Chapter 4
Removed.
The word did not belong in a love story.
It belonged in business disputes, sealed ledgers, erased names, missing witnesses, and men who never had to raise their voices because others did the damage for them.
Garrett heard it and felt three years of grief rearrange itself into rage.
“By who?”
Mave’s eyes moved toward the SUVs.
Not enough to answer.
Enough.
Coraline watched them both, veil trembling in the rain, her face pale but controlled.
“Don’t do this here,” she warned.
Garrett turned toward her slowly.
“What do you know?”
“Nothing that matters tonight.”
Wrong answer.
Wesley shifted beside him.
Even the bodyguards understood the mistake.
Garrett’s voice stayed quiet.
“What do you know?”
Coraline looked past him toward the approaching convoy.
Her confidence flickered, then returned in a colder form.
“I know your mother will not let a maid’s daughter walk into the Hail name because she arrived wet and dramatic outside a cathedral.”
Mave recoiled as if struck.
Garrett stepped forward.
Posie cried out, “Mama!”
He stopped instantly.
The sound of that little voice pulled him back from the edge.
He turned and crouched slightly, rain running down his face.
“Posie,” he said softly.
The child stared at him with those pale gray eyes.
Too familiar.
Too impossible.
“I won’t scare you.”
Mave’s face broke again at his gentleness.
“She doesn’t trust men in suits.”
Garrett looked down at his own tuxedo.
Then at the bodyguards.
Then at the black vehicles.
He understood why.
He lifted one hand slowly and tugged his bow tie loose, letting it hang open at his collar.
Not much.
Not enough.
But something.
Posie watched.
Her grip on his finger stayed.
Wesley leaned close.
“Lead door opening.”
Garrett rose.
“No one touches them.”
Wesley nodded.
“Understood.”
Coraline’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re choosing chaos.”
Garrett looked at the child in Mave’s arms.
“No. I’m choosing the truth that reached me before the vows finished.”
A black SUV door opened halfway down the street.
No one stepped out yet.
The rain hid the face inside.
Mave’s whole body went rigid.
May you like
Garrett felt it through her hand on his lapel.
Read Chapter 5 👉 Because the convoy had not attacked, but its silence frightened Mave more than any shouted threat.
