“Hello,” Alice’s voice came into the phone in a hush as soon as Lombard answered the call. “You okay?” he asked as he got into the car. “Actually, I’m not sure. I’m calling you from the restroom because I don’t want Abigail to know about this. Mireya called me a few seconds ago and said she’d like to have a discussion with me, if that’s okay. I didn’t give her an answer, I just told her I’d check my schedule and get back to her. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what she wants to discuss.” “Are you free today?” Lombard asked as he started the car. “Yes. Basically,” she said. “You can call her back and tell her that you’ll be free. In the meantime, can we meet up now? You don’t have to tell Abigail about it.” “She won’t let me leave the house, not after everything that happened to me. Even now, she’s in the kitchen whipping something together for me,” she said. Lombard let out a soft groan. “I’m coming over. You and I are going out after, and we can talk. In the meantime, don’t tell

Alice had already called Mireya back and told her she was free. They’d agreed to meet at the restaurant in the next ten minutes. Lombard had driven there, and they were still in the car, watching people come and go through the entrance.Lombard’s eyes stayed on the door, but Alice wasn’t looking that way at all. Her eyes were on Lombard instead. He looked like exactly the kind of trouble she should avoid. She tried not to romanticize every inch of him she was staring at, but it was becoming impossible by the second. Twice, she’d looked away as fast as she could before he could catch her. And twice, it had been awkward.“She’s here now,” Lombard announced.Alice looked at the door. Mireya had really arrived, sunglasses on, one guard stationed outside in case anything happened, another going in with her.Lombard had already fitted himself with something that would let him hear their conversation in real time. He waited for Mireya to get out of her car, but two seconds later, she still h

Abigail looked closely at what Alice was showing her on the screen.“Just look at those records. What kind of ordinary person has that kind of record?” Alice was saying as her hand moved over the screen.But Abigail wasn’t impressed, and she wasn’t even surprised that she wasn’t impressed. Hell, Lombard — the man she knew — wasn’t some guy that had ever seemed like he’d had a normal day in his life. But then, looking more closely, the only thing that genuinely unsettled her a little was Clara. The woman who had been Lombard’s partner. If he’d had a woman like this beside him, why was he going around asking her to be whatever it was he was asking her to be to him? All those marriage talks.“Can you scroll back a bit?” she asked Alice, who was already moving past a new page. This time, there was some information on Clara.“The woman died two years ago. No real information there on it,” Alice said, already dismissing it. “What I want you to look at is all these things that Lombard is. W

The Belmont family were still standing around the table, trying to process what had just happened, when a phone started ringing in the dining room.Everyone looked at each other. Ten seconds passed. Nobody moved to claim it.Mireya went to get it.“Don’t answer it—” one of the family started, already raising their voice across the room.She had already answered before they finished the sentence.“What do you mean it was fake? It isn’t that big a deal,” a voice said through the speaker. A voice everyone in the room recognised immediately. Rowan. The room went quiet at once.It sounded like a recording.“I told her she was pregnant, and she instantly fell for it,” Rowan’s voice continued, easy and unbothered.“How does that even work?” the other voice asked. “I know one or two things about women, but what I don’t know is how one of them doesn’t notice something like that herself.”“She needed to believe it,” Rowan said. “She wanted someone to give her exactly what she wanted to hear. Sh

“When I first saw my wife, I didn’t go to her father first,” Drake’s father-in-law said from across the table. “I had to run to the only man that I knew would tell me the truth about what I was feeling. And that man was my father.” He paused the way people pause when a memory lands warm. “I have never in my life experienced anything like watching those two people love each other. My mother and my father. I never got tired of it. Not once.”From where Lombard sat across the table, he found himself getting pulled into this story more than he wanted to admit. If he had ever ended up with a father-in-law, he would have wanted exactly this man. Loud, completely sure of himself, entirely in love with his own story. There was something about people like that — no shame, no second-guessing, just full commitment to every word coming out of their mouth.“I went to my dad and I said, Dad, I found this woman. I love her. I don’t have a lot of money, but I am going to marry her. I don’t know exact