“You never asked what I wanted.
You never asked where I would go.
You let her dismantle my life because opposing her was more difficult than losing me.”
Ethan flinched.
Eleanor did not.
“She abandoned this family,” she announced to the guests.
“Whatever happened afterward was her decision.”
I turned toward her.
“I escaped your family.”
A murmur traveled through the crowd.
Eleanor’s eyes flashed.
“You arrived here uninvited with three children and a stack of papers designed to disrupt a wedding.”
I reached into my bag and removed the gold invitation.
The paper gleamed beneath the afternoon sun.
I held it between two fingers, careful not to hide the Montgomery crest.
“You invited me.”
Her gaze dropped to it.
“You assigned me a seat.”
I turned the invitation over, revealing the handwritten note attached to the back.
The guests were too far away to read it, but Eleanor knew exactly what it said.
Table 27.
Kitchen entrance.
“You wanted an audience,” I continued.
“You wanted everyone here to watch Ethan marry someone you considered worthy while I sat beside the staff doors.
You believed I would arrive alone, ashamed, and desperate to be noticed.”
Eleanor’s lips thinned.
“This wedding is about my son, not you.”
“Then why did you spend so much time planning my humiliation?”
No one spoke.
Even the quartet had stopped playing.
A photographer near the aisle slowly lowered his camera after Ethan gave him a warning look.
The senator’s security detail exchanged glances.
Guests who had been whispering about me now studied Eleanor instead.
For the first time that afternoon, she appeared to understand that the audience she had invited could turn against her.
She recovered quickly.
“Security,” she called.
“Remove her and the children.”
The guards hesitated.
Ethan stepped in front of them.
“No one touches them.”
His words were quiet, but they struck the estate harder than Eleanor’s shattered champagne glass.
She stared at him.
“Ethan, think about what is happening.
Your wedding, the Hastings family, the press—”
“I said no one touches them.”
The old certainty left her face.
Behind me, Liam tugged gently at my hand.
“Mama?”
I crouched until we were eye level.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
He looked past me toward Ethan.
“Is that our dad?”
The question traveled through the silent garden.
Ethan closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, he walked toward us slowly, as though one sudden movement might frighten the boys away.
He stopped several feet from Liam and lowered himself to one knee.
