?Chapter 725:

    After a moment of silence, he asked, voice tinged with doubt, “Is it that Grandpa and Dad don’t want me to marry Wanda?”

    Paulina and Myles exchanged a subtle nce—an unspoken agreement to continue the carefully constructed lie. “Maybe they’re still harboring resentment…”

    Over your aunt marrying into the Campbell family.” Cole nodded, epting the exnation without suspicion.

    To the outside world, the details remained buried. But within the Evans family, the story of Arthur and Eva was no secret.

    Arthur had never wanted Eva. He’d refused her time and again, but Eva had been relentless, consumed by love—or perhaps obsession. She had dered she would never marry anyone else.

    Desperate, Eva had bypassed all propriety and gone directly to Arthur’s father. No one knew the full extent of what transpired behind closed doors, only that a deal had been struck—one that led to Eva marrying Arthur against his will, followed by a wedding without Arthur’s presence.

    Humiliated and furious, Arthur had left and never returned to the Campbell family residence, abandoning Eva to an empty house and a hollow marriage. Ruben and Jarrett had taken the blow personally. Eva had always been the Evans family’s pride—nurtured, adored, and protected. But for marrying Arthur, she’d thrown away her dignity and dragged their name through the mud. Thus, while the Evans and Campbell families were connected through marriage, they were never close allies.

    To Cole, Paulina’s exnation made sense. Given that history, it wasn’t surprising that his grandfather and his father showed no joy about his uing union with Wanda. Still, he felt bound to go through with it. After all, this was his mother’s wish—one she had repeated not once, but twice.

    That memory remained seared into his mind, especially after waking up on the ind. The first time she had told him was when he was only three. She had been holding a book, exining the vastwork of the Sun Group to him, pointing out logos and names with her slender fingers.

    Thus, even at three, Cole had understood: the Campbell family controlled the Sun Group. And at that time, Eva had already married into the Campbell family. After exining the structure of the Sun Group, his mother had gently patted his head and said with quiet insistence, “Cole, when you grow up, you must marry a Campbell girl.”

    Cole had blinked. A Campbell girl. That meant his aunt Eva’s daughter. Even as a child, the notion had struck him as strange. His mother wanted him to marry his cousin? But he was young then, too young to argue, too innocent to grasp the weight of such a request. So he had smiled, nodded, and epted it like any other grown-up rule.

    The second time his mother told him, he was twelve. She was fading—her bones fragile, eyes bright with urgency. She reached for his hand, her voice trembling. “Cole, promise me you’ll marry a Campbell girl!”

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    At twelve, he understood Wanda wasn’t rted to the Campbell family by blood. Legally, morally, nothing stood in the way. But even then, he couldn’t summon warmth for Wanda—not as a girl, not as apanion, not as someone he could ever imagine sharing a life with. So he stayed silent.

    A few days back, after waking from the ind, he missed his mother dearly. Her words came back to him, clearer than the waves, stronger than his doubt. Thus, he clung to her final wish as if honoring it might tether her soul to peace, even though he had no feelings for Wanda.

    His grandfather and father weren’t thrilled about his engagement to Wanda, and truthfully, neither was he. Had his mother not asked, he never would have proposed. He wouldn’t have even considered it. He felt a void in his heart, as if something essential was absent, but he couldn’t pinpoint what.

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