Chapter 3 — Welcome Home, Tanith Bellamy

Tanith

The iron gates of the Bellamy estate swung open without a sound. The Maybach glided up the tree-lined driveway.

I leaned my head against the headrest and looked out at Bellamy House. The stone mansion stood unchanged against the rainy skyline. Five years ago I had walked down those front steps with my chin high, leaving behind my heritage, my title, and my family's protection for a man who had left me to bleed alone in an operating room.

The car stopped under the portico. The chauffeur opened my door, held the umbrella over me, and guided me inside.

The doors closed behind us, cutting off the storm.

Maxen Bellamy stood near the base of the staircase.

My grandfather hadn't aged a day. Silver hair pulled back with the same precision, dark eyes as sharp as ever. He didn't rush forward. He didn't cry out or offer any dramatic welcome. He simply stood in his charcoal suit, hands resting on the handle of his cane, watching me cross the floor.

His gaze moved over my pale face, the way I held my coat against my abdomen, and stopped on the blue hospital bracelet still on my wrist.

He took one measured step forward. The silence stretched between us, heavy with five years of unspoken things.

"Did he do that?" he asked. His voice was low and even.

"No," I whispered. "Emergency surgery. A ruptured ovarian cyst. Internal bleeding."

His expression didn't soften, but a cold stillness settled over his features.

"Then why wasn't he beside you when it happened?"

The question landed hard. I opened my mouth to explain—to repeat Caspian's excuses or Vesper's performance at the gallery—but nothing came. There was no answer that could excuse a man abandoning his wife on an operating table.

He watched me for a long moment, reading the truth in my eyes.

He raised one hand slightly. Mr. Vance, the butler who had served the family for three decades, stepped forward from the shadows.

"Prepare the master wing suite," he said. "Tell the staff that Miss Tanith has returned. She is not visiting. She is home."

"Right away, sir." Vance bowed and hurried up the stairs.

Only when we were alone did my composure break.

The ice that had held me together through the confrontation with Caspian melted. Tears spilled over as a sob tore out of me. I clutched my abdomen as pain—physical and otherwise—ripped through me.

"He chose her," I said. "I was in the OR… I was begging them to find him… and he was holding Vesper's hand because she cut her wrist at a gallery. He chose her over me, Grandfather."

I waited for the I told you so. I waited for him to tear Caspian apart, to call him an opportunist or a coward.

He did none of those things. He didn't even say Caspian's name.

That silence hurt worse than any insult. It proved that Caspian was so insignificant to the head of the Bellamy family that he wasn't worth hating.

He stepped closer. He didn't hug me—he had never been a man of easy affection—but he placed a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"Have you eaten tonight, Tanith?" he asked.

I shook my head, half-laughing through the tears. Five years of broken promises, a ruined marriage, and all he asked was whether I had eaten.

Behind the simple question was the same unwavering foundation that had raised me. He had never accepted Caspian. From the day I brought him home, he had treated him with cold detachment. He refused every invitation to Rourke House. He blocked every attempt Caspian made to secure open investments from the Bellamy Group. When Caspian pushed for joint ventures, he shut him down without hesitation.

Five years ago, standing in this same foyer, I had screamed at him for being cruel and unsupportive. I had begged him to give Caspian a chance.

His answer had been one devastating line: "I do not receive men who make my granddaughter smaller."

I had hated him for it. I thought it was arrogant elitism—an old billionaire who couldn't stand his heiress choosing a man from modest beginnings.

Standing here now, clutching my surgical wounds in the house I had abandoned, I finally understood. He had never cared about Caspian's background. He had seen straight through the brittle ego. He had known Caspian was a man who would demand I destroy my own light so he wouldn't have to stand in my shadow.

"Go upstairs, Tanith," he said. "Vance has a tray prepared. Rest. Tomorrow the rest of the world can be dealt with."

It was past three in the morning when the painkillers began to wear off, leaving a dull, persistent ache in my core.

Unable to settle, I pulled on a robe and stepped into the hallway. The house was silent except for the rain against the windows.

I was heading toward the kitchen for water when a muffled, wet sound stopped me outside the doors of his study.

A thin line of light spilled under the door. From inside came a deep, violent cough—harsh and body-racking, muffled as if someone were pressing a cloth to their mouth to hide it.

Panic spiked. I pushed the door open without knocking.

"Grandfather?"

The coughing stopped at once.

He sat behind his desk, lit only by a single banker's lamp. His chest heaved as he fought for breath. His right hand slipped something into the top drawer and shoved it shut with a sharp click.

When he looked at me, his face was pale, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

"Tanith," he said, voice raspy before he cleared his throat. "Why are you out of bed? You should be resting."

My eyes went to his trembling hand, then to the closed drawer. For a split second I had seen the white linen in his palm—stained with a fresh smear of blood.

"What was that?" I took a step closer. "You're sick. What was that coughing?"

His expression hardened into the familiar mask of authority. He leaned back in his chair.

"It is a lingering autumn chill. Nothing more." He took a slow sip of water. "You are exhausted and in pain. Do not invent tragedies where there are none."

Every instinct told me something was wrong. The blood, the tremor, the sweat—it wasn't a cold.

But my body was still wrecked from surgery, and my mind was too battered by the wreckage of the day to push past his walls. I wanted to believe him. I needed the last solid thing in my life to stay solid.

"Go back to bed, child," he said, voice softening a fraction. "You are a Bellamy. We don't get shaken so easily. Gonget some rest."

I nodded, backed out, and shut the door.