One corner of his mouth moved, humorless. “You still don’t know who you’re talking to.”
Wren looked at him—really looked.
At the composure. The quiet. The lethal confidence of a man who had never once needed to repeat himself to be obeyed.
And suddenly she understood something much bigger than rumor.
Sterling Blackwell was not merely wealthy.
He was infrastructure.
He was consequence.
He was the hidden machinery beneath polished society.
“Go inside, Wren,” he said, and hearing her first name in his mouth did something strange to her pulse. “That is the only time I’m asking gently.”
She should have argued.
Instead she let go of the door handle.
The next morning the court summons was gone from her nightstand.
In its place was a folded note in strong, spare handwriting.
It’s handled.
Don’t leave again.
No signature.
None needed.
Wren sat on the edge of the bed and cried, not because she was frightened anymore, but because no one had ever fought for her without first making her beg.
A week later, Garrett arrived in person.
He was shown into the drawing room under Eleanor’s supervision, and when Wren stepped through the door, her body remembered him before her mind did—his height, his expensive cologne, the devastatingly practiced smile that had once made her think love was easy.
“Wren,” he said, standing. “I’ve been trying to find you.”
“You found me now,” she said. “Say what you came to say.”
He softened his face into regret. It would have been convincing if she had met him yesterday instead of surviving him.
“I made a mistake. I panicked. I want to make this right. I want to be a father to our child.”
Wren felt nothing.
That more than anything else told her how finished she was.
“When I told you I was pregnant,” she said, “what did you text me?”
Garrett’s smile thinned. “I said things I regret.”
“No. What did you text me?”
His eyes hardened.
She answered for him.
“Take care of it. Don’t bother me.”
A beat passed.
Then his mask slipped all the way.
“My grandfather is dying,” he said flatly. “He wants to see an heir. Stop being emotional and think practically.”
Wren laughed once, a sharp sound full of disgust. “You don’t want this child. You want inheritance.”
“Same outcome.”
“No.”
Garrett’s voice cooled. “You are not in a position to refuse me.”
Before she could answer, a second voice entered the room.
“She is, actually.”
Sterling walked in carrying a glass of whiskey as if he had all the time in the world.
He crossed to the armchair opposite Garrett and sat down with unhurried ease, one ankle over the opposite knee. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
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