***
Three years earlier, I had married Silas Thorne against the advice of nearly everyone close to me.
He wasn’t wealthy.
He had grown up in a struggling family in Kentucky and worked his way into the construction industry.
When we met, he was charming, ambitious, and remarkably attentive.
He remembered my favorite flowers.
He brought me coffee during long workdays.
When I developed a fever one winter, he drove through a snowstorm to bring me homemade soup.
I’d never cared about his bank account.
I cared about the way he made me feel.
When he proposed, he knelt in the rain outside my apartment.
“Eleanor, I don’t have much,” he told me. “But whatever life gives me, I want to share it with you.”
I believed him.
After our wedding, I helped him secure an executive position at Vance Holdings.
My father was hesitant.
“Eleanor, love and business require different kinds of judgment,” he warned.
