LUCAS’S POV
The blue light from the projector screen was a cold, surgical blade, dissecting the room’s dignity in seconds.
I sat motionless, my spine a rigid line against the velvet chair, while the world I had spent years mastering dissolved into a cacophony of gasps and camera shutters. On the screen, the girl I was supposed to marry in less than twenty hours was being dragged through a police precinct like a common criminal.
Ava Hart.
The name I had just defended was now a lead weight, threatening to pull the Carter empire into the depths of a public relations nightmare. My eyes tracked the grainy footage, the matted hair, the tattered coat, the way she looked at the camera with the hollowed-out stare of the defeated.
Beside me, I felt her tremble. It wasn't a delicate shiver, it w
