“Noah?” I asked.
He blinked, as if snapping back into himself. He folded the letter carefully, too carefully, and set it down on the box with trembling precision.
He dragged a hand through his hair, exhaling a shaky breath that sounded more like disbelief than anything else.
“So he had a child,” he said slowly, as if the words didn’t feel real in his mouth. “A child my grandmother never knew about.”
I felt him go rigid beside me.
He kept staring at the folded letter like it might rearrange itself and make more sense the second time.
“My dad spent his whole life believing we were the only family Edward had,” he whispered. “That this place…” His gaze swept the study, the shelves, the estate beyond the windows. “…belonged to us because it always had.”
He shook his head, stunned. “But if Edward had a child with T… then someone out there has a stronger claim. Stronger than mine. Stronger than my father’s.”
The words landed heavy, sinking between us.
I turned towards him fully.
“Look, we don’t know what happened to this child.”
He blinked at me, eyes dazed. “Holly, don’t you understand? There could be a whole branch of the family out there. Someone who could walk in tomorrow and… take it all.”
He exhaled unevenly, the fear finally breaking the surface.
“The estate. The land. Everything.” His expression hardened as he snapped his fingers, “Just like that.”
I scooted closer without thinking, my knee pressing gently into his.
“Noah…” I said firmly, “no one is walking in here and taking anything from you.”
He shook his head once, not fully convinced.
“You don’t know that.” he whispered. “If this is real, then what? What happens to everything my dad sacrificed? What happens to everything I built?”
His voice cracked at the end, tiny but unmistakable.
He finally looked at me then, and for the first time since I met him, he wasn’t the confident, grounded man who steadied everyone else.
He wasn’t the owner of a thriving estate.
He was a man suddenly terrified of losing the only solid ground he’d ever had.
My mouth opened, ready to reassure, to comfort, to promise him everything would be okay, but the words… weren’t there.
Because I didn’t know what to say.
Nothing I could offer would change what he’d just learned.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As I reached the private tasting room, the noise spilling into the hallway was quite concerning.
High-pitched, champagne-fuelled, and unmistakably the sound of wealthy women letting loose.
There was also music, loud, unapologetic, aggressively cheesy hens-night classics. The kind of songs that involved clapping in unison, yelling the words, and at least one spontaneous scream every chorus. I’m pretty sure I heard “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” followed by something with an alarming number of “WOO!”s, and then the unmistakable beat of a remix no one over the age of thirty would willingly admit to liking.
I stepped inside and nearly got blinded by rose-gold sparkle.
