All Chapters of Torn Between Vows: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Nobody moved for a long moment. Catherine could hear the ticking of an antique clock somewhere in the conservatory, absurdly loud in the tension of the silence.Catherine watched Harry's face carefully, waiting for the practiced deflection she'd come to expect from him whenever a conversation ventured too close to something real. It didn't come. He sat with his grandmother's question hanging in the air between them, and for the first time since Catherine had met him, he looked like a man choosing honesty simply because he was tired of the alternative."I'm not naive, Harry," Victoria said, finally breaking it. "I raised you. I know exactly how you operate when you're protecting yourself. I saw the way you looked at Catherine at that first dinner, and I thought, either my grandson has finally allowed himself to fall for someone, or he's found the most convincing actress in Manhattan." She allowed herself a thin, humorless smile. "I confess I suspected the truth was somewhere in between

Catherine stared at Harry's phone screen like the words might rearrange themselves into something less devastating if she looked long enough. Robert Cho. The man who'd drafted their contract at midnight, who'd added a therapy clause because he cared about protecting her, who'd witnessed both their signatures with the dry humor of someone who'd seen every version of human foolishness and still showed up to do his job well."There has to be a mistake," she said, even though she could hear how thin the words sounded.She thought back to every interaction she'd had with Robert since the night at the Meridian, searching for some sign she might have missed, some tell that would have warned her he was capable of this. She remembered him adding the therapy clause without being asked, his dry observation that clarity prevented ninety percent of future problems, the careful way he'd witnessed both signatures like the moment actually mattered to him beyond the billable hour. None of it had felt

"That's not possible," Catherine said, reading the headline again, willing the words to mean something other than what they clearly meant. "He was there when Lily went into labor. He told everyone the baby was his. He named her, for God's sake, Grace is on the birth certificate with his last name."Her mind flashed back to the hospital corridor two nights earlier, Marcus's absence conspicuous even then, the way Rebecca had mentioned him only in passing, distracted by her own fear for Lily. Catherine had assumed his absence was simple cowardice, unwillingness to face the family he'd betrayed while his daughter fought her way into the world. Now she wondered if it had been something else entirely, the first move in a calculation that had been running in the background the whole time."Apparently he's changed his mind," Jamie said grimly, scrolling through the article. "This says the filing happened an hour ago, right after the hospital released mother and baby. Someone leaked it to pres

Catherine felt the pieces sliding into a shape uglier than she'd anticipated. "So Sinclair didn't just compromise Robert. He hired an actual photographer to infiltrate the gala and document us signing that contract, months before he ever needed the leverage."She thought about how confident she'd felt walking into that gala, how certain she'd been that the reckless plan was entirely her own idea, born from a single devastating afternoon. It was strange and slightly nauseating to consider that somewhere in the crowd that night, unseen and unremarkable, someone had already been watching, already documenting, long before she'd ever understood the stakes of what she was starting."That's what it looks like," Nina said. "Which means this wasn't a reaction to anything you and Harry did. This was premeditated from almost the very beginning. Someone planned to have evidence ready the moment it became useful."Catherine's mind raced backward, trying to remember every private moment of the last

The wedding, against every reasonable expectation, still happened fourteen days later.Getting there had required a level of coordination Catherine had never attempted even for her most demanding clients, an entire ceremony built and rebuilt three times over in absolute secrecy, guest lists trimmed to only the people whose loyalty had been tested and proven beyond doubt. She'd spent more hours on security logistics than flower arrangements in the final week, a strange inversion of everything her career had trained her to prioritize, and yet somehow, standing here now, none of that mattered as much as she'd expected it to.They'd relocated the venue twice in the final week, told almost no one the true location until forty eight hours before, and replaced every member of the household staff with vetted temporary security personnel, a level of paranoia that had felt excessive right up until the moment it had proven entirely justified when a second listening device turned up hidden inside