Chapter 6
PART 6
Grace woke to white light, antiseptic air, and the sound of someone praying badly.
At first she thought she was back in Dr. Bell’s office, hearing the sentence that had ended her old life. Then pain rolled through her body, deep and heavy, and she remembered the hallway. The gun. The safe-room door. Emma screaming.
She opened her eyes.
Nathan sat beside the bed in the mansion’s private medical suite, his suit jacket gone, white shirt wrinkled, sleeves stained dark. He looked like he had aged ten years in one night. His hands were clasped so tightly his knuckles had lost color.
The praying was coming from him.
Grace tried to smile. “You’re terrible at that.”
His head snapped up.
For one stunned second, the most dangerous man in Chicago looked helpless.
Then he reached for her hand like a drowning man.
“You’re awake.”
“The children?”
“Safe.” His voice was rough. “All of them. Because of you.”
Grace closed her eyes in relief.
“Elias Crowe?” she whispered.
Nathan’s expression emptied. “Gone.”
She did not ask for details.
The door opened before Nathan could say more. Emma rushed in, followed by Jack, Lily, and Noah. Marcus stood at the doorway, pretending not to wipe his eyes.
Emma stopped beside the bed, trembling. “You locked yourself out.”
Grace’s throat tightened. “I locked you in.”
“You could’ve died.”
“Yes.”
Emma let out a sound somewhere between anger and grief. “Don’t say it like that.”
Grace reached weakly for her. Emma collapsed against the bed, careful of the bandages, sobbing into Grace’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Emma cried. “For everything. For every horrible thing I said. I didn’t mean—”
“You meant some of it.”
Emma laughed through tears, then cried harder.
Grace stroked her hair. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” Emma lifted her face. “You took a bullet for me.”
Grace looked at each child. Jack stood silent, tears running down his cheeks. Lily clutched her lamb. Noah held the rescued dinosaur under one arm.
“That’s what mothers do,” Grace said.
Jack stepped forward. He took her hand with both of his.
“Mom,” he whispered.
The word moved through the room like sunlight.
Grace covered her mouth, but the sob escaped anyway. Lily climbed carefully onto the bed and tucked herself against Grace’s good side. Noah followed, placing the dinosaur on Grace’s chest like an offering.
Emma looked at Nathan. “Don’t ruin this.”
Nathan blinked. “Excuse me?”
“She’s ours,” Emma said fiercely. “Not staff. Not some woman you bought. Ours.”
Nathan’s eyes moved to Grace.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “She is.”
After the children left, Grace and Nathan sat in the hush left behind.
“You should not have been in that hallway,” he said.
“You told me to protect them.”
“I did not tell you to bleed for them.”
Grace looked at him. “Would Caroline have?”
The name hung between them.
For once, Nathan did not flinch from it.
“Yes,” he said. “She would have.”
“Then don’t insult me for doing the same.”
His mouth tightened, but not with anger. With feeling.
“I bought you because I thought you were safe,” he said. “No ambitions. No heirs. No threats.”
“I remember. You made it sound very romantic.”
A shadow of a smile touched his face, then vanished. “I was wrong.”
Grace looked away. “About which part?”
“All of it.”
Her breath caught.
Nathan stood and walked to the window. Snow covered the garden outside, smooth and untouched. When he spoke again, his voice was low.
“I thought blood made family dangerous. Blood made enemies target my children. Blood made men obsess over heirs. Blood made your parents sell you when your body did not serve them.” He turned back to her. “But you loved my children without blood. You chose them.”
Grace’s eyes burned.
Nathan approached the bed slowly. “And somehow, without asking, you made me choose life again.”
“Nathan.”
“I am not good at gentleness,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“I do not know how to be a husband to someone who deserves more than a cage.”
Grace’s pulse quickened.
“But if you stay,” he said, “you will never again be owned. Not by me. Not by your parents. Not by any man in any room.”
He removed a folded document from inside his vest and placed it on the blanket.
Grace opened it carefully.
Legal guardianship papers.
Her name beside Nathan’s.
Grace Holloway, co-guardian of Emma Vale, Jack Vale, Lily Vale, and Noah Vale.
Her hand shook. “You did this?”
“They asked for it.”
“They?”
“Emma drafted the demand. Jack corrected her grammar.”
Grace laughed, then winced from pain.
Nathan’s eyes softened. “There is more.”
He placed a second document beside the first.
A marriage license application.
Grace stared at it.
Nathan said quickly, “Not for ownership. Not for appearances. Not unless you choose it. But the world I live in respects certain titles. Wife is harder to remove than guardian. Mrs. Vale is harder to threaten than Miss Holloway.”
Grace looked up. “Is this strategy?”
“Yes.”
Disappointment flickered.
Then Nathan added, “And love.”
The word stunned them both.
He looked as surprised as she felt, as if it had escaped from a locked room inside him.
Grace whispered, “You love me?”
“I don’t know how to do it well,” he said. “But yes.”
Grace thought of the farmhouse. The slap. The stage. The spotlight. The word barren thrown like garbage at her feet. She thought of Noah’s arms around her neck, Lily’s perfume-scented pillow, Jack’s books, Emma’s fierce apologies.
“I can’t give you children,” she said, old pain speaking before truth could stop it.
Nathan sat beside her. “Grace, you already did.”
She cried then, not because she was broken, but because for the first time, someone saw the pieces and did not ask her to apologize for them.
She placed her hand over the marriage license.
“I’ll choose,” she said.
May you like
Nathan waited.
“I choose them,” Grace whispered. “And I choose you.”
