Chapter 10 - The Sovereign of Sutton Harbor
One year later.
The October sun was sinking low over Charleston Harbor, painting the sky in breathtaking strokes of violet, copper, and gold. The water glittered like crushed diamonds, reflecting the sails of dozens of yachts gliding past the Battery.
The grand lawn of the newly restored Sutton Harbor Flagship Hotel was filled with five hundred people.
There were no whispers tonight. No snide debutantes hiding behind champagne flutes. No arrogant young men treating women like chattel.
Tonight was the grand ribbon-cutting for the Sutton-Reed Maritime Resort Collection—a historic thirty-hotel alliance spanning from Key West to the Outer Banks, completely debt-free, entirely owned by a private partnership between myself, Nana Jo, and Nolan Reed.
The Hartwells were gone.
Lorraine Hartwell had entered a guilty plea to six counts of federal financial fraud and was currently serving an eight-year sentence in a minimum-security facility in Alabama. Her bank had been broken up and sold for scrap to regional credit unions. Spencer, disgraced and penniless after the restitution orders stripped him of his trust fund, had fled the state, living off the charity of distant relatives in Atlanta.
Delaney Prescott’s family had been forced to sell their historic home on South Battery to cover their operating debts, their social standing annihilated by the very cruelty Delaney had thought would make her legendary.
And my father?
Dennis Sutton lived in a quiet cottage outside Asheville, North Carolina. We spoke once a month—polite, brief conversations. He had finally admitted, over a tearful phone call six months ago, that he had failed me. I didn’t hate him anymore. But I had never given him his keys back. Some boundaries, once drawn in fire, must remain unbroken.
Wade, to my complete surprise, had thrived at the logistics terminal. Stripped of his tailored suits and his father’s toxic expectations, he had actually learned the business. Tonight, he stood near the raw oyster bar, laughing with our head of procurement, his sleeves rolled up, looking happier than he ever had in his entire life.
Nana Jo sat in a throne-like wicker armchair beneath a sprawling live oak, wearing an ivory silk dress, holding a glass of champagne, and watching the guests with the quiet, triumphant satisfaction of a queen who had outlived all her enemies.
I stood on the private second-story balcony of the presidential suite, looking out over the harbor.
I wore an ice-blue silk gown.
Not the one Delaney had torn. This one was custom-crafted in Milan, embroidered with thousands of microscopic silver beads that caught the dying light like stardust. The back was daringly open, dipping to the small of my spine, unashamed and magnificent.
Warm, familiar hands slid around my waist from behind.
I leaned back against Nolan’s chest, letting out a soft, contented sigh as his chin rested gently against the crown of my head. He wore a crisp black tuxedo, smelling of cedarwood, salt air, and the intoxicating, steady heat that had become my home.
“You’re hiding,” Nolan murmured, his lips pressing a warm kiss against the curve of my neck.
“I’m not hiding,” I replied, turning slightly in his embrace to look up into his striking gray eyes. “I’m savoring. One year ago tonight, I was standing in Lorraine Hartwell’s ballroom with my dress ripped open, wondering if I had to sell my soul to save my family.”
Nolan’s arms tightened around me, his expression softening into an unyielding, fierce devotion.
“Nobody will ever tear your clothes again, River,” he whispered. “Unless I’m taking them off myself.”
A slow, breathless laugh escaped my lips. “Mr. Reed. That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise,” he said.
He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out a small, heavy velvet box the color of midnight.
My breath caught in my throat. My heart gave a wild, violent thud against my ribs.
Nolan didn’t drop to one knee. He looked me straight in the eyes—as an equal, as a partner, as the man who had fought beside me through the fire.
He clicked the box open.
Inside rested a flawless, ten-carat emerald-cut diamond, set in platinum, flanked by two deep-blue sapphires that matched the exact color of the Atlantic Ocean during a storm.
“Nolan...” I breathed, my hand flying to my mouth.
“I don’t need a business partner, River,” Nolan said, his voice dropping into a deep, raw register that made tears sting the backs of my eyes. “I have dozens of those. I need the woman who looked at a ballroom full of monsters and refused to bow her head. I need the woman who taught me that true power is protecting the people who trust you. I need you. For the rest of my life.”
He lifted the ring from the velvet, holding it between his long, steady fingers.
“River Sutton. Will you marry me?”
I looked down at the ring, then up into the eyes of the most feared billionaire in America—the man who had watched two hundred people laugh at my humiliation and had made every single one of them regret the day they were born.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my fingers in his dark hair, and pulled his lips down to mine.
“Yes,” I whispered against his mouth, tasting the salt of my happy tears and the sweetness of his breath. “A thousand times, yes.”
Down below, on the manicured lawns of the harbor, the crowd erupted into cheers as someone spotted us on the balcony. Fireworks exploded across the purple Charleston sky, raining red, gold, and silver light over the water, over our hotels, and over the empire we had built from the ashes of betrayal.
I was no longer the girl with the torn dress.
May you like
I was River Sutton.
And together, we were untouchable.
