“That’s right. We don’t need this marriage tie. Lila, you’re our treasure, the Lane family’s jewel. You deserve to marry for love.”
I lowered my gaze, my eyes resting on Lucas Vaughn’s business card.
“Love?”
“Brother, if I were such a love-addled fool, how could I inherit Father’s mantle?”
My eyes hardened.
“Lucas Vaughn. I’ll marry him.”
That evening, I sat in the garden gazebo reading.
Adrian arrived with six of my brothers. Stella trailed close behind.
I’d heard that on the very night of his return, Adrian moved out of the room beside mine—
claiming Stella needed peace to carry her child, and he would care for her.
“Take it out on me, but don’t trouble Stella,” he said.
After learning I was Stella’s savior, Adrian’s expression softened, though his eyes still carried suspicion.
I smiled faintly, studying him in silence.
These five years had been cruel to him.
I heard he was ambushed during his mission, tumbling off a cliff.
By rights, he should have died.
But fate spared him—Stella had found him at the bottom.
A bodyguard handed me file after file, detailing Adrian’s years away.
He and Stella had built a cabin in the woods and lived there for two years.