The fear of losing the thing she had been working toward.

“Then you’ll regret it,” she said, and her voice dropped into something harder and older than any voice she’d used before.

“I have signed contracts in both our names.

The venue, the designers, the honeymoon villa — nearly nine hundred thousand dollars.

Cancel now, and your family pays.”

She meant it as a threat, a trump card, the financial hostage that would force him to go through with it.

She had no idea that she had just, on tape, confirmed the last thing I needed confirmed.

Because the money in those contracts was not what she thought it was — and the moment she reached for it as a weapon, she walked directly into the trap that had been waiting, quietly, since the day Verena first came to me.

Chapter 14 — The Account

Weeks earlier, Sabine had persuaded Gabriel to authorize her to manage all the wedding expenses through a single special account.