Since We Fell

Since We Fell Plot Summary

Introduction

# Through the Looking Glass: A Marriage Built on Lies The rain hammers Boston like bullets against glass. Rachel Childs stands frozen on the sidewalk, watching her husband climb into a black SUV behind the Hancock Tower. The same husband who called her twenty minutes ago from Heathrow Airport, claiming he'd just landed in London. The same husband who saved her from three years of crippling panic attacks, who pulled her back from the edge of madness after Haiti broke something fundamental inside her soul. But Brian Delacroix is supposed to be thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, not conducting mysterious business in downtown Boston. As the SUV disappears into traffic, Rachel feels the first crack appear in the carefully constructed world that has kept her sane. What follows is a descent into a labyrinth of deception so intricate that she'll question not just her marriage, but her own grip on reality. The man who taught her to trust again has been living a lie so elaborate that their entire relationship becomes a performance, and Rachel the unwitting audience to her own destruction.

Chapter 1: The Fractured Woman: Rachel's Broken Past and Fragile Present

The ghosts started in Haiti. Rachel had been a respected broadcast journalist, fearless in pursuit of stories that mattered. But in the refugee camps of Léogâne, she met an eleven-year-old girl named Widdy whose smile could light up the darkness of that devastated landscape. When armed men came hunting for victims in the night, Rachel made a choice that would haunt her forever. She convinced the child to hide rather than surrender to their demands. The men found Widdy anyway. Their rage at being made to wait turned deadly. Rachel watched helplessly as they cut the girl's throat, her own life spared only because she begged for it on her knees in the mud. The image burned itself into her retinas, playing on endless loop behind her closed eyelids. Back in Boston, the trauma shattered her ability to function. Panic attacks struck without warning, turning elevators into torture chambers and crowded spaces into battlefields. The confident reporter who once chased stories across war zones couldn't leave her apartment without hyperventilating. Her marriage to Sebastian, a narcissistic television producer, crumbled under the weight of her newfound fragility. Then Brian Delacroix appeared like salvation itself. He was patient with her condition, understanding about her fears, never pushing her beyond what she could handle. Under his gentle guidance, Rachel began the slow climb back toward functionality. He became her anchor in a world that had lost all meaning, the one person who could see through her damage to something worth saving. Their song was "Since I Fell for You," and it felt like prophecy rather than coincidence.

Chapter 2: Cracks in the Mirror: First Glimpses of Deception

The morning after Brian's supposed departure for London, Rachel forces herself outside for the first time in weeks. The simple act of walking to Copley Place feels like scaling Everest, but she pushes through the anxiety. She's buying Brian a necklace, a small gesture of gratitude for his endless patience with her condition. But as she exits the mall, rain driving down in sheets, she sees him. Brian, unmistakably Brian, climbing into a black Suburban with two other men. The sight stops her cold, reality fracturing around the edges like glass under pressure. Her husband should be conducting business in London by now, yet there he stands, very much earthbound and apparently involved in activities he never mentioned. When she calls his phone, he answers from what he claims is Heathrow Airport. His voice carries the tinny quality of international calling, complete with background announcements about boarding procedures. He even sends her a selfie from the Covent Garden Hotel, grinning tiredly at the camera. Either she's losing her mind again, or her husband is lying with professional skill. The doubt spreads like poison through her thoughts. She begins scrutinizing every detail of their life together, looking for cracks in the facade. A receipt from London with the wrong date format. Brian's business partner Caleb arriving at work with a soaking wet coat despite claiming he hadn't left his desk all day. An actor named Andrew Gattis crashing their anniversary party, making cryptic references to places Rachel had never heard Brian mention. The paranoia builds until Rachel can barely function, but this time it's different from her post-Haiti breakdown. This time, the fear comes with a sharp edge of clarity that cuts through the fog of medication and therapy. Her instincts, honed by years of investigative journalism, are screaming that something is fundamentally wrong with the man she married.

Chapter 3: The Double Life: Following the Trail of Brian's Lies

Desperation drives Rachel to do something that would have been impossible months earlier. She rents a car and follows Brian on what should be a trip to Logan Airport. Instead of heading toward his supposed flight to Prague, he drives south to Providence, Rhode Island, where he visits an office building housing a company called Alden Minerals Ltd. She watches from the shadows as her husband transforms before her eyes. Gone is the casual lumber executive in flannel shirts and work boots. In his place stands a polished businessman in an expensive suit, conducting transactions at banks and camera shops with the confidence of someone who owns the world. This isn't the Brian she married. This is someone else entirely, wearing her husband's face like a mask. The investigation reveals that Alden Minerals is owned by Brian and Nicole Alden, a married couple who bear a striking resemblance to Brian and a pregnant blonde woman Rachel has never seen before. The company owns a gold mine in Papua New Guinea worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but corporate sharks are circling, looking to seize control of the operation. Rachel discovers that her Brian is actually Brett Alden, a failed actor who appeared in a straight-to-video movie called "Since I Fell for You" in 2002. The song that became their anthem was the title of a film he starred in twenty years ago. Even their most intimate moments were scripted, borrowed from a performance he gave for cameras and an audience that never cared. The real Brian Delacroix exists somewhere in the world, but he's a different man entirely, one without the small bump on his nose that her husband carries as a souvenir from a childhood hockey injury. Her marriage was built on a foundation of stolen identity and elaborate deception, every tender moment a lie wrapped in the performance of love.

Chapter 4: Shattered Reflections: Discovering the Truth Behind the Mask

The final revelation comes when Rachel follows Brian to a row house in Federal Hill, Providence. She watches in horror as he whistles up at the windows, a gesture she's never seen him make, and is greeted by a pregnant blonde woman who kisses him with the familiarity of long intimacy. He kneels to kiss her swollen belly, then disappears inside with flowers and champagne. This is Nicole Alden, and Rachel assumes she's witnessing her husband's real life, his authentic family, the place where his true affections lie. She sits in her rental car across the street, staring at the house where her husband's other existence plays out. The white curtains in the windows, the peeling paint on the windowsill, the black front door with its pewter knocker—every detail burns itself into her memory as evidence of her own irrelevance. But the truth is even more twisted than simple adultery. Nicole isn't Brian's wife but his sister, pregnant by a married coworker who has no idea his ex-mistress is about to disappear forever. Brian and his business partner Caleb have been running an elaborate con, using the worthless mine as bait for a seventy-million-dollar swindle targeting venture capitalists. Rachel had been the perfect mark for their scheme. Her isolation after Haiti, her desperate need for stability, her complete dependence on Brian for emotional survival—all of it made her an ideal cover for their criminal enterprise. Her husband hadn't saved her from her breakdown. He had orchestrated her recovery to serve his own purposes, turning her healing into another tool in his arsenal of deception. The drive back to Boston passes in a blur of numbness and rage. She had thought she was broken before, but this is different. This is the complete dissolution of reality itself, the discovery that everything she believed about her life was a carefully constructed performance designed to hide crimes she never suspected.

Chapter 5: Blood in the Water: Confrontation and Apparent Death

The confrontation comes on Brian's boat in Massachusetts Bay, where he has lured Rachel under the pretense of explanation. Caleb is there too, and the three of them sit in the darkness while Brian spins a story about mining rights and venture capitalists. He claims he did it all for her, that the con was meant to set them up for life together, but his words ring hollow against the weight of his deceptions. The partnership between Brian and Caleb is fracturing under pressure from their victims. Cotter-McCann, the venture capital firm they've swindled, is sending representatives to recover their seventy million dollars. These aren't lawyers or accountants but professional killers who view murder as a business expense. The elaborate con that was supposed to be their ticket to freedom has become a death sentence. When Caleb demands to know why Brian has been withholding crucial information about their escape plans, the conversation turns violent. Brian begins kicking his partner with savage intensity, revealing a capacity for brutality that Rachel never suspected. The gentle man who nursed her through panic attacks is capable of murder, and she's trapped on a boat with him in the middle of the harbor. In that moment, as Brian turns toward her with a gun in his hand, Rachel makes a choice that will haunt her forever. She shoots him in the chest, watching him stumble backward and fall into the dark water. The man she loved, the man she hated, the man she never really knew—gone in an instant, his last words a whispered declaration of love that might have been genuine or might have been his final performance. But even death is a lie in Brian's world. Using stagecraft techniques learned in acting school, he fakes his own demise with blood squibs and a hidden oxygen tank. Rachel discovers the deception when she dives down to find his body and encounters only empty water and the bitter taste of her own gullibility.

Chapter 6: Hunters and Prey: When Professional Killers Come Calling

The game turns deadly when representatives from Cotter-McCann track Rachel to her Boston apartment. They arrive as ordinary-looking men in cheap suits, but their weapons and casual brutality mark them as professional killers. Ned and Lars introduce themselves with the mundane politeness of insurance salesmen, but their eyes hold the flat emptiness of predators. They want information about Brian's whereabouts and access to the safe deposit box containing the crew's escape passports. When Rachel claims ignorance, they demonstrate their seriousness by executing Caleb with a single shot to the face, his blood spattering across her dining room table like abstract art painted in violence. The killers make it clear that Rachel's survival depends on her cooperation, but they underestimate what three years of Brian's tutelage have taught her. The fragile woman who once couldn't leave her apartment has learned to function under pressure, to think clearly when death hovers inches away. Her panic attacks, ironically, have prepared her for this moment by teaching her that fear is just another obstacle to overcome. Detective Trayvon Kessler from Providence Police arrives unexpectedly, investigating Nicole Alden's murder and following a trail that leads directly to Brian. Rachel seizes the moment to escape, leading the detective away from the apartment and the corpse within. But Kessler is no fool. He knows she's lying about everything, from her husband's whereabouts to the timeline of recent events. The walls are closing in from every direction. Cotter-McCann's killers want her dead. The police want her in custody. And somewhere in the darkness, Brian Alden is playing a game whose rules only he understands. Rachel's only advantage is that everyone underestimates her, seeing a damaged woman rather than the predator she's becoming.

Chapter 7: The Predator Awakens: Rachel's Violent Transformation

Rachel's metamorphosis accelerates when she discovers Brian waiting for her in the backseat of a car in the Maine wilderness. Her response is immediate and savage—she beats him unconscious with her fists, reveling in the crack of cartilage and the flow of blood. The fragile woman who once couldn't leave her apartment has become someone capable of extreme violence, and the transformation feels as natural as breathing. Brian reveals the full scope of his manipulation. The panic attacks, the careful rehabilitation, even their marriage—all of it was designed to forge her into someone who could survive in his world of perpetual deception. He needed a partner who could function under pressure, someone loyal enough to trust and strong enough to endure what was coming. Rachel was his masterpiece, sculpted from trauma and desperation into the perfect accomplice. But Rachel refuses to be anyone's creation. She steals Brian's passport and mails it to Amsterdam, ensuring that he can't escape the country without her cooperation. For the first time in their relationship, she holds all the cards. Brian needs her more than she needs him, and the power dynamic that has defined their marriage finally shifts in her favor. Their reunion is interrupted by the discovery that Cotter-McCann's killers have found their safe house. Haya, Caleb's supposedly innocent Japanese wife, is dead, executed in the room where she was caring for her infant daughter. The baby, Annabelle, becomes an unwitting symbol of innocence in a world where everyone else has chosen corruption. Rachel looks down at the child and sees herself three years ago—helpless, dependent, trusting in the goodness of people who view compassion as weakness. But she also sees possibility, the chance to protect someone the way no one ever protected her. The maternal instinct that awakens in that moment isn't gentle or nurturing. It's fierce and predatory, the love of a wolf for her cub.

Chapter 8: New Reflections: Power Shifts and the Price of Survival

The final confrontation comes at an abandoned mill in Rhode Island, where Rachel and Brian must rescue Annabelle from the killers who murdered her mother. Rachel's evolution is complete now. She moves through violence with the same calm efficiency she once brought to journalism, methodically eliminating threats to protect the child who has become her responsibility. The killers, Ned and Lars, are revealed as ordinary men driven to extraordinary brutality by economic desperation. Ned shows Rachel photos of his own children, trying to humanize himself even as he prepares to murder her. But Rachel has moved beyond such considerations. She executes him with the same cold precision he showed Caleb, feeling nothing but the satisfaction of a job completed. Brian watches this transformation with something approaching awe. The woman he tried to create has exceeded his wildest expectations, becoming something more dangerous than he ever imagined. But Rachel's power comes with a price. She's lost the capacity for the kind of trust that once defined her relationship with Brian, viewing his every gesture through the lens of potential deception. They escape to Canada with Annabelle, but their future remains uncertain. Rachel holds Brian's passport and access to the seventy million dollars, making her the dominant partner in their strange new family. She's learned to love the way Brian taught her—strategically, conditionally, with one hand always reaching for a weapon. In quiet moments, watching Brian play with the baby, Rachel sometimes glimpses the man she thought she married. The gentleness might be real, buried beneath layers of performance and calculation. But she can never be sure, and uncertainty has become her natural habitat. She's discovered that survival requires embracing ambiguity, finding comfort in the spaces between truth and lies where most people fear to tread.

Summary

Rachel's journey from victim to predator represents more than personal transformation—it's a meditation on the nature of identity itself. In a world where everyone wears masks, where love and manipulation become indistinguishable, survival requires the willingness to abandon everything you thought you knew about yourself. The panic attacks that once controlled her life weren't a weakness to overcome but a chrysalis to emerge from, transformed and deadly. The story's final image—Rachel holding an infant while blood pools around the bodies of men she's killed—captures the brutal poetry of reinvention. She has become the author of her own story, no longer content to be a character in someone else's narrative. The price of this transformation is steep: innocence, trust, and the comfortable illusions that once defined her world. But in exchange, she has gained something infinitely more valuable—the power to determine her own fate, no matter how dark the path ahead may be. In the looking glass of her fractured life, Rachel has finally found her true reflection: not the woman she was, but the predator she was always meant to become.

About Author

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Dennis Lehane

Lehane investigates the intricate layers of crime and morality through a lens focused on family dynamics and the sociopolitical landscape of Boston. His novels, known for their emotional depth and meticulous attention to detail, often serve as a mirror to societal issues, providing readers with a profound understanding of human nature. In works like "Mystic River" and "The Given Day", Lehane dissects the impact of personal and collective history on individual lives, creating a rich tapestry of interconnected narratives that resonate with his audience. His ability to weave compelling stories has led to several adaptations, with "Mystic River" becoming an Academy Award-winning film directed by Clint Eastwood.\n\nIn addition to his novels, Lehane has significantly impacted television and film through his work as a screenwriter and producer. Beyond his book-writing prowess, he contributed to critically acclaimed series such as HBO's "The Wire" and Apple TV+'s "Black Bird", showcasing his versatility in storytelling across different mediums. His first film screenplay, "The Drop", demonstrates his skill in adapting his narratives to the screen, thereby broadening his reach and influence. This versatility ensures that Lehane's stories maintain their emotional resonance, regardless of the format, benefiting readers and viewers who seek narratives with depth and complexity.\n\nLehane's achievements in literature and screenwriting have earned him numerous accolades, including the Shamus Award for his debut novel, "A Drink Before the War", and the Edgar Award for "Live by Night". These recognitions underscore his talent for crafting narratives that captivate and challenge his audience. As an author whose bio reflects a rich career in diverse storytelling forms, Lehane continues to engage readers with narratives that are both thought-provoking and deeply human.

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