The scandal did not die overnight, but Declan was as good as his word. Within days, the true story began to leak into the same pages that had hurt her. The mix-up at the clinic, the insemination without anyone's consent, the name Valerie slowly pulled from every story that had once put her at Declan's side. It was not clean and it was not fast, but it was the truth, and the truth had finally begun to catch up.
Makayla watched it unfold from the safety of the estate, a woman at the center of a war being fought in her name, and she carried a heavy gratitude she did not know how to hold. No one had ever fought for her before. She had spent her whole life being the one who stood up, the one who held the sky, the one who never put the load down. And now someone was holding it for her, and the
