Todos los capítulos de Torn Between Vows: Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

The implication settled over the room like a physical weight. Catherine felt her skin prickle with a specific kind of horror, the realization that the night she'd believed was the single reckless, spontaneous decision of her life had, from someone else's vantage point, been unfolding inside a carefully constructed stage.She thought back to that night in vivid, painful detail, the champagne stain spreading across her dress, the stranger's voice apologizing before she'd even looked up. Every detail had felt so genuinely random at the time, so entirely her own choice, that the possibility of an unseen architect behind even the smallest pieces of it made her feel almost dizzy with retroactive violation."That's not possible," she said, even as every piece of evidence suggested otherwise. "I decided to crash that gala on impulse. I didn't even know which hotel it was being held at until I drove past the banner.""I believe you," Harry said quickly, reaching for her hand. "This isn't about

The drive back to the city felt longer than any Catherine had endured in weeks, every red light an agony, every mile another opportunity for her imagination to conjure worse scenarios than the one already unfolding. Harry drove himself this time, refusing to wait for a car service, his knuckles white against the steering wheel as he navigated the late night roads with a focused intensity that left no room for conversation.Catherine watched the city lights blur past the window, her mind cycling through every possible outcome, each one worse than the last. She thought of Grace's tiny fingers curling around her own during the hospital visit weeks earlier, the fragile trust of a newborn who had no idea what kind of world she'd been born into. The thought of anyone threatening that innocence, using it as leverage in a war that had nothing to do with her, made something fierce and protective rise in Catherine's chest that she hadn't fully anticipated feeling toward a niece she'd known for

Catherine forced herself to think clearly despite the exhaustion and fear pressing down on every part of her, drawing on the same resourcefulness that had carried her through years of managing brides in crisis, vendors falling through at the last minute, entire weddings threatening collapse hours before the ceremony. There was always another path forward, even when the obvious one closed. She simply had to find it.She thought of every impossible situation she'd navigated over the years of running Ever After Events, the caterer who'd canceled four hours before a five hundred person reception, the flower delivery lost somewhere between Amsterdam and JFK, the groom who'd developed sudden cold feet twenty minutes before walking down the aisle. Every single time, panic had accomplished nothing, while calm, creative problem solving had somehow found a way through. She refused to believe this crisis, however much larger the stakes, operated by fundamentally different rules."What if we don'

Catherine felt the floor tilt beneath her for the second time that day, the implications of Jamie's discovery settling into place with sickening clarity. "She works for Sinclair. The mother of your possible son works for the man who's been trying to destroy us.""That can't be a coincidence," Harry said, his voice tight with barely controlled fury. "Nothing about this entire situation has been a coincidence."Jamie was already pulling up more information on his phone, scrolling rapidly. "She started there fourteen months ago. Executive assistant in the corporate communications division. Before that, she worked for a marketing firm in Seattle for three years, exactly matching the timeline in the letter she sent you.""So either Sinclair recruited her specifically because of her connection to me," Harry said slowly, "or he discovered the connection after hiring her and recognized an opportunity.""Does it matter which?" Catherine asked, her voice sharper than she intended. "Either way, t

Catherine read the fabricated quote three times, her hands trembling with a fury she hadn't expected to feel this intensely. The words attributed to her were cruel in their precision, cherry picked phrases about betrayal and regret assembled to sound plausible enough that anyone unfamiliar with her actual voice might believe she'd spoken them.She thought of every genuine conversation she'd had about Oliver in the days since discovering him, the fierce protectiveness that had settled into her chest the moment she'd watched him show her his dinosaur toys, and felt a fresh wave of violation seeing that authentic emotion twisted into something so deliberately cruel. It wasn't enough for Sinclair to attack their marriage through legitimate means. He needed to manufacture doubt from nothing, to plant seeds of regret in her own voice that she'd never actually felt."He's trying to publish something under my name," Catherine said, turning the phone toward Harry. "A fake statement, ready to g