Chương 4 - The Secret Beneath the Garden
The question haunted Damian.
Had Delara been chosen before he ever met her?
He hated the thought.
He hated anything that made their love seem less real.
He ordered an investigation.
Not into Delara.
Into the Whitcomb family.
Elias returned two days later.
“There are gaps.”
“What kind?”
“Your grandfather's property records disappear for nine years.”
“Can we recover them?”
“Maybe.”
“Do it.”
At Magnolia Hollow, Delara discovered something else.
Her grandfather had hidden a key inside an old wooden flower box.
She found it while reorganizing the greenhouse.
The key was small.
Iron.
Like the ring.
She brought it to Damian.
“Do you know what this opens?”
He studied it.
“No.”
Ruth did.
“The old root cellar.”
Delara stared.
“There is a root cellar?”
“Under the carriage house.”
They went down together.
The cellar was damp and dusty.
A metal door waited at the back.
The key fit.
Inside was a room filled with boxes.
Old letters.
Ledgers.
Maps.
Photographs.
Delara opened the first box.
She found a picture of her grandfather standing beside Damian's father.
And beside them was a woman Delara did not know.
Celeste Rourke.
Damian stared.
“My father knew her.”
“Who was she?”
“Marcus Rourke's sister.”
Ruth's face changed.
“You know the Rourkes?”
“I know enough.”
Delara looked between them.
“What happened?”
Damian didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Ruth whispered, “She disappeared.”
The letters revealed a different story.
Celeste had wanted to leave the criminal world.
Damian's father had promised to help her.
Thomas Whitcomb had helped hide the arrangements.
Marcus had discovered their plan.
Then Celeste vanished.
Everyone assumed she had been killed.
But the letters suggested otherwise.
“She might be alive,” Delara whispered.
Damian looked at her.
“That would change everything.”
A sound came from above.
Footsteps.
Damian immediately raised a hand.
Everyone became silent.
The footsteps stopped.
Then came the sound of breaking glass.
Damian rushed upstairs.
A man was running across the garden.
Damian chased him.
The stranger reached the gate.
Two of Damian's men caught him.
They dragged him back.
Damian looked at his face.
The man smiled.
“You're too late.”
“Too late for what?”
The man laughed.
“Your wife already has the key.”
Damian froze.
The man suddenly bit down.
Elias grabbed him.
But it was too late.
He had swallowed something.
Within minutes, he was unconscious.
Delara ran toward them.
“What happened?”
Damian turned.
His eyes were cold.
“He was sent to scare you.”
“For the key?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the iron key in her hand.
“Then this is why they want me.”
Damian pulled her close.
“From now on, you do not go anywhere without security.”
“No.”
“Delara.”
“No.”
She looked into his eyes.
“I will not live as a prisoner because someone else decided I should be afraid.”
His jaw tightened.
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“And I am trying to keep myself.”
He went silent.
She placed her hand against his chest.
“If we are going to survive this, you cannot turn love into a cage.”
The words hit him.
Because she was right.
The next morning, Damian changed the security plan.
Delara would learn everything.
She would have access to every document.
No secrets.
No locked rooms.
No hidden decisions.
Together they studied the files.
One name kept appearing.
Harold Mercer.
An attorney who had once represented both the Vales and the Rourkes.
They tracked him to a retirement community outside Savannah.
He was eighty-four.
And when he saw the iron ring on Delara's finger, he began crying.
“You found it.”
Delara looked confused.
“Found what?”
“The promise.”
Damian stepped forward.
“What are you talking about?”
Mercer looked at him.
“Your father told me that one day a Whitcomb woman would wear an iron ring.”
Damian's expression hardened.
“My father knew I would marry her?”
“No.”
Mercer shook his head.
“He knew he owed your family.”
“For what?”
Mercer reached into a drawer and removed an old photograph.
A young Damian.
A young Delara.
Taken at Magnolia Hollow.
Years before either could remember.
Delara stared.
“That can't be.”
Mercer smiled sadly.
“You were children.”
Damian looked at Delara.
They had met before.
May you like
Neither remembered.
And suddenly the love that had seemed impossible began to feel like something written into a history neither had known existed.
