Chapter 35

Kelly POV

I was shocked to see Kate. I shouldn’t have been, though. She was family, after all. But after everything that had happened, it still hurt to see her standing there. The air between us had always been suffocating with unspoken words, and now that she was in front of me, I couldn't help but wonder if this was another one of her games. Another one of her manipulations.

But then there was Lucian. That was the real shock. How had he gone from being the mess of a person I once knew, to this...healthy, refined police officer? It didn’t make sense. It was funny to think about, in a way. Lucian, the man who once made my skin crawl, was now playing the part of a man in control. How did someone like him, someone who had been so lost, so unstable—transform into someone I could almost look at with a sense of respect? It didn’t sit right with me.

I couldn’t change the past in my mind, though. He was still the same person to me, even if his appearance had c