Chapter 6
Marina had approached me three years earlier deliberately.
Not at a random charity dinner.
Not through mutual friends.
Sabine arranged the introduction.
She knew Winterbourne events.
Old alliances.
Who still remembered Voss.
Who had forgotten.
The original plan was simple.
Marina gets close.
Earns household access.
Finds any clue Eleanor kept about Gideon.
Then disappears.
No marriage.
No love.
Certainly no wedding.
Then I ruined the plan by being human.
Apparently.
Marina smiled through tears when she said it.
I did not.
“When did you tell Sabine you wanted out?”
“One year ago.”
“What happened?”
“She said there was no out.”
Of course.
Sabine had spent decades turning Marina’s grief into purpose.
If Marina abandoned revenge, Sabine lost control of the story.
Then Mother began calling her Marina during wedding week.
Why?
Small things.
The way she touched a necklace.
A phrase she used.
Then finally a scar near her thumb from falling through a greenhouse pane at thirteen.
Mother recognized it.
She asked privately:
“Marina?”
Delphina panicked.
Not immediately violent.
She denied.
Avoided.
Then today Mother confronted her again.
Told her Gideon was alive when last heard from.
That was when everything escalated.
“You locked her in a cage.”
Marina closed her eyes.
“I needed three hours.”
“For what?”
“To search her rooms.”
There.
No confusion.
No heat-of-the-moment defense.
She wanted time.
Mother’s emergency pendant threatened that.
Carys found it when Mother managed to push it through the kennel bars after Delphina took her phone.
Then Delphina caught Carys.
Tried to make the pendant disappear.
One act followed another.
Planned.
Ugly.
“Did Sabine tell you to do it?”
“No.”
Important.
Marina owned that choice herself.
May you like
I respected the honesty.
Not the act.
