Chapter 319 I Wish You Happiness
Chapter 319 I Wish You Happiness
Cassie didn't hesitate. She rose from her seat, moved into the aisle, and pulled Sienna into her arms right there in front of everyone, in the middle of all of it, without caring even slightly about the setting or the timing or the hundred pairs of eyes watching the whole thing unfold.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "It's me."
Sienna came apart. Not gracefully, not in the composed and photogenic way people sometimes cried at weddings, but fully and completely, the way you cried when something you had been carrying for a very long time finally set itself down.
Her shoulders shook and she held on to Cassie like she was afraid she might disappear.
"I'm so sorry," she managed between breaths. "I wanted to call you so many times to apologize after my sins caught up to me. So many times, Cassie. But I was scared you wouldn't want to hear from me."
Cassie held her for a moment before drawing back just enough to look at her properly. "I forgive you, Sienna. You want to know why?"
Sienna pulled back and shook her head, unable to speak, and Violet drifted over to stand beside her, pressing a white handkerchief gently against her cheek with the quiet, practiced care of a woman who had been taking her job as a maid of honor seriously.
"Why?" Sienna managed, the word barely making it past the tightness in her throat.
Cassie let the moment breathe before she answered, and when she did, her voice was steady and warm and completely unhurried.
"First, because of Violet. Having her with me means you've always been a part of my world whether you were in it or not. But more than that, I'm grateful to you, Sienna. I mean that."
She held her gaze, making sure the words landed where they were supposed to. "If you hadn't done what you did, I would have spent the rest of my life as someone's wife in a house, too afraid to step into the light.”
“Your betrayal was the thing that finally pushed me to go after everything I actually wanted. I found my purpose because of it. And I found real love."
She paused, letting all of that settle. "I want you to be happy. Genuinely happy. And the three of us, Franklin, Frederick, and I, have put two billion into your account as a wedding gift. Live well, Sienna. Build something good."
Sienna pulled her back in and held on again, tighter this time, and she would not have let go for a long while if the priest hadn't cleared his throat from the front of the room with the patient, slightly pained expression of a man who had been waiting through this entire scene.
"We are still waiting for the bride."
A ripple of gentle laughter moved through the guests, and Sienna finally pulled herself together, dabbing her face one last time before continuing down the aisle. “Thank you, Cassie,” she said one last time. “I’ll be in touch.”
Her to-be-husband was standing at the altar with an expression that had moved well past surprised and into something closer to stunned.
He clearly recognized Cassie and Franklin, not just from headlines about Blackridge Maritime Group but from everything that had come out about TRICARO2 and the Roth name, all of it, the kind of recognition that came with understanding exactly how much weight was sitting in the pews of his wedding.
When Sienna reached him, she leaned in and whispered something close to his ear, and whatever she said was enough to send him walking back down toward their seats with his hand extended and something genuine and slightly overwhelmed in his eyes.
"I don't have enough words for what you've done for her," he said, looking between them.
"I love her. I've always tried to look after her, but my family has not made it easy. They've called her a gold digger from the beginning because she came to this with nothing. What you've given her today changes that conversation completely. It gives her a standing they can't talk around, and it saves me from having to fight that battle every time someone opens their mouth."
He seemed to mean every word of it, and Cassie was about to respond when Franklin spoke first, his voice quiet but carrying the particular quality of someone who was not making a suggestion but stating a fact.
"You should also know that her sister is one of ours. Which means Sienna is under our protection as well."
The man absorbed that without flinching, but something in his posture settled, like a tension he hadn't fully acknowledged had just been given somewhere to go. "Mr. Roth, I would not dare to place myself in opposition to someone like you."
He turned then, and his gaze moved to Frederick with something more careful in it, more considered. "Mr. Jones," he said, "Sienna told me everything. I can't speak to who she was before, but I can promise you she's not that person anymore."
Frederick looked at him for a long moment, his expression giving nothing away. "Good for you," he said, and left it exactly there.
The ceremony carried on, the vows were exchanged, and the room filled with that particular collective exhale of people who had just witnessed something they would remember.
But by the time the reception was beginning to take shape around them, Cassie's group was already moving toward the exit, slipping out quietly and without ceremony, leaving the celebration behind without staying for a single glass of champagne or saying a goodbye.
They had come to say what needed to be said, and they had said it.
That was enough.
❖✺❖
A few months later, Cassie's phone rang while she was sitting with her feet up and the afternoon light coming in low and golden across the living room floor.
She picked up and heard Lila's voice before she'd even gotten the phone fully to her ear, bright and breathless and full of the particular joy that comes with the first hours of new life.
"Cass, I had her. A baby girl."