The Wrong Bride

Chapter Ten

She found the letter on a Thursday.

She hadn’t been snooping. She’d been looking for a pen in the hallway bureau when the envelope had come loose from a stack of papers and spilled out. It was from Gabriel Mendez — her father— and it was dated six months before the wedding.

She recognized the letterhead. She recognized her father’s handwriting.

She read it anyway.

It took her three times through to fully understand.

Her father had not merely proposed the merger. He had proposed the substitute. He had known Isabel wouldn’t go through with it. He had known, and he had told Julian’s lawyers, and there was a clause— she found it on the second page, dense and careful— that specified that a marriage to any Mendez daughter would satisfy the contract, and that if Isabel declined,the option should be offered to Cara , who had been described as reliable, capable, and unlikely to refuse.

Unlikely to refuse.

She put the letter back. She put everything back, carefully, exactly as she’d found it.

She went to the library and sat in the chair by the window for a very very long time waiting for Julian to come back home.