They’ll never know the truth of this.
Chapter 31
Charlotte Gallagher
The first thingI notice is that it’s morning.
Before I even open my eyes, I know Dane’s still here. After fourteen years together, some part of me always knows when he’s beside me.
He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.
I push up onto my elbow and look at him—the set of his jaw, the way he’s holding himself.
He’s tense.
“How long have you been awake?”
“A while.”
I shift, settling across his chest with my chin resting there. He looks down at me, and something in his expression softens.
“You never stay in bed this late.”
“Sometimes I do,” he says. “When I feel like lying here and watching you sleep. Or when I need to think.”
I tilt my head, studying him. “What’s on your mind this morning?”
He exhales slowly. “Everything. Whether there’s something we’ve missed. Some move we haven’t seen yet. A way to make this chaos stop.” A small pause. “Didn’t come up with an answer. But I did come up with something that might help for now.”
He’s been carrying the weight of this for weeks. Of course he’s trying to solve it.
“Okay. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“We need to get off this property. Not just out for a bit. I mean properly away—out of Brisbane, away from the fence and cameras. All of it. We need to breathe, Charlotte. If we don’t, something’s going to give.”
I hold his gaze. “What are you thinking?”
“A yacht of our own.”
That pulls my attention in completely.
“Tell me more.”
“We’ve got the money, and nothing is holding us here. There’s no reason we can’t.”
“We’d need Grandad to walk us through how to actually buy something like that.”
“Which he’d happily do, I’m sure.”
I nod. “He would. I’m sure of it.”
“Nothing massive. Something we can handle ourselves. No staff. Just us and open water.”
Something in me lifts.
“Yeah?”
“It means we can leave whenever we want,” he says. “If things get like this again, we go. No asking. No waiting. Just... gone.” He watches me. “I’ll need to train properly. Revisit everything Dad taught me. Do it right.”
