“They probably told you I’m unbearable.”
“I’ve heard many things,” he said. “I would rather know you before believing them.”
It was not love, but no one had ever spoken to Rosalie without mockery or pity. She accepted because she needed to escape her father’s control.
Her mother, Lorelei, had died twelve years earlier after falling from the veranda of their lake house. Police called it an accident, but Rosalie never believed that.
Afterward, Emmett kept her isolated through paid doctors, powerful medication, and false claims that she was emotionally unstable.
The night before her wedding, Rosalie found a tiny key hidden inside her mother’s sewing box. She believed it opened a locked archive Emmett had guarded for years.
She stitched the key into her wedding corset.
Hours later, two of her father’s men searched her bedroom, demanding to know what she had taken. They found nothing.
During the marriage signing, Emmett placed his hand heavily on her shoulder for the cameras.
Rosalie recoiled so violently that the pen fell from her fingers.
