Chapter 6
Coraline heard the promise too.
That was when her fury sharpened into something more dangerous than jealousy.
She looked at Posie not as a child, but as a legal problem with wet curls and inherited eyes.
“You have no proof,” she said.
Garrett did not look away from the SUV.
“Proof of what?”
“That she’s yours.”
The crowd inhaled.
Mave’s face went white.
Posie did not understand the words, only the cruelty inside them. She pressed closer to her mother.
Garrett turned back to Coraline.
“I recognized her before I breathed.”
“That is not proof.”
“No,” he said. “It is more.”
Coraline laughed once, brittle under the rain.
“That sounds romantic. It won’t hold up against your mother.”
Mave’s hand gripped his lapel again.
“She’s right.”
Garrett looked at her.
Mave hated saying it.
Hated giving Coraline anything.
But fear had taught her which truths could kill if ignored.
“She’ll bury us in courts, doctors, newspapers, guards, whatever she needs. She already did it once.”
Garrett’s eyes darkened.
“She had help.”
Mave’s silence answered.
Garrett turned toward Coraline.
The bride stood perfectly still.
Too still.
He understood then that Coraline had not created the secret.
She had benefited from it.
Worse—she had agreed not to ask what had been done before she arrived at the altar.
Wesley stepped beside Garrett.
“Convoy holding position. Two men visible in front vehicle. No movement from rear.”
Garrett nodded.
“Keep the perimeter.”
Mave looked toward the limousine.
“We can’t get through.”
“Not that way.”
“Garrett—”
He met her eyes.
For the first time in three years, Mave saw the man she had loved beneath the heir.
Not innocent.
Never innocent.
But hers, once.
And furious now because he finally understood his power had been used against the one person he would have used it to protect.
Garrett spoke low.
“Did you think I let you go?”
Her face crumpled.
“I thought you stopped looking.”
The words hurt him more than the rain, more than Coraline, more than the ring lying in the gutter.
He shook his head.
May you like
“Never.”
Read Chapter 7 👉 Because Mave believed Garrett abandoned the search, but he had believed she had chosen to vanish.
