His gaze dropped to the corset strings biting into her back.
“Take it off.”
Mrs. Higgins gasped. “But she’ll look enormous!”
Silence swallowed the room.
Elias slowly turned toward her.
“She looks like my wife.”
Four words.
Nothing more.
Yet Mrs. Higgins immediately began loosening the strings.
Mabel inhaled deeply for the first time in an hour.
Elias stepped outside without another word.
That afternoon, the church overflowed.
People crowded the pews and windows, whispering as Mabel walked down the aisle in her plain beige dress.
Someone snickered.
Another voice whispered, “Poor beast married another beast.”
Mabel heard it.
So did Elias.
His massive hand tightened once, but he remained still.
The preacher hurried through the ceremony.
When he pronounced them husband and wife, Elias didn’t kiss her.
He simply offered his arm.
Mabel took it.
Outside, laughter followed them toward his wagon.
Then the banker appeared.
“Graves!”
Elias stopped.
The banker grinned at Mabel. “You forgot our arrangement.”
Mabel’s stomach tightened.
“What arrangement?”
Elias said nothing.
The banker pulled a folded document from his coat.
“Your husband didn’t merely ask for a wife, Mabel. He paid your father’s debts.”
Her breath caught.
“All of them?”
“Every dollar.”
The crowd fell quiet.
Mabel stared at Elias.
“Why?”
His scarred face revealed nothing.
Then he climbed onto the wagon.
“You’ll understand at Black Ridge.”
The journey lasted until sunset.
When they finally reached his property, Mabel expected a miserable cabin.
Instead, beyond the pine trees stood a beautiful two-story house, surrounded by barns, orchards, and acres of fertile land.
But something else waited on the porch.
A little girl.
Perhaps seven years old.
She saw Elias and ran toward him.
“Papa!”
Mabel froze.
The supposedly childless murderer lifted the girl gently into his arms.
Then the child looked at Mabel and whispered something that turned her blood cold.
“Is she the lady Mama told us would come?”
Mabel stared at Elias.
“Us?”
A second child appeared in the doorway.
Then a third.
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