Their Favoritism Resulted In A Cruel Outcome Chapter 01
The governor’s emergency detention order arrived just as I was stepping into my wedding dress, waiting for Connor Winthrop to pick me up.
Within minutes, my wedding had become a raid.
SWAT officers took every woman in the Worthington family into custody.
They told us my fiancé had identified my father and three brothers as conspirators in an assassination attempt on the governor, and that the prosecutor would seek the death penalty.
The rest of us were to be sent to a maximum-security prison as accomplices.
After my grandmother read the document, stamped with the governor’s seal, her hands began to shake uncontrollably. My mother tore off my veil, handing pieces of it to my sisters-in-law and the children to cover their mouths and noses.
“Stay together,” she whispered.
“Don’t let anyone take you off alone.”
That night, fire tore through the abandoned detention facility.
My grandmother collapsed beside a concrete pillar.
My mother died beneath a ventilation duct.
My sisters-in-law shielded the children with their bodies.
As I drew my last, smoke-choked breath, I heard two guards talking outside the door.
“Connor and the Worthington men really do spoil that girl rotten.”
“Blair was afraid Connor still wanted to marry this adopted one, afraid the family loved Willa more after raising her for twenty-six years. She cried and demanded they prove their loyalty, so they forged the governor’s order and threw all the women in here.”
The other guard laughed.
“Connor said as long as Willa signs the cancellation papers, they’ll let everyone out at dawn. The men are all still back at the Worthington house, drinking and trying to figure out how to make Blair happy.”
So there had been no attack on the governor.
My father and brothers had never been arrested.
Connor had never betrayed his own father.
They were all safe at home.
This was just a performance, all of it staged for Blair.
No one told us. The detention building had been shut down for years.
The fire alarms and sprinkler system were dead.
And now, not a single woman inside would ever walk out.
…
Every breath felt like swallowing hot sand.
I lay facedown on the freezing floor.
The fire in the corridor had died down, but the cell was still thick with smoke.
The guards outside were still complaining.
“It was only supposed to be one night. If she’d just signed the damn paper, nobody would’ve had to suffer.”
I wanted to tell them the paper didn’t matter.
I opened my mouth, but all I could do was cough up black mucus.
At last, one of the guards noticed something was wrong.
“Why is she still lying there?”
He flicked on a flashlight and moved closer to the iron door, the smile gone from his face.
“Open it. Call an ambulance.”
The other guard grabbed his arm.
“Are you crazy? Blair said no matter what we heard in there tonight, we weren’t to open that door. We already took the money. If we let them out now, how are you going to explain it?”
“But something’s really happened to them.”
“It’s just smoke. They’re putting on a show for Connor.”
The guard with the flashlight hesitated, then stepped back into the corridor.
I pressed my face to the ground, to the last trace of cool air.
What hurt more than the agony in my chest was the truth of what they had just said.
My father had never been put in handcuffs.
My grandmother had never lost her son.
My mother, my sisters-in-law, the children—they all could have lived.
If only someone had told us it was all a lie.
As consciousness scattered, I saw the hem of my wedding dress, blackened with ash.
When I opened my eyes again, I was floating above the cell.
My body lay by the door, my fingers still reaching for the lock.
My mother had fallen beneath a rope made of tied-together sheets.
She had tried to climb to the vent to call for help, but the rope snapped, and the metal panel had crushed her against the wall.
My oldest sister-in-law had stuffed her wedding ring into a guard’s hand, begging him to at least call the fire department.
My second sister-in-law had just entered her third month of pregnancy.
My third sister-in-law had pinned six-year-old Molly beneath her.
Even at the very end, she had covered her daughter’s eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the flames and the bodies.
I was the last one to stop breathing.
I should have lost consciousness hours ago.
But my grandmother had saved the only damp towel for me.
She had wiped the soot from my face and shoved it into my hands.
“Willa, you came in here wearing that wedding dress, and you’re going to walk out wearing it too.”
“Listen to me. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m going to find a way out. You stay here.”
She braced herself against the wall and walked toward the door at the end of the corridor, half-hidden by smoke.
I tried to grab her, but my mother and sisters-in-law held me down.
Seconds later, I heard a desperate pounding from that direction.
My grandmother never came back.
Just a few hours earlier, she’d been sitting in the Worthington dressing room, helping me choose my wedding earrings.
She’d joked that even if Connor was the governor’s son, he couldn’t bully a Worthington girl.
If he dared, she’d go testify before the state legislature herself and let the whole state know exactly what kind of man he was.
A force pulled me out of the cell.
I drifted through Charleston before dawn and returned to the Worthingtons’ old seaside estate.
Every light in the house was on.
Dinner was still laid out on the long dining table.
My father, my three brothers, and Connor were all there.
Blair sat at the center of the table, wearing the pink dress my mother had originally chosen for my wedding brunch.
Her eyes were swollen from crying, and her plate was piled with food others had served her.
My oldest brother, James, slid a plate of shelled crabmeat toward her.
“You said you liked this. I already picked it all out for you.”
My second brother, Luke, handed her a silver whistle he’d bought from an antique shop in Savannah.
“You looked at this a few times last week. I had someone bring it over.”
My third brother, Henry, set a golden retriever puppy in her lap.
“Stop crying,” he said gently.
“Once Willa signs the cancellation papers tomorrow morning, this will all be over.”
…
Standing outside the dining room, I thought about the last twenty-six years.
When I was little, I hated the cold, so my father had the heating in the north wing of the old house completely redone and gave me the largest bedroom.
I loved the caramel pudding from a shop in Savannah.
Every time James passed through, he’d go out of his way to bring one back for me.
Luke taught me how to ride.
The first time I fell off a horse, he carried me all the way across the stables to find a doctor.
Henry always liked to argue with me, but when I got disciplined at boarding school, he secretly wrote my community service report for me.
They had loved me like that, once.
A month ago, a DNA database located the real Worthington daughter, Blair.
Twenty-six years ago, a nurse had switched two babies at the hospital.
The nurse was long dead. Blair had bounced through a series of foster homes and, as an adult, scraped by on temporary jobs.
My parents stayed up the entire night after reading her file.
My brothers seemed desperate to make up for everything she had lost in a single stroke.
I wanted to make it up to her, too.
I moved out of the north wing, the room I had lived in for twenty-six years.
I laid out the jewelry my mother had given me, the seaside cottage my father had bought for me, and all the gifts my brothers had showered on me over the years, and told Blair to take whatever she liked.
She didn’t take a single thing.
She only looked at me, her eyes red, and asked, “You already had my parents and my brothers for twenty-six years. Are you really going to keep the marriage that was supposed to be mine, too?”
That was when I learned she was in love with Connor.
When Blair first came to Charleston, her car had skidded off the road in the rain.
Connor happened to be passing by.
He took her to the hospital and draped his scarf over her shoulders.
She had taken that chance meeting as fate.
The wedding date had been set long ago.
At the family meeting, Connor held my hand.
“I helped you because you said you were Willa’s sister,” he told Blair.
“The person I’ve always wanted to marry is Willa.”
Blair fainted on the spot.
When she woke up, she refused to eat. Then she slit her wrist with a razor from the bathroom.
My mother cried all night outside the hospital room.
My father and brothers took turns trying to reason with Blair, but she would only repeat one sentence:
“As long as Willa is here, there will never be a place for me.”
After that, everyone started asking me to give in.
My father told me in his study, “We just need to get her stabilized first.”
“The doctors said she might hurt herself again. Once she accepts treatment, everything will go back to normal.”
My brothers said the same thing.
“You’re more stable than she is. We have no idea what Blair might do right now. We can’t risk her life.”
Even Connor stopped objecting.
They all said it was temporary.
As long as Blair believed no one was going to abandon her, life would go back to normal.
And now, they were still saying the same thing.
Holding the puppy, Blair asked softly, “What if Willa won’t sign?”
Connor held his wineglass, his fingertips pressed against the rim.
“She’ll sign.”
“Willa cares about her family more than anything. She thinks your father and brothers are facing the death penalty, and that everyone else will be charged as accomplices. She won’t let the whole family go to prison over a wedding.”
Tears immediately welled in Blair’s eyes.
“Are you blaming me?”
“In your heart, is she always going to matter more than I do?”
Connor stared down at the wine in his glass.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you can’t bear to let her go.”
Blair shoved her chair back.
“You’re all comforting me now, but when she comes back tomorrow morning, you’ll flock right back to her. Dad will feel sorry for her because she spent one night locked up. Mom will hold her and cry. My brothers will blame me. And you’ll just reschedule the wedding.”
My father set down his silverware.
“No.”
“Blair, we’ll do what we promised.”
James lowered his voice.
“After Willa signs, I’ll arrange for her to stay at the vacation house in Maine.”
“When you’re no longer afraid that she’ll take everything from you, then we can talk about her coming back.”
Luke frowned.
“She’s never tried to take anything.”
“She’s given you everything you wanted.”
Blair snatched up her water glass and smashed it on the floor.
“Because she looks down on me!”
“She thinks if she gives me a few of her old things, I’m supposed to be grateful?”
The dining room fell silent.
Henry bent down and picked up the startled puppy.
“Fine. We won’t talk about Willa.”
“Tonight was supposed to be for you. Sit down.”
Connor reached into his pocket and placed a ring engraved with the Winthrop family crest in front of Blair.
It had belonged to his grandfather. He never took it off.
“I promise you. After the engagement is canceled, I won’t marry Willa for at least a year.”
“A year from now, if you still can’t accept it…”
He paused.
“I’ll end things with her. She can leave here and be with someone else.”
At last, my father changed the subject.
“Has everything at the detention center been taken care of?”
James nodded.
“I had the butler deliver a cash payment.”
“The room was cleaned, and they sent in mattresses, heaters, water, and food. The men on duty used to do security for us. They won’t give them a hard time.”
Luke added,
“Mom’s blood pressure is unstable. I told the family doctor to keep his phone on. If anything happens, he can get over there immediately.”
“We’ll all go pick them up in the morning,” my father said, loosening his tie.
“Good.”
“Your grandmother has a temper. Once she finds out the truth, the worst she’ll do is chase us with her cane.”
“Your mother will be angry, but she knows what Blair has been through. She’ll understand.”
Henry forced a smile.
“Lauren, Rachel, and Hannah won’t hold it against us forever, either.”
“It’s just Molly who’s timid. She might cry. I’ll bring her favorite cinnamon candy tomorrow morning.”
They had even divided up who would pick up whom.
My father would handle my grandmother.
My brothers would comfort their wives and children. Connor would take me himself.
He had prepared a house on Sullivan’s Island, full of hydrangeas, and said that after I’d calmed down, he would stay there with me for a while.
Every one of them believed that by dawn, everything could be put right.
No one knew that the cash had never reached the detention center.
The butler had already been bought by Blair.
The mattresses, heaters, food, and water had all been diverted to a warehouse.
Blair had even handed her access card to three men.
She had paid them to get into our cell, tear my wedding dress, and take photos that would ruin me.