Chapter 27
PORTIA
T he days slipped past like silk through fingers—quietly, quickly, beautifully. And before I knew it, the weddings were only one week away.
One week.
Seven days until the string quartets tuned their final notes.
Until six women stepped into dresses that had taken months to design and longer to perfect.
Until I delivered on the most high-profile, high-security wedding event of my career, all under the roof of a family whose name whispered through Charleston like a storm wind behind a stained-glass door.
And somehow, in the eye of all that pressure, I’d fallen in love.
With the man I never expected to trust. The one who’d once stalked shadows in my dreams. Who watched from the periphery and now held me close like he was trying to memorize the shape of my heart from the inside.
Silas Dane loved me.
He’d said it once—raw, breaking, undone—and I’d said it back more times than I could count since. In whispers against his skin. In gasps between kisses. In silence, too, in the way I reached for him first thing in the morning, in the way my fingers gripped his shirt when the nightmares came back.
It didn’t make any of this easier.
The pressure. The weight. The war still waiting on the edge of everything.
But it made it bearable.
Mostly.
Because there were still things he hadn’t told me. About Department 77. About his mother. About what came next after the weddings, when we wouldn’t have a convenient excuse to orbit each other.
I hadn’t told the others about the tracker. Or the men at the pool. Or the truth about Monte.
Monte.
Bea and I spoke his name softly as we checked into the spa at Kiawah Island.
The others didn’t know the full story—not yet—but they felt the absence just the same.
They didn’t mention him directly, not because they’d forgotten, but because the grief still laced the air.
The missing chair. The quiet toast. The heavy pause when someone laughed too loud.
“He’d want us to keep going,” Bea said as we unpacked in our shared suite, her voice steady even though her hands trembled slightly over the itinerary binder she refused to let out of her sight. “He’d want this to go off without a hitch.”
“He made sure it would,” I said quietly. “All of it. He laid the groundwork for the security. Dominion Hall’s team is stepping in now. Silas’s people.”
Bea nodded and glanced out the arched window, the ocean just visible between the dunes, its morning shimmer soft as sea glass.
I didn’t tell her I still hadn’t hired a new head of security in Atlanta. Because the truth I hadn’t dared say aloud yet—maybe even to myself—was that I didn’t want to go back.
Not really.
Not without Silas.
If he was here, in Charleston, at Dominion Hall, then maybe that’s where I belonged, too.
But there wasn’t time to spiral. Not today.
Today was for the bachelorette weekend.
Kiawah Island was wrapped in light. The spa resort where we stayed had been entirely rented out for the event—twelve ocean-facing suites, a private saltwater infinity pool, a lavender steam room, two round-the-clock estheticians, and enough monogrammed silk robes to start our own cult.
Each of the brides had her own suite, with rooms assigned for bridesmaids, sisters, and friends. I was tucked into a corner suite with Bea, which gave me just enough privacy to scream into a pillow if the schedule unraveled.
Unseen but never far, a small team of Dominion’s security operatives kept quiet watch from the periphery of the island grounds.
I spotted one of them near the edge of the dunes at dawn, pretending to stretch.
Another lingered near the golf carts with a clipboard that didn’t seem to hold anything.
The Dane brothers would never have let us come unprotected. Not now. Not after Monte.
And honestly? I was glad.
We had two full days of pre-wedding indulgence lined up, and I’d approved the entire itinerary.
Day One:
Welcome Bellinis and personalized facial consults
CBD-infused massages
A sunset champagne boat tour
Late-night bonfire on the beach with a tarot reader
Day Two:
A sunrise yoga session in white linen
Curated brunch with seven different kinds of artisanal honey
A “Bridal Blessing Ceremony” in the spa’s meditation dome—read: a sound bath that often made bridesmaids cry
A group soak in the mineral pools beneath floating rose petals
And a final blowout dinner on the rooftop terrace, with custom cocktails named for each of the brides: The Sloane Ranger, Russian Doll, Sweet Vivienne, Southern Storm, and Brooklyn Bite.
There were no tiaras. No penis-shaped confetti. No squealing or screaming or staged “shots in the wild.” That kind of party wasn’t built for these women. These women were chaos and elegance.
They wanted connection. Story. Power.
And they had it.
Watching them laugh and drink and float in mineral water while the sun broke over the sea, I realized this was the last breath before the plunge. They were braver than they knew.
I sat on a chaise near the water’s edge while Vivienne re-read her vows out loud to herself, and Anna and Claire debated whether they could get away with dancing barefoot at their respective receptions.
Bea joined me at some point, a hibiscus drink in her hand, the breeze catching her hair.
“You okay?” she asked, not looking directly at me.
I nodded. “For now.”
“You feel like you’re falling, or flying?”
I gave a sad smile. “Both.”
She didn’t press. Just sipped her drink and said, “That’s what love feels like, sometimes. Right on the edge of the drop.”
We talked about Monte then. Not long. Just enough. How he’d said—over and over—that he’d be the invisible wall between this world and the dangerous one if it came to that.
He had been.
Now that wall was gone. But somehow, I felt like he was still here. Maybe in the silence. Maybe in the way Silas touched me with careful reverence every time we were alone. Like he was carrying Monte’s memory, too, even in the heat of love.
It was late by the time we all settled. My body was warm from the spa, my skin glowing, my muscles boneless with relief. But the tension was never fully gone. Not from me.
Because this wasn’t just a countdown to six perfect weddings.
It was a countdown to whatever else was coming.
To whatever price Silas was going to have to pay to end the war his mother started.
I hadn’t told anyone that the ribbon was back. A second one. Found in the pocket of my robe here at the resort. Crimson, curled. No note.
Just the scent of something familiar.
My Silas. Soon.
I sat there long after the others had gone to their rooms, the stars bleeding out above the sea like pinpricks in velvet. The waves came in slow and steady, a rhythm I couldn’t quite match. Everything in me pulsed too fast lately—my heart, my thoughts, my memories.
Especially the ones I’d buried.
Maybe it was the second red ribbon. Maybe it was the way Silas held me now, like I wasn’t just some detour in his life but the anchor in a storm neither of us fully understood. Maybe it was Monte—gone too fast, too quietly, leaving behind silence and unfinished sentences.
Or maybe it was just time.
I hadn’t thought about home in years.
Not really.
Not since the day I bought the cheapest bus ticket out of Arkansas and changed my name halfway to Atlanta.
Deborah Koltnow.
That had been my name.
Born in a trailer off County Road 17, second of five kids, daughter of a mechanic who never met a bottle he didn’t finish and a mother whose love came and went with the heat index.
I’d grown up knowing how to make a dollar stretch and how to disappear when my father’s voice got low and quiet—that dangerous kind of quiet that always preceded a slammed door or a backhanded lesson.
I’d been seventeen the last time I saw my family. My real family.
I didn’t send letters. I didn’t answer theirs.
And eventually, they stopped writing.
It was cleaner that way. Safer. Because I’d decided that girl—the girl with hand-me-down dreams and too many secrets—wasn’t going to make it.
But Portia Lane might.
Portia Lane had ambition. Poise. Taste. She had a name that looked good on letterhead and made people pause when she said it aloud.
She didn’t flinch when powerful men looked her up and down.
She didn’t choke on her own tongue when the socialites of Buckhead smiled too tightly. She smiled back tighter.
Portia Lane built a business from nothing. She curated magic for other people’s most perfect days. She walked into rooms full of million-dollar budgets and made them bend.
She never looked back.
Except now … I was.
Silas Dane had cracked something open in me. Not just my heart. But something older. Something more dangerous. A part of me I’d sealed away with the letters I never sent.
Because being with him—loving him—meant reconciling with shadow. With blood. With family you couldn’t control, and pain you couldn’t outrun.
And it made me think of them.
My sisters. My brothers. My mother, who used to hum Patsy Cline under her breath while frying bacon on a dented stove. My father, whose anger wasn’t the whole story, even if it had swallowed up all the good parts by the end.
I wondered what they’d think of me now. If they’d recognize me. If they’d hate me for leaving. Or if they’d understand.
I’d been so sure I had to become someone else to survive.
But now I wasn’t sure, anymore. Because I was starting to think the old me—the forgotten me—might be the only version brave enough to make it through what was coming next.
I pressed my hands to my stomach, to the soft, quiet space just beneath my ribs, and whispered into the dark, “You’re changing.”
And I was.
The planner. The professional. The woman who never cracked in front of clients.
She was still here. But underneath her, something older was stirring.
A girl who’d grown up hiding bruises and dreaming of luxury.
A woman who’d remade herself out of spite and hunger and rage and hope.
A woman who now loved a man soaked in shadow and was willing to risk everything to walk beside him into the fire.
Portia Lane was real.
But so was Deborah Koltnow.
And maybe it was time I stopped pretending they couldn’t coexist.
The wind picked up. A curl of sea air swept across the patio, bringing with it the faintest sound of someone’s laughter from the rooftop terrace. Maybe Claire’s. Maybe Isabel’s.
And then the softer sound of the ocean again, calling me back.
I didn’t know what the next week would bring. I didn’t know if I’d make it through the weddings without a flaw, or if we’d all be swept into some invisible war none of the brides knew was already encroaching on their aisle.
I didn’t know if I’d survive whatever Silas and Caroline Dane had planned.
But I knew this: I wasn’t going to do it pretending.
If this world was going to come for me, it wasn’t going to find just a polished name and a perfect smile.
It was going to find the whole damn woman.
Even the girl from the trailer park.
Especially her.
Because she was the one who knew how to survive.
This time, she wasn’t running.