Chapter 17
Six years after my wedding never happened, I attended another ceremony at the same estate.
Not mine.
One of my younger cousins.
Happy.
Nervous.
Ordinary.
Before the vows, I passed the old bridal suite.
The vanity had been replaced.
Sofa reupholstered.
Door unlocked.
Nothing haunted except memory.
I stepped inside for a moment.
No club.
No ring.
No Preston.
Just sunlight.
My cousin’s teenage sister rushed past carrying shoes.
“Giulietta, have you seen the bride?”
“Wrong room.”
She groaned and ran.
I smiled.
Then outside, on the lawn beyond the reception tent, a small charity putting green had been set up for guests.
One of the clubs carried tiny initials near the grip.
E.H.
I stopped.
Naomi had loaned several pieces from Evelyn’s program for the event.
A girl of about twelve took the club.
Set her feet.
Swung.
The ball rolled six feet and stopped nowhere near the hole.
She laughed anyway.
Perfect.
Preston stood across the lawn.
He saw me looking.
No need to speak.
Years earlier he had lifted that same piece of metal in a locked room and told me:
This is how my father taught my mother to obey.
For too long, that had been the club’s loudest meaning.
Not anymore.
Evelyn had owned it before Warren corrupted it.
Girls used it after Preston surrendered it.
And I had survived the lesson he tried to pass forward.
Power was never the ability to make someone obey because they feared what happened if they refused.
Warren had believed that.
Preston learned it.
For one terrible moment, he tried to teach it to me.
He failed.
Not because my bodyguards were outside.
Not because I had more capos.
Not even because the Marconi name was stronger than Hale.
He failed because the first thing I did when he raised the club was remove the ring.
Before the fight.
Before Warren arrived.
Before anyone came to rescue me.
I chose.
That was the part neither Hale man understood.
A marriage could bring someone beside my power.
It could never make that power theirs.
Across the lawn, the girl swung again.
This time the ball dropped into the cup.
She shouted in triumph.
Preston clapped.
May you like
So did I.
And for once, a Hale golf club taught exactly the right lesson.
