The days slipped past like silk through fingers—quietly, quickly, beautifully. And before I knew it, the weddings were only one week away.
One week.
Seven days until the string quartets tuned their final notes. Until six women stepped into dresses that had taken months to design and longer to perfect. Until I delivered on the most high-profile, high-security wedding event of my career, all under the roof of a family whose name whispered through Charleston like a storm wind behind a stained-glass door.
And somehow, in the eye of all that pressure, I’d fallen in love.
With the man I never expected to trust. The one who’d once stalked shadows in my dreams. Who watched from the periphery and now held me close like he was trying to memorize the shape of my heart from the inside.
Silas Dane loved me.
He’d said it once—raw, breaking, undone—and I’d said it back more times than I could count since. In whispers againsthis skin. In gasps between kisses. In silence, too, in the way I reached for him first thing in the morning, in the way my fingers gripped his shirt when the nightmares came back.
It didn’t make any of this easier.
The pressure. The weight. The war still waiting on the edge of everything.
But it made it bearable.
Mostly.
Because there were still things he hadn’t told me. About Department 77. About his mother. About what came next after the weddings, when we wouldn’t have a convenient excuse to orbit each other.
I hadn’t told the others about the tracker. Or the men at the pool. Or the truth about Monte.
Monte.
Bea and I spoke his name softly as we checked into the spa at Kiawah Island. The others didn’t know the full story—not yet—but they felt the absence just the same. They didn’t mention him directly, not because they’d forgotten, but because the grief still laced the air. The missing chair. The quiet toast. The heavy pause when someone laughed too loud.
“He’d want us to keep going,” Bea said as we unpacked in our shared suite, her voice steady even though her hands trembled slightly over the itinerary binder she refused to let out of her sight. “He’d want this to go off without a hitch.”
“He made sure it would,” I said quietly. “All of it. He laid the groundwork for the security. Dominion Hall’s team is stepping in now. Silas’s people.”
Bea nodded and glanced out the arched window, the ocean just visible between the dunes, its morning shimmer soft as sea glass.
I didn’t tell her I still hadn’t hired a new head of security in Atlanta. Because the truth I hadn’t dared say aloud yet—maybe even to myself—was that I didn’t want to go back.
Not really.
Not without Silas.
If he was here, in Charleston, at Dominion Hall, then maybe that’s where I belonged, too.
But there wasn’t time to spiral. Not today.
Today was for the bachelorette weekend.
Kiawah Island was wrapped in light. The spa resort where we stayed had been entirely rented out for the event—twelve ocean-facing suites, a private saltwater infinity pool, a lavender steam room, two round-the-clock estheticians, and enough monogrammed silk robes to start our own cult.
Each of the brides had her own suite, with rooms assigned for bridesmaids, sisters, and friends. I was tucked into a corner suite with Bea, which gave me just enough privacy to scream into a pillow if the schedule unraveled.
Unseen but never far, a small team of Dominion’s security operatives kept quiet watch from the periphery of the island grounds. I spotted one of them near the edge of the dunes at dawn, pretending to stretch. Another lingered near the golf carts with a clipboard that didn’t seem to hold anything. The Dane brothers would never have let us come unprotected. Not now. Not after Monte.
And honestly? I was glad.
We had two full days of pre-wedding indulgence lined up, and I’d approved the entire itinerary.
Day One:
