Chapter 4
Preston walked out of the library.
I let him.
No guard.
No command.
He needed air more than supervision.
Warren watched the door.
“Happy?”
I stared.
“What?”
“You broke him.”
I almost laughed.
“No.”
I placed the engagement ring on the table between us.
“You raised him inside a lie. I opened a window.”
His face darkened.
“You don’t understand what Isolde would have done to Hale.”
There.
Always the family.
Never the woman.
“What?”
“She would have taken half the house with her.”
Not property.
People.
That mattered.
Isolde had been loved.
Staff trusted her.
Three captains respected her judgment more than Warren’s.
Two allied families dealt with Hale only because of her.
Warren’s marriage had become part of his authority.
If she left publicly, it would reveal that some loyalty belonged to Isolde rather than Hale.
He could survive losing a wife.
He could not tolerate everyone seeing the difference.
“So you made her look unstable.”
“I protected the family.”
“No.”
Domenic spoke from behind me.
“You protected the story that everyone followed you.”
Warren’s eyes sharpened.
Domenic continued.
“Some of us remember.”
That interested me.
“How many?”
“More than he’d like.”
Apparently Isolde’s disappearance had fractured Hale quietly.
A few senior men knew she had not simply walked out for another life.
They suspected Warren drove her away.
But Preston stayed.
The son remained beside the father.
That gave Warren legitimacy.
If his own son accepted the abandonment story, who were outsiders to question it?
Preston had unknowingly become his father’s proof.
I understood why Warren intercepted the letter.
It was not just about keeping his son.
It was about keeping the witness who made Warren’s version believable.
Then I asked:
“Where did Isolde go after the Marconi house?”
Domenic looked at me strangely.
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“Your mother knew.”
Of course.
Lucia Marconi had taken secrets to the grave because everyone in our families seemed addicted to silence.
“Do you?”
“Only the last place she was seen.”
“Where?”
He answered:
“Blackthorn.”
I stopped breathing.
Blackthorn was not a town.
It was a Marconi property.
The oldest one.
The house my mother had forbidden anyone to enter after my father died.
Warren’s face changed when he heard the name.
May you like
He knew it too.
And that told me this wedding had another purpose.
