Chapter 28
Alexander knew something was wrong before the estate manager spoke.
The house was too quiet.
Not the old silence he had lived with for years. This was different. It contained absence.
Grace’s shoes were gone from beside the side entrance. Her scarf no longer hung over the back of the library chair. The ridiculous floral mug she used every morning was missing from the kitchen.
“Where is my wife?”
The manager hesitated.
That hesitation was answer enough to turn Alexander’s blood cold.
He found the papers in the library.
Dissolution agreement.
Signed.
Grace Zane.
Her rings lay on top.
For a long time, he did not move.
Ethan entered behind him, saw the desk, and stopped.
“General—”
“Leave.”
“Sir.”
“Now.”
The door shut.
Alexander picked up the wedding band first.
It was warm from nothing. Small enough to disappear inside his palm.
He had faced gunfire with a clearer mind than he had now.
“You fool.”
Eleanor’s voice came from the doorway.
He did not turn.
“Not now, Grandmother.”
“Especially now.”
She crossed the room slowly with her cane.
“You gave that girl security, money, doctors, guards, a house. You gave her everything you understood how to give.”
Alexander stared at the signature.
“It wasn’t enough.”
“No. Because she needed the one thing you kept treating like classified information.”
He looked at her.
“She knew I cared.”
“Did she?”
The question landed like a blow.
Eleanor’s voice softened.
“Grace’s father died after asking you to care for her. Of course she wondered whether you stayed from duty. You never told her otherwise.”
Alexander thought of every time Grace had looked at him and waited.
Every time he had answered with logistics.
Every time fear convinced him silence was protection.
“Where is she?”
“With Mia.”
He reached for his phone.
Eleanor struck the floor once with her cane.
“If you send soldiers to drag her home, I will personally disown you.”
Alexander’s hand stopped.
“I would never drag her anywhere.”
“Good. Then earn her.”
He looked down at the rings.
He slid them both onto his little finger because they would not fit anywhere else.
Then he picked up the dissolution papers.
“I am not signing these.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved.
“That is not the same as earning her.”
“I know.”
He called Ethan back into the room.
“Grace is not to be approached unless necessary. Maintain discreet security only. She must not feel watched.”
Ethan wisely did not mention that Grace noticed almost everything when anxious.
“Understood.”
“And the Medal of Honour ceremony. Confirm the guest list.”
Ethan looked at him more carefully.
“Yes, sir.”
Alexander folded the divorce papers once.
A plan was not an apology.
A plan was not love.
But it could create the moment in which he finally stopped hiding both.
