Page 159 of The Scandal You Started
“And we’d better receive invitations when you two get married. Preferably soon,” Maleeka declared, her green eyes dancing.
Cassie, Matt, and Hania laughed and announced their agreement, while Rayna blushed and stuttered a scolding at them. Dominic managed to keep a grin on his face, but the lacklustre of her charcoal gaze concerned him.
Rayna’s hope was deteriorating. He knew it was. He heard it in her voice. Saw it in the dullness of her smiles and the fretful tilt of her eyes that was becoming more prominent every day. With each problem they encountered, she was losing sight of the future he was so desperately holding on to, trying to remind her, persuade her they could reach it.
The only meagre sign of hope was that Victor’s friend had managed to save most of the broken files on the hard drives, and Erin, with surprising stubbornness, had joined their effort. But it wasn’t enough to prevent Rayna’s confidence from dwindling.
Dominic couldn’t blame her for it. In truth, his own doubts were beginning to whisper the cruel, frightening impossibility of what he wanted with her, how nothing had yet solidly proven his dreams of a life and family with her could become a reality.
It terrified him. Made him sick to his stomach as he held her at night, knowing she lay awake worrying about their lack of progress just as he did. It was breaking his heart.
And when Dominic returned with River on Thursday evening from Olkmond Regional Library, his fingers were shaking by his sides, a liquid ache blocking his throat, with the fear that the paper in River’s hands would be the last straw for Rayna.
“Where’s Victor?” River asked as he sat next to Kelly on the sofa with folders laying open on the cushion between her and Erin.
Rayna was sitting in the armchair, a closed laptop on her lap with one of the hard drives plugged into the side of it, forcing Dominic to sit on the other sofa next to George.
“He had to go to the lab in the afternoon because Izzy was coming back from scouting a Study,” Erin explained, closing the folder she’d been reading from.
River’s brown rose in sceptical hope. “Did you find anything?”
“Not much,” Kelly said through a heavy sigh. “Most of what we’ve read is on how Ruptures are started, and Rayna’s been looking through the drive on how to estimate their size.” Kelly shrugged. “It’s all helpful, I guess, but nothing really yet says how to fix the issue.”
“Did you guys find anything?” Rayna repeated, her gaze slipping from River to Dominic.
Dominic’s heart dropped and rose in a wave of panic as River glanced at the paper in his hands. “We, uh…”
“River,” he rumbled as the man began unfolding the paper.
“What?” Rayna questioned. Sitting forward, she set her laptop on the round coffee table to the side of the armchair. “What did you find?”
River’s expression twisted apologetically, and a frustrated sob clambered up Dominic’s throat. It came out as a stifled noise between his gritted teeth as he pinned his stare on Rayna.
It is not true. It is not! Do not believe it, my love. Do not look at it, I beg of you.
But she wasn’t paying any heed to his silent pleading. “River, tell me.”
“River,” Dominic said in one last desperate attempt to stop the man from destroying what he had with Rayna.
River lowered his lashes with a gulp. Dominic wanted to roar in agony and tear the room apart, tear that damning paper to unrecognisable shreds too.
“Not all the documents in the city hall were lost,” River mumbled as he opened the page fully. “Some were just badly burned, but they were still uploaded onto the online archives.”
“What is it?” Rayna said hesitantly as she took the offered printout from her colleague.
“Rayna,please,” Dominic croaked, a wet sting filtering across the back of his nose and eyes.
Do not look! I beg of you, do not look at it.
“It’s a marriage certificate,” said River.
The words hung in the painfully silent atmosphere.
“It…it’s not entirely legible,” he continued, his voice like a dozen pins jabbing into Dominic’s ears. “But…it’s signed D-something Thorne and a…a Claire-something.”
Rayna’s hands shook as she read it—the evidence of his supposed marriage to another woman.
He wanted to lunge for her, hide it from her, and bury his face in her lap as he cried and swore it wasn’t true. He would never marry anyone other than her.
