Chapter 5 - The Departure
The chaos in the church was deafening, but Aaliyah stood in the center of it with total, unbreakable peace.
She turned away from the altar and walked back down the aisle to her five sons. Isaiah looked up at her, his dark eyes—Caleb's eyes—searching her face for reassurance. She smiled, placing a warm hand on his shoulder.
"Come on, boys," Aaliyah said softly. "We're going home."
"Aaliyah, wait!"
Caleb sprinted down the aisle, stopping a few feet away from her. He was weeping openly, his tuxedo jacket discarded, looking desperately at the woman he had never stopped loving, and the five boys who shared his face.
"Please," Caleb begged, his voice breaking. "Please, Aaliyah. Let me fix this. Let me be a father to them. Let me come with you."
Aaliyah looked at the man she had once promised her life to. There was no hatred in her eyes, but there was no longing, either. The fire that had once burned for him had been forged into steel years ago.
"You didn't fight for me when it mattered, Caleb," she said quietly, her voice devoid of malice, carrying only the cold weight of the truth. "When you woke up and I was gone, you didn't tear the city apart to find me. You let your father tell you a lie because it was easier than going to war for me."
"I didn't know!" he sobbed.
"You didn't want to know," Aaliyah corrected him. "I didn't bring my sons here to ask you back. I brought them here because they kept asking why they didn't have a father, and I needed them to see exactly who they survived."
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She didn't wait for his response.
Aaliyah Brooks turned her back on the ruined groom, the arrested billionaire, and the shattered high-society crowd. Flanked by five identical boys in navy blazers, she walked out of St. Matthew’s and into the bright, unclouded afternoon, leaving the Whitmore empire entirely in ashes.
