Chapter 2 - The Whispers of the Cathedral“Marin,” she said, her voice barely carrying over the hum of the air conditioning. “Marin Holloway.”
Cash Mercer repeated it once, under his breath, as if filing the name away in a ledger where only things of absolute necessity were kept. “Get her out of the city for the day, Teddy. Pay her for her silence, and then pay her again to ensure she stays away from the docks until tomorrow.”
Teddy Vance nodded, but his eyes remained on Marin, cold and calculating. “Right away, Cash. The cars are waiting. The bride's family has already arrived at the cathedral. We are running out of time.”
As Teddy escorted her down the back staircase of the mansion, the heavy silence of the house seemed to press against Marin’s temples. In her pocket, the thick stack of bills felt heavy, a life-changing weight that would pay Pippa’s medical bills for a year. Yet, her mind remained anchored to the dressing room. She couldn't shake the image of the wound under Cash Mercer’s ribs.
The first set of panicked stitches hadn't just been bad craftsmanship. They had been deliberate. They were meant to fail—designed to split under the tension of a man moving, breathing, and standing at an altar. If Cash had walked into that cathedral with those stitches, a single deep breath during his vows would have torn his side open, leaving him hemorrhaging in front of two hundred of the most powerful people in Maryland.
And the precise, older stitches beneath the messy ones... those had been done by a professional. A surgeon. Someone who knew how to save a life, only for a second, traitorous hand to come in afterward and ruin the work.
“You’re a smart girl, Marin,” Teddy said as they reached the gravel courtyard where a black sedan sat idling. He didn't look at her as he opened the door. “Smart girls forget the color of a man's blood. They forget they ever held a needle. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” Marin said, sliding into the leather seat.
But as the car pulled away from the estate, she looked out the back window. The sky over Baltimore was a bruised violet, heavy with the promise of rain. Through the gates, she saw three more black SUVs pulling into the driveway, their windows tinted dark as midnight.
The wedding of the decade was about to begin. Cash Mercer was marrying Gianna Moretti, the daughter of the rival family that controlled the northern shipping lanes. It was supposed to be a treaty written in gold and vows, a union to end a thirty-year turf war that had turned the harbor red.
But as Marin stared at her own hands, still smelling faintly of antiseptic and Cash’s copper-scented blood, she realized the treaty was a lie.
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The bride wasn't coming to unite the families.
She was coming to finish what the first set of stitches had started.
