“You will provide a signed confession,” Adrien continued. “You will publicly retract your accusation. You will reimburse every dollar Mabel lost after Rossi’s dismissed her.”
“And if I refuse?”
Adrien looked at her as though she had asked whether fire was hot.
“Then by tonight, your father’s investors will receive evidence of the offshore accounts he believes no one knows about.”
Coraline stepped back.
Mabel touched Adrien’s arm.
“Stop.”
He turned immediately.
“I don’t want her father destroyed for what she did.”
Coraline stared at her in disbelief.
Mabel faced her.
“You will clear my name. You will tell the truth in the same restaurant where you humiliated me. You will apologize to Walt and Rosa for the way you treated them. Then you will volunteer for six months at the hospital program that helped my mother when we couldn’t pay.”
Coraline laughed nervously. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
Adrien watched Mabel with a look she could not decipher.
Coraline glanced between them and understood that the woman she had once dismissed as powerless now controlled what happened next.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered.
After she left, Adrien said, “You showed her mercy.”
“No. I gave her work.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
“You would make a terrifying queen.”
“I’m not your queen.”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
She should have been angry.
Instead, unwanted warmth moved through her.
That night Bishop brought evidence that two Rourke men had rented an apartment across from the hospital. One carried photographs of Mabel, Toby, and Hope.
Mabel read the report in silence.
“What are my options?”
Adrien sat across from her in the secure apartment. “Remain hidden indefinitely. Leave Chicago under a new identity. Or marry me and stand where hiding becomes unnecessary.”
“Because no one would dare touch your wife.”
“They might try. They would not survive the consequences.”
“I won’t be locked inside your house.”
“No.”
“I decide how Hope is raised.”
“Yes.”
“Toby stays in school and chooses his own future. You don’t recruit him into your world.”
“Agreed.”
“You tell me the truth when I ask for it.”
Adrien’s expression changed.
“That is harder than the other terms.”
“Then there is no marriage.”
He considered her.
“Some information could place you at risk.”
“Then tell me that. Don’t invent another life and expect me to thank you for protecting me.”
He inclined his head. “Agreed.”
“And you don’t touch me unless I say you can.”
Pain flashed across his face, gone almost instantly.
“You have my word.”
Mabel looked toward the bassinet where Hope slept.
She hated that danger had made the decision for her.
She hated more that part of her still wanted to believe the man who had once sat beside her beneath a leaking awning was real.
“How long?”
“Until Rourke is no longer a threat.”
“And afterward?”
“You may leave with every protection, asset, and legal right secured for you and Hope.”
“That sounds like a contract.”
“It is.”
“What happens to your feelings when it ends?”
Adrien’s gaze held hers.
“They will remain my problem.”
Mabel signed the agreement the next morning.
They married at a courthouse under heavy security.
Adrien wore a charcoal suit. Mabel wore a simple cream dress Bishop had arranged, refusing the diamonds Margot Cain sent.
The press gathered outside after someone leaked the time and location.
Questions exploded when Adrien emerged holding Hope’s carrier in one hand and Mabel’s hand in the other.
“Mr. Cain, who is she?”
