let out a tiny shriek. She whirled, the refrigerator door swinging shut behind her, and clutched her hands to her chest, her green eyes wide.

The warmth that flooded my chest at the sight of her took me by surprise. I thought I was coming to the kitchen for food, but once I saw Sophie, wrapped in that bulky white robe, her silvery blonde hair spilling over her shoulders, I knew what I really wanted was her.