Page 126 of Discretion at Its Finest

My breath shook. “He might hate me now,” I whispered.

“Then he’ll hate you,” he said simply. “But he will not forget you. He will not erase you. And when he’s ready, when the world allows it, they will know the truth. And I will bring you home,” Reid whispered. “To them. To yourself. Even if I have to tear down every dynasty in this country to do it.”

My vision blurred. “Reid…”

He kissed the tear before it fell. Then another as my arms wrapped around his neck. He lifted me off the ground, his arms locked around me, lifting me just slightly off my feet as the waves crashed on the shore.

“Je t’aime,”I whispered.

He held me tighter.

“Je t’aime encore plus, mon amour.”

For a fleeting moment, I let myself believe him. Believe that one day, this wouldn’t hurt so much… that one day, my children would know I never stopped trying and the world would let me be their mother again.

But that day was not today.

The months had gone by as normal. Traveling with Reid across the globe had become more of a habit over the years. Currently, we were en route to Shanghai, and I was roaming the cabin of the private jet as we crossed over the Pacific.

The crew on board were tidying up after breakfast and Reid seemed nowhere to be found. It wasn’t like he could go far; he was probably in the cockpit talking to the pilots.

I walked over to where he’d been sitting, eyeing the stack of contracts Alexander had given him. His laptop was open, pages and pages of legal jargon for him to review on display.

His tablet sat opened, unlocked, and my eyebrows furrowed gently as I looked it over. I’d almost walked past it entirely… but something made me stop.

A wedding photograph of a couple. The woman dressed in white, her dark brown hair in an elegant updo. Beside her a man,arm wrapped around her waist. He held the growing bump that was her stomach.

Her features… her mouth, nose, smile… all of it seemed too familiar. Almost like a mirror. I reached for the tablet before my mind could register it.

And suddenly… the breath from my lungs felt like it had been knocked out of me.

It was…her.

Brielle…

My daughter… my baby… full-grown, glowing, radiant in a wedding gown. I felt my legs go weak as I sat. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. It didn’t feel real. Didn’t compute to me that the baby I held had grown up.

She looked so… happy. Truly happy.

My hand flew to my mouth before the sob even left me.

And I hadn’t seen her walk down the aisle. I wasn’t there to fix her veil or hold her hand when she found out she was expecting. I had missed every version of her. The girl she was, the woman she became, the mother she was about to be.

My hand clamped around my mouth, shock curling in my throat.

Before I could even think, the tablet was pulled from my hand. I looked up immediately, watching Reid turning it off before he set it to the side and walked towards the jet’s bedroom suite.

I stood abruptly. “Reid,” I called after him, watching him from behind as he rubbed his temples.

“You weren’t supposed to see that.”

My brows furrowed as I stopped in the door frame, watching him run a stressed hand through his hair. “I wasn’t supposed to see our daughter? What does that mean?”

“None of this was supposed to reach you,” he said, clipped.

“Well I didn’t leave the screen open on display for the world to see, you did. And why do you get to see her and I don’t…? Andwhy is she in a news article? How did you even know about this? Who is the man she’s marrying?”

“This is exactly why I didn’t show you,” he murmured, “exactly why I keep certain things off your plate. You’re not ready for it.”