Chapter 14

Julian worked quickly.

Quinn agreed to the City Hall marriage certificate in the morning. By afternoon, police in New York were making their way down a narrow backstreet to arrest Serena Thorne.

What they found was barely recognizable.

The designer clothes she'd always been so careful about were in rags. Her face, once maintained with the precision of someone who understood exactly how far beauty could take you, had gone sallow and hollow-eyed. She was sitting against a wall with a paper cup in front of her.

Begging.

When Holden had finally thrown her out of the estate, she'd discovered she had nothing. No money of her own. No one in New York willing to take her side — Holden had made sure of that. Even the hotels had turned her away.

A few days on the street had finished the rest.

She'd screamed when they took Noah. She'd gone to her knees and begged while Holden looked down at her with nothing in his face.

He goes with me, she'd sobbed. He's mine.

"He'd starve with you," Holden had said. "He called me Dad for years. I'll put him somewhere he gets fed and schooled. You — I don't care what happens to you."

She'd held onto one hope. Holden's first love. All those years, that had always been worth something. He'd hurt Quinn again and again for her sake. He'd come back to her before. Once the grief settled — once his search for Quinn failed — he'd want Serena again.

She'd kept believing it while she sorted through dumpsters. She'd kept believing it while she slept on the pavement.

She didn't believe it when the police arrived.

"You can't do this!" She backed away as they came toward her, her voice climbing. "I want to speak to Holden — call Holden Blackwood right now — I'm his wife, I'm Mrs. Blackwood—"

The officer didn't blink. "You're being taken in on suspicion of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. Come with us."

"No — no, I didn't—"

They put the handcuffs on. She was still protesting when they walked her to the car.

A surveillance operative watched from across the street and sent the footage to Holden.

In his study, Holden had been holding a framed photograph — the three of them, a family portrait from years ago. Abby in the middle, laughing at something off-camera. Quinn bright and confident beside him. Holden looking at them both with an expression he could barely stand to see now.

He set the photograph down very carefully when the message came through.

His right hand was shaking. He pressed it flat against the desk.

He'd spent weeks wondering whether Quinn had survived. And whoever had handed the police that evidence — it was her doing. Of course it was. He knew it the moment he heard.

She was alive.

"Check the evidence," he said to the empty room, the words more for himself than anyone. "I want to know exactly where it came from."

His assistant left.

Holden turned back to the photograph.

He touched Quinn's face in the image — just his thumb, light and slow.

"You won't get away this time," he said quietly.

Quinn was getting ready for a wedding.

Once they'd registered at City Hall, Julian had begun circling the subject of a proper ceremony with an almost uncharacteristic delicacy. "Ms. Ashford — you know my family has been waiting a long time for this. Considering everything, I think we probably need a real event. Something significant—"

Quinn had found it almost funny.

Julian Wyndham had run the most feared private equity firm on the East Coast since he was barely thirty. He'd outmaneuvered three hostile takeover attempts, absorbed two competing firms, and been described in the financial press as "the kind of man who wins before he sits down." Ruthless, when he needed to be.

And yet he was standing in her kitchen being carefully, painfully diplomatic because he was afraid she'd say no to a wedding.

"Of course," she'd said, before the sentence had properly finished. "Whatever you need."

The look on his face — the surprised brightness of it, quickly hidden — had stayed with her.

That's not the face of someone being practical about a marriage of convenience, some part of her had noted.

She'd let the thought go.

Now, a week into the preparations, she was watching Julian personally review the seating chart for the fourth time and realizing she'd badly underestimated how much this mattered to him. Every detail had his attention. Every decision went through him.

She came to stand beside him. "Julian—"

"If you're about to say something I won't like, don't."

She paused. "I was going to say — I had something happen, with Holden. Before Abby. Before all of this." She kept her voice steady. "Things I never chose. Are you—"

Julian turned from the seating chart, and the look on his face stopped her.

He took her hand. His voice, when he spoke, was careful and quiet and absolutely certain.

"Quinn. You are one of the sharpest, bravest, most decent people I've ever known. Nothing that was done to you without your consent leaves a mark on who you are. Not in my eyes." A pause. "I don't want you to carry that as a burden into whatever this becomes. And I hope—" He stopped. Tried again. "I hope you can let yourself try. With me."

Late-winter sunlight fought its way through the clouds and fell across his face. There were fine dark hairs catching gold at his temple. He was still looking at her, patient, waiting.

Quinn's heart beat too fast, and she made herself be honest about why.

She wasn't afraid of him. That was the thing. After everything — after all of it — she wasn't afraid of this man, and she couldn't entirely explain why.

She didn't answer.

She didn't have to, yet. He would wait.

She had known that about him for a long time.