Chapter 25
I whispered:
“What way?”
“Like you belong to me.”
Silence.
He took my hand.
“If you ever let me love you again, I want to do it while remembering you belong entirely to yourself.”
The world seemed very quiet.
Five years earlier, I had left Declan Hawthorne because I believed remaining married to him meant disappearing.
Now the man beside me was asking for nothing.
No promise.
No ring.
No ownership.
Just possibility.
So I kissed him.
Not because fate demanded it.
Not because three children magically repaired our marriage.
Not because suffering had erased the past.
I kissed him because I wanted to.
And when I pulled away, he looked stunned.
“Don’t ruin it by talking.”
He immediately closed his mouth.
Progress.
Two years later, I stood inside a converted industrial warehouse outside Savannah.
Once, Hawthorne Development had used the land beside it to bury toxic chemicals.
Now workers were restoring the wetlands.
The Carter Environmental Restoration Foundation had committed $110 million to clean contaminated communities across Georgia.
My father’s hidden trust had grown to more than seven hundred million.
I used much of it exactly as he intended.
Declan worked with the foundation too.
Not as CEO.
Not as billionaire savior.
Mostly as the guy who understood how corporations hid ugly things inside beautiful spreadsheets.
He was very useful.
Our daughters were seven.
Loud.
Brilliant.
Completely different from one another.
Sophie wanted to become a judge.
Lila wanted to design roller coasters.
Harper wanted to “save every animal except mosquitoes.”
That afternoon, the girls ran through the restored field chasing butterflies.
Declan stood beside me.
There was a simple wedding band on his hand.
Mine matched.
We had remarried six months earlier.
Small ceremony.
Thirty guests.
No newspapers.
No Hawthorne estate.
The girls were our bridesmaids.
Amelia cried louder than anyone.
I had kept my name.
Cassidy Carter.
Declan had not complained once.
Across the field, Sophie shouted:
“Daddy!”
He immediately looked.
She waved.
He waved back.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message from Agent Hale.
I opened it.
We found one more document in Charles Hawthorne’s sealed archive.
You should see it.
I stared at the screen.
Declan noticed.
“What?”
“Apparently your family has one final nightmare.”
“Absolutely not.”
I laughed.
Two days later, we met Hale.
He placed a document on the table.
“I debated whether this mattered,” he said.
“That introduction is terrifying,” Declan replied.