Chapter 5
Preston walked out of the bridal suite.
My men stopped him.
I almost told them to let him go.
Then he turned back.
“I’m not running.”
Good.
He returned and sat opposite the cassette recorder.
Warren looked disgusted.
“You’re letting a dead woman humiliate you.”
Preston looked at his father.
“Is she dead?”
Silence.
That question had apparently never been answered clearly.
Warren always said Celeste was gone.
Sometimes Preston interpreted that as abandoned.
Sometimes dead.
Children fill gaps adults create.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Warren’s face hardened.
“I don’t know.”
I believed that part.
Not because Warren was honest.
Because uncertainty irritated him.
I listened to the rest of Celeste’s tape.
She described an old property called Lake House.
Warren took her there whenever she “needed time.”
Private.
Remote.
No servants except one housekeeper.
No visitors.
Preston looked confused.
“We had a lake house?”
Warren looked away.
That fascinated me.
The house was part of Celeste’s former family holdings.
After the Hale marriage absorbed those holdings, Warren used it to isolate the woman whose family once owned it.
Celeste said she planned to leave again after speaking to Preston.
She never got the chance.
The recording ended with one sentence.
“If I disappear after tonight, ask Warren what happened at Lake House.”
I looked at him.
He stood.
“This is finished.”
“No.”
My voice stayed quiet.
“That’s the first true thing we’ve heard all day.”
Warren tried to leave.
The corridor was still full of Marconi men.
He stopped.
Preston did not defend him.
That mattered.
I turned to Enzo.
“Does Lake House still exist?”
“Yes.”
Warren closed his eyes.
Another answer.
I looked at Preston.
“You want to know?”
His expression twisted.
Part of him did.
Part of him had spent nineteen years surviving by not asking.
Finally he nodded.
“Yes.”
I picked up my engagement ring from the vanity.
Then dropped it into the cedar box beside Celeste’s bracelet.
Preston watched.
The wedding was over.
May you like
Whatever came next had nothing to do with saving our relationship.
It was about finding out what kind of family had almost absorbed mine.
