Chapter 19
Elena
The dining room at the flagship Highcourt Hotel feels more like a stage than a restaurant.
Heavy velvet curtains drape across tall windows, candles flicker in crystal holders, and silverware gleams on tablecloths under low lights.
It’s the kind of place where someone goes on a date — not hosts an impromptu intervention for a twenty-eight-year-old delinquent.
I smooth my dress down, the emerald silk clinging uncomfortably, but I’m not sure if that’s because I know the eyes that will look at me in the private dining room won’t like what they see or because of the inevitable bump that will show soon.
Harry’s hand rests firm against my back, grounding me. He bends down to me as we stand just outside the door to the private dining room, his voice low in my ear. “We don’t have to do this if you’re not comfortable.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, swallowing before turning to look up at him. My heart hammers against my ribs. “I can handle it.”
He studies me for a moment, his eyes sharp and searching, before nodding. “All right,” he sighs. “If George crosses a line, I’ll end it. We’ll go.”
I nod back, grateful for something solid beside me. He’s always steady, always immovable — at least when it comes to everyone else.
He opens the door, and we step inside.
Grace, Harry’s sister, is already seated.
She’s elegant in an understated way, dressed in navy with her auburn hair pulled back in a loose twist. There’s warmth in her eyes when she spots me, an easy grin spreading across her cheeks.
Beside her sits Liam, her son — sixteen and lanky with the beginnings of stubble and a restless energy that makes his leg bounce constantly in his chair.
His expression is guarded, though, one that clearly says he’s not thrilled to be dragged to a family summit.
And then there’s George.
He’s sprawled at the opposite end of the table, wine glass in hand, posture lazy in his open suit, his eyes already staring us down with challenge. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t pretend at all with politeness, just raises his glass slightly, mocking. “Well, if it isn’t the happy couple.”
Harry ignores him and guides me into my seat at his side, then takes his own.
The silence that follows is thick, weighed down by eyes glancing around at each other, trying to pick this apart before it even begins.
Grace tries to smooth it over by asking if I’ve settled into the Highcourt Hall cottage, but George cuts in before I can answer.
“Why are we here, Dad? Is this a family reunion or a group lecture?”
Harry doesn’t flinch. He places his napkin across his lap, smooth as steel, before resting his chin on his fist and looking directly at his son. “We’re here because you need to hear some things face-to-face.”
George leans back, bringing his wine glass in toward his chest. “This should be good.”
Harry’s voice stays even, but the weight in it makes my hair stand on end. “You’re not inheriting anything. Not the business, not the estate, not a cent beyond the trust already established.”
The words land like a bomb.
Grace’s glass stills halfway to her mouth. Liam blinks as he takes a bite of buttered bread. George's glass clinks too hard as he sets it down.
“You’re joking,” he says flatly.
“I don’t joke about things like this,” Harry replies. “You abandoned your responsibility. I gave you chance after chance, and you squandered every one.”
George laughs, sharp and unbelieving. “So what, you’re just cutting me out? Passing it all to some board, to Matthew, to your new wife?”
Harry dodges the question. “I said there would be consequences if you didn’t return when Matthew found you. Severe ones.”
George gawks at him, his mouth hanging open, his chair screeching against the floor before he thinks better of standing. “This is bullshit,” he snaps. “I’m your son.”
“Then start acting like it,” Harry says, his voice eerily calm. “You want me to reconsider? Then start behaving like a man who can carry the Highcourt name. Until then, the answer is no.”
The room goes quiet, tension hanging thick enough to slice. Even Grace seems unsure what to say, though her eyes linger on Harry’s profile like she can’t quite believe what he’s saying.
George’s cheeks flush, his jaw clenching, before he laughs incredulously.
The sound is almost mean. “Fine,” he says.
“You want me to take responsibility? I’ll do it.
Divorce my fiancé. I’ll marry her like I was supposed to, rearrange the contract, and make the alliance how it was meant to be in the first place.
That way, everyone can forget this fucking sideshow you’ve decided to put on, and I can do what I need to. ”
I stare at George, my fingers tightening over the wine glass stem in front of me, my pulse hammering so hard I can feel it in my eyeballs. Harry’s knee knocks once against mine, just gently, just enough to remind me that he’s there.
“No,” I say.
George blinks at me as if he wasn’t expecting me to speak. “Excuse me?”
“I said no,” I repeat, my voice stronger than I thought it would be. “There is no version of my life where I walk into your arms after what you did.”
His mouth twists, disgust painted all over it. “You think he’s the better option here.”
“We already had this discussion,” I say. “I’m not a package to be thrown together and redelivered just because you’ve decided you want it now under threat of losing everything.”
George surges to his feet, abandoning his better judgment to stay seated, and the clack of his chair legs against the floor makes me flinch.
He stares directly at Harry, the tips of his ears pink and his hands clenched so hard against the table that his knuckles are nearly as white as the cloth hanging over it.
“This is an impossible situation,” he snaps.
“I didn’t ask for this mess, Dad. I didn’t ask to be forced into an archaic arranged marriage to a woman I’m not even—”
“Don’t,” I say coldly, steeling my jaw as I stare him down. I know exactly where that sentence was leading. To a woman I’m not even attracted to. “Don’t finish that thought.”
His eyes flick toward me, his face twisting in irritation.
“You’re impossible to even talk to now. How the hell am I supposed to do what’s ‘expected of me’ when you refuse to cooperate?
” He pushes a hand into his hair, mussing it, pulling at the roots.
“You were meant to be my fucking wife, Elena. Mine. Not his—”
“And you were supposed to show up,” I interrupt. “But you didn’t. You bailed. So cry me a river about expectations.”
“You—” He cuts himself off, his nostrils flaring, and looks back at Harry. “This is your fault. You pushed the marriage, you pushed the deal, forced me into all of this. Now you want to punish me for not playing along at the perfect moment? Seriously, Dad?”
Harry sets down his glass with deadly calm, but I can see the tension in him, the stiffness in his shoulders and the ticking of a muscle just beneath the hinge of his jaw.
“The perfect moment in question had been planned out for a year in advance. You made your choice to not show up for your own wedding,” he says.
“You chose to ignore my texts and my calls. You chose not to come home when Matthew found you. These are the consequences.”
“Consequences,” George scoffs. “Ridiculous. You keeping my wife-to-be is a consequence for this? You taking the legacy from me is a consequence? I get what, Dad? Exile? Public humiliation? Everyone will think I’m a joke.”
“You did that to yourself. Not once in the last few years did you bring up doubts about the marriage. You let me believe you were fine with all of it until you disappeared.”
George’s hand comes down from his hair, a single finger pointing at Harry. “This is about control. Don’t fucking lie to me. You always need to be the one pulling the strings, and the second I pull away from that, you rip everything—”
“You want the truth, George?” Harry says, cutting him off and leaning back in his chair. “Even if you earn back your inheritance, you’ll only get half. Split down the middle.”
George’s face twists, his lip twitching, his brows pulling together. He takes a step back, the backs of his knees knocking into the chair. “What, you’re adding her?”
“No.” Harry’s face is intensely neutral as he stares at his son. “Elena’s pregnant.”
The answering silence is so loud it makes my ears ring.
My stomach churns as George’s face morphs from stunned confusion to something darker, harsher, his hands dropping to his sides as he blinks rapidly.
Grace, on the other hand, is wide-eyed and silent, staring between Harry and George like she’s trying to solve an equation.
At least Liam seems distracted enough by his phone.
“You can’t be serious,” George murmurs, breaking the silence so quietly I almost miss it.
Harry nods once, clipped, matter-of-fact.
“Holy fucking shit, Dad.” George’s Adam’s apple bobs uncomfortably as he swallows, his mouth popping open like he wants to say more but can’t find the words.
“You don’t get to decide the outcome of a situation when you walk away from it,” Harry says simply, setting his napkin down on the table beside his plate like he’s prepping himself for war.
“You gave it up. You walked away. What happened after that isn’t yours to decide or change. Figure something else out.”
“Something else?” George lets out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. “You expect me to be able to do that when this was what the plan was my entire life? I have to fight a war that I don’t even know how to navigate, just to get half of what I was owed, because you decided to breed her?”
I choke on my saliva. “Seriously? Breed?”
“That’s enough,” Harry scolds.
But George is spiraling now, the way I’ve seen him do the handful of times I was around him before the wedding, when he got overwhelmed and angry that the universe wasn’t revolving around him.