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Colin smiles even as he answers gravely, "God works in mysterious ways."

My heart melts, and when I tell him so, my husband only laughs.



















Chapter Thirteen

ADRIANO

DELLBROOK, NEW JERSEYlooks like it was left behind by time and economics decades ago. Boarded storefronts line the main street. Faded awnings hang over dusty windows. Cars from the previous century rust in driveways. The air smells of factory exhaust and defeat. It's a place that no one in his right mind would choose to live...and that makes Dellbrook also the perfect town to hide.

It took three private investigators and a small fortune to find Shayla here, of all places. Fifty miles and a universe away from Manhattan's glass towers and marble lobbies.

I lean against my Maserati—painfully conspicuous on this rundown street—and stare at the shabby building across from me. Peeling paint. Cracked windows. A hand-painted sign that reads "Dellbrook Community Legal Aid."

I'm going to rescue her from this dump. Bring her back to where she belongs. To me.

The door to the center opens, and people begin trickling out. I straighten, scanning faces, and then—

There she is.

Shayla emerges into the afternoon sunlight, surrounded by a small group of people. An elderly couple. A young mother with a toddler. A man in a worn uniform.

She's talking animatedly, hands gesturing as she explains something. And then she laughs, head thrown back, sunlight catching in her hair.

I've never seen her more beautiful. More peaceful. More...herself.

And that's when I realize I had it all wrong.

She's not the one who needs rescuing me. I do.

She's not the one who's trapped. I am.

It's me, not her, who's all the things I thought she would be, and it shames me to think how I could be so damn full of myself not to see that from the start.

On the day I had bumped into Colin and Hope, the couple had sent a package to my apartment. It was a Bible, of all things. My first Bible, too, to be honest. I had opened it to a random page, and even now I remember how my ego still had me so damn blind, that the verse I ended up reading didn't bother me one bit.

God opposes the proud but exalts the humble.