Claire sat in her car outside the Cole Industries building for seven minutes before she trusted her hands enough to drive.
Marcus Cole.
Not as a villain. She did not leap to that. She had known this man long enough to know that his capacity for harm almost always came from the same place as his capacity for love, from the absolute conviction that he knew best what the people around him needed, even when they had not asked.
He had hired Patricia Webb. He had pointed Sarah at her. Not to destroy Nathaniel. Not to destroy Claire. To stop the marriage before it became real, before his son gave his heart to another person who might leave, because Marcus Cole had watched his son build walls after Vanessa and had decided, in his own terrible way, that walls were safer than windows.
She drove
