Damian
They flew Ivy in a week before the wedding.
It wasn’t a coincidence.
It wasn’t kindness.
It was strategy.
I knew it the second my mother mentioned the “special guests” arriving early. I knew it the moment I saw her step out of the car, one hand on her rounded stomach, the other clutching Josh’s arm like a lifeline.
She was no longer on bedrest, but the shadows under her eyes said she hadn’t been resting. Not really. She looked fragile, a little paler, but still impossibly beautiful. Strong. Quiet.
She didn't look at me as she passed in the corridor of my parents’ estate.
Josh did.
He gave me that calm, detached expression I’d grown to hate. Like he had nothing to prove, because Ivy had already made her decision.
But I knew better.
She hadn’t chosen him.
She’d chosen safe
