Chapter 1

The stale, biting scent of cheap whiskey and day-old Chinese takeout clung to the air in Chris’s house like a shroud. It was the smell of defeat. The smell of a life stalled, a future yanked out from under him, again. He stared at the cracked screen of his smartphone, the spiderweb pattern radiating from the point of impact against the wall. It was a fitting metaphor for his life: one central point of failure, with fractures spreading out to ruin everything else.

The phone was dead, but the last message he’d read was burned into his memory, seared onto the backs of his eyelids.

Isabella: I can’t do this, Chris. I can’t be with a man who doesn’t prioritize our future. A cruise isn’t just a vacation, it was a promise. And you broke it. We’re done.

A promise. The word was a bitter laugh in his throat. His entire life had been a series of promises he’d kept to others, promises that had bled him dry, leaving him hollowed out and forty-two years old with nothing to show for it but four estranged sisters and a savings account that was, once again, decimated.

He took a long, burning swallow of whiskey straight from the bottle. The fire in his gut was a welcome distraction from the cold, heavy stone of despair in his chest. He wasn’t just heartbroken over Isabella. It was more than that. She was the symbol of what he could have had. For the first time in over two decades, he’d allowed himself to hope, to dream of a life that was his own. A life with a beautiful woman, a life of pleasure and companionship, a life free from the suffocating weight of responsibility.

Isabella had been everything he’d ever fantasized about. She was thirty-two, a decade his junior, with a body that seemed sculpted by a god who specialized in male desire. She had long, raven-black hair that cascaded down her back like a silken waterfall, eyes the color of dark chocolate that could be both innocent and sultry, and a smile that could disarm armies. Her skin was a flawless olive tone, smooth and taut over the lean muscle of a yoga enthusiast. Her breasts were perfect, full and round, not so large as to be comical but substantial enough to fill his hands, to promise a mouthful of soft, yielding flesh. Her ass was high and tight, a perfect heart shape that strained against the fabric of her jeans and made his cock ache with a primal need to grab, to squeeze, to possess.

He’d met her at a coffee shop, a ridiculously cliché meet-cute where he’d fumbled his order and she’d laughed, a sound like wind chimes. For six months, they had dated. It was a courtship from a bygone era, filled with long walks, dinners at quiet restaurants, and hours spent talking on the worn-out couch in this very apartment. He’d been honest with her about his past, about raising his sisters. He framed it as a story of duty and love, glossing over the bitterness that now coated his tongue like poison. She’d seemed to admire him for it, called him a hero.

But there was a wall. A physical one. Isabella was a romantic, she’d said. She wanted their first time to be monumental, unforgettable.

“I don’t want our first time to be in a rush, after a long day of work, in a bed you’ve probably shared with other women,” she’d told him one night, her fingers tracing the collar of his shirt, her scent—vanilla and something spicy—driving him to the edge of madness. “I want it to be epic. On a cruise, maybe. Somewhere beautiful. Under the stars, with the ocean all around us. I want to give myself to you completely, Chris, and I want the setting to be as special as the moment.”

The frustration had been a constant, low-level thrum beneath his skin. He was a man with needs, and being so close to this goddess, smelling her, touching her hand, feeling the soft brush of her leg against his, without being able to bury himself inside her, was a unique form of torture. But he’d agreed. He’d seen the logic in it, the romance. He wanted it to be special, too. He wanted to shed the skin of Chris the Caretaker and become Chris the Lover.

So he’d saved. Every extra shift at the construction site, every weekend side job doing handyman work, every dollar was funneled into the “Isabella Fund.” The cruise was obscenely expensive, a five-star liner with a private balcony suite. It was more money than he’d ever spent on himself in his entire life. It was all his savings, his emergency fund, everything. But it was worth it. It was an investment in a new life. He’d booked it, shown her the confirmation, and the look on her face—pure, unadulterated joy and desire—had made every sacrifice feel worthwhile. Her kiss that night had been deeper, wetter, her tongue promising him all the things her body had been denying him.

“Two more weeks, baby,” she had whispered against his lips, her hand straying down to squeeze his hardening cock through his jeans. “Two more weeks and I’m all yours. I’m going to fuck your brains out on that balcony.”

That had been last Tuesday.

Then, on Friday, the text from Lisa had come. The harbinger of doom, the final nail in the coffin of his happiness.

Lisa: Dad ... I mean, Chris. I’m so sorry to ask. I know you just did all that for the wedding, but Alan’s business ... it’s going to go under. We’re going to lose the house. He miscalculated some things. We need fifty thousand dollars by Monday. Or we lose everything. I don’t know who else to turn to. Please. You’re the only one who’s ever been there for me.

The use of “Dad” had been a deliberate, manipulative masterstroke. She only ever did that when she was desperate, when she wanted to pluck at the old heartstrings, the ones he thought had long since frayed and snapped. He closed his eyes, the whiskey burning, and let the memories he fought so hard to suppress wash over him.

He was sixteen, his hands still raw from his first real construction job, standing in a sterile, white hospital room. His mother, barely forty herself, lay broken and unconscious, machines breathing for her. And in a nearby nursery, there were four little girls. Emma, three years old, with their mother’s fiery red hair and a toddler’s defiant pout. Suzie, two, with wide, curious eyes that seemed to take in everything. Emily, one, already a whirlwind of motion, trying to climb out of her crib. And Lisa, a tiny, six-month-old infant, swaddled in pink, a perfect, fragile doll. Four different fathers, four fleeting relationships, four little anchors his mother had left in her chaotic wake.

When she died two days later without ever waking up, the world tilted on its axis. His aunt, his mother’s sister, had sat him down, her face a mask of strained sympathy. “Chris, you’re just a boy yourself. Let them go into the system. They’ll find good homes. You need to live your own life.”

His friends had said the same thing. “Dude, you can’t raise four kids. You’ll be tied down forever.”

But when he looked at them, at these four little pieces of his mother, he couldn’t do it. They were his blood. His only family left. In that moment, a promise was forged in the heart of a sixteen-year-old boy, a promise to protect them, to raise them, to be the family they needed. He became their legal guardian, their brother, their protector. And when little Emma, confused and grieving, started calling him “Dad,” he didn’t have the heart to correct her. The others followed suit. It was easier that way. It gave them a sense of stability he knew he could never truly provide.

The years that followed were a blur of diapers, scraped knees, parent-teacher conferences, and working himself to the bone. His twenties and thirties vanished. Women came and went. They’d be charmed by him at first, by his story. But when the reality set in—the messy, loud, expensive reality of four growing girls—they always left. “It’s too much,” they’d say. “I’m not ready to be a mother to four kids.” After a while, he stopped trying. He settled for occasional, meaningless hookups with women who didn’t ask questions, women whose bodies were a temporary release but whose faces he could barely recall the next day. None of them ever came close to the beauty, the intoxicating allure, of someone like Isabella.

He’d poured everything into his sisters. He’d taught them to ride bikes, helped them with homework, and held them when they cried over scraped knees and broken hearts. He was their rock. He thought that love, that sacrifice, would be returned. He was a fool.

Emma was the first to leave. And the first to betray him. She’d always been the ambitious one, her eyes fixed on a world far away from their cramped, noisy house. She was stunning, having grown into her red hair and fiery spirit. She had a model’s figure, all long legs and graceful curves, with emerald green eyes that could size a person up in a single glance. She met Evan at college, the son of a real estate tycoon. Chris had disliked him on sight. Evan was all polished shoes, a condescending smile, and a limp, dismissive handshake.

After the wedding a lavish affair that made Chris feel shabby and out of place in his rented tux, the change in Emma was swift. The calls became less frequent. When they did talk, her voice was strained, distant. He overheard her once, talking to one of her new friends on the phone when he’d dropped by unexpectedly.

“No, he’s just ... a relative,” she’d said, her voice dripping with carefully constructed nonchalance. “He looked after us when we were kids. It’s complicated.”

A relative. The word was a slap in the face. He wasn’t her brother who had sacrificed his youth for her. He wasn’t the “Dad” she had called him for fifteen years. He was an inconvenient, poor relative from a past she was desperately trying to erase. He confronted her, and her response was cold, surgical.

“Chris, look at my life now. Look at Evan’s family. I can’t have them knowing I grew up in a three-bedroom house with four kids and a brother who works construction. It’s just ... not a good look. It’s better if we keep our distance for a while.”

He’d walked away from her marble-floored mansion that day feeling like he’d been gutted. He accepted it, with a chilling sense of resignation. She had her life. He let her go.

Suzie was next. The quiet, bookish one. She had a more subtle, intellectual beauty. Slim, with warm brown hair she always wore in a practical bun, and intelligent hazel eyes hidden behind stylish glasses. She was all about her mind. She devoured books, aced every test, and flew through her education on a cloud of scholarships. He was so proud of her when she earned her PhD in literature. And then she announced she was marrying her thesis advisor, Professor Mark Albright, a man of fifty with a tweed jacket and a perpetually self-satisfied smirk.

Like Emma, Suzie’s betrayal was one of snobbery. She saw Chris’s life as intellectually barren.

“Chris, I love you, I do,” she’d said over a stilted coffee meeting, Mark sitting beside her looking bored. “But our worlds are just so ... different now. Mark and I, our friends, we discuss Foucault and Derrida. You and I ... what would we even talk about? The price of lumber?”

The condescension was breathtaking. He had stayed up late nights with her, helping her build dioramas of scenes from The Great Gatsby, quizzing her on vocabulary words until his own head swam. He had bought her every book she ever wanted, even when it meant he ate ramen for a week. And now, he wasn’t good enough to talk to. He paid the bill, wished her well, and walked away, another piece of his heart chipped off and discarded.

Then came Emily. His wild child. His greatest worry. Emily was a firecracker, a force of nature. She inherited their mother’s wild streak but tempered it with a disciplined physicality. She was gorgeous in a fierce, athletic way. Tanned, toned muscles, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and a defiant glint in her sharp blue eyes. She was never one for dresses or makeup, always in jeans and tank tops, her dirty-blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She craved danger, adrenaline. She was into rock climbing, dirt biking, anything that pushed the limits.

So when she announced, at eighteen, that she was joining the army, a cold dread filled him.

“Absolutely not,” he’d roared, the first time he’d ever truly raised his voice to one of them in anger. “Emily, you have no idea what you’re getting into! People die! You could die!”

The fight was explosive, a release of years of pent-up fear on his part and resentment on hers.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!” she’d screamed, her face red, tears of rage in her eyes. “You’re not my father! You’re just my brother! You’ve been trying to keep me in a cage my whole life, trying to protect me from everything! Well, I don’t want to be protected! I want to live!”

You’re not my father. The words were a dagger, twisted in an old wound. She had used the truth as a weapon, and it had found its mark. She packed her bags that night. He didn’t hear from her again. No letters, no calls. Just a gaping hole where his little daredevil used to be. Every news report about conflict overseas sent a spear of ice through his veins.

Which left Lisa. Sweet, gentle Lisa. The baby of the family. She had a soft, classic beauty. Big, soulful brown eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a full-lipped mouth that was usually curved into a smile. She was the one who had stayed the closest, the one who still seemed to appreciate him. When she’d fallen in love with Alan, a handsome but feckless charmer with big dreams and no work ethic, Chris had had his reservations. But Lisa was happy, and that’s all that mattered.

He walked her down the aisle, his heart swelling with a painful mix of pride and sorrow. He paid for most of the wedding, draining his savings then to give her the perfect day. It felt good, like a final act of fatherhood.

Then the requests for money started. A few hundred here for a car repair. A thousand there to cover rent. He knew it was Alan, pushing her. He could hear it in her voice, the shame, the reluctance. But she was his last link, the only sister who hadn’t completely abandoned him. So he paid. Again and again. He was enabling her husband’s incompetence, and he knew it. But the thought of cutting her off, of being truly, completely alone, was unbearable.

Until Isabella. Until the cruise. Until the promise of a life that was finally, finally his.

Back in the suffocating present, the whiskey bottle was half-empty. The rage had burned through the despair, leaving a cold, hard clarity in its wake. He had sacrificed everything. His youth, his money, his chance at love and a family of his own. For them. And what had he gotten in return? Abandonment, condescension, and a final, parasitic bleeding of his last hope for happiness.

He picked up the dead phone and stared at his reflection in the black screen. A man with lines of fatigue etched around his eyes, flecks of gray in his stubble. A man who looked every one of his forty-two years, and then some. The man who had played the martyr for two decades.