No one is ever going to touch you again.”

“It was Delilah,” she said, and her voice shook so hard the words nearly came apart.

“My aunt.

She did this to me.”

And slowly, in pieces, she told me why.

For months, Delilah had been pushing her to marry a man named Wayne Vance — had promised Wayne control of Vivienne’s late mother’s land if he would agree to the match.

And when Vivienne had told her, plainly, that she was going to marry me instead, and claim her legal inheritance the moment the ceremony was done, Delilah had not argued, or wept, or raged.