Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Three

Celeste’s POV

I thought I was prepared.

I’d rehearsed this day in my head a hundred times, how I would walk into the exhibition we’d spent months preparing for, how I would stand tall beside my team, how I would breathe knowing my work was finally out in the world.

But nothing could’ve prepared me for the moment I stepped inside the grand hall and saw him.

Nicholas Grant.

My father.

Standing under the chandelier light with the elegance of someone who belonged to every room he entered, wearing the name of a man I’d never met and the face of the man my mother had lost.

He wasn’t alone.

He had a wife. And two children, maybe ten, maybe twelve years old, clinging to him like he’d never once disappeared from their world.

My breath stopped.

I felt Ryan’s fingers brush mine, sensing the shift in my body before a single word left my mouth.

“Celeste?”

I couldn’t answer him.

My heart was malfunctioning, tripping over itself, trying to beat around the shards suddenly slicing through it.

Nicholas’