Chapter 158: Facing What was Left Behind
High above the ballroom floor, on the heavily guarded royal balcony, Richard Bennington stood a pace behind King Alden.
His eyes never left Hannah.
From this distance, he desperately wanted to step forward, to descend the marble stairs and claim her as his own blood.
But a heavy, suffocating weight anchored his boots to the floor. Hannah looked completely foreign to him.
In his memory, she was just a tiny, quiet thing hiding in the shadows of Bennington Hall, a silent ghost he deliberately ignored because her face reminded him too much of the wife he had lost.
Look at her now, Richard's inner monologue raged, a volatile cocktail of toxic pride and creeping guilt churning in his gut.
She carries herself like a sovereign. How dare she look at me with such indifference? I am her father.
The Bennington blood in her veins should dictate her loyalty.
Yet, the agonizing truth cut through his arrogance.
