Chapter 8
Celeste knew about our engagement.
That surprised me.
She knew almost everything about Preston from a distance.
Not because she wanted control.
Because a mother can spend nineteen years telling herself watching is safer than returning.
When she learned he was marrying me, she panicked.
“I knew Warren would try again.”
I looked at her.
“With me?”
“With any woman whose family had power.”
Preston closed his eyes.
Celeste continued.
Warren never taught his son to marry for love.
He taught him to identify useful families.
Preston snapped:
“I loved Giulietta.”
I looked at him.
Past tense was correct.
Celeste nodded.
“I believe you.”
That surprised him.
“Then why—”
“Because love does not erase what your father taught you to think love entitles you to.”
Silence.
I remembered the golf club rising.
The locked door.
His smirk.
This is how my father taught my mother to obey.
Preston’s face crumpled.
Celeste looked at me.
“What did he do?”
I answered.
No softening.
“He locked the bridal suite and swung a club at me.”
She closed her eyes.
Preston whispered:
“I didn’t hit her.”
I turned.
Wrong defense.
Celeste opened her eyes.
“You wanted her afraid.”
He stopped.
“You wanted fear before marriage so she would understand the marriage afterward.”
Preston looked sick.
That was exactly it.
He sat down.
“My father said…”
Then stopped.
Celeste waited.
Preston forced himself to finish.
“He said Marconi women think power makes them men. He said if I didn’t establish control before the ceremony, I’d spend the rest of my life begging inside her family.”
I felt nothing hearing it now.
Only clarity.
Warren had not merely encouraged the marriage.
He designed the first act of it.
I looked at him.
“You sent him into that room.”
Warren shrugged.
“He needed a spine.”
Celeste laughed.
“No.”
She looked at Preston.
“He needed a father.”
That hit.
Preston lowered his head.
Then Warren said something even worse.
“The wedding was bigger than your feelings.”
I turned.
There.
The next layer.
“What happens after the ceremony?”
Warren did not answer.
Celeste did.
“He absorbs Marconi access.”
Preston looked confused.
She stared at him.
“You didn’t know all of it, did you?”
May you like
Apparently he didn’t.
Warren had been using his son too.
