Everyone laughed when they sent an eighty-year-old man and his eighteen-year-old wife off to spend their wedding night together. “Let’s see if Grandpa can make it until morning,” one relative joked through a burst of laughter. He didn’t respond. He simply picked up his old briefcase and closed the door. When six relatives opened it the next morning, they stopped laughing when they discovered what he had been protecting all night.

Walter raised his head slowly and locked eyes with his nephew.

“Before you make another pathetic joke about this young girl, ask yourselves why a man had to marry her just to stop dangerous people from hunting her down,” Walter said coldly.

And at that precise moment, none of the family members could possibly imagine what secrets were still waiting to be discovered.

PART 2

Six months before that chaotic wedding night, Chloe was living quietly with her sick father, Thomas Bennett, in an old residential apartment in Cincinnati.

Thomas had advanced lung cancer and knew deep down that he did not have much time left in this world.