Chap­ter 3: The air at Osprey Cove car­ried an eerie still­ness as Mag­gie stepped onto the shore­line, where a chaot­ic scene was unfold­ing. Guests had gath­ered in hushed mur­murs, their eyes locked on the life­less body of Gwen­dolyn, float­ing face-up in the water. Her pale robe bil­lowed gen­tly with the cur­rent, cre­at­ing a haunt­ing image that was both serene and trag­ic. Secu­ri­ty guards wad­ed into the shal­lows, care­ful­ly work­ing to retrieve the body while a few of the wed­ding atten­dees, unable to resist their curios­i­ty, whis­pered among them­selves. Some stood frozen in place, while oth­ers clutched their phones tight­ly, strug­gling with the urge to cap­ture the moment. Kha­lani, unable to resist, raised her iPhone and began record­ing, her gaze fixed on the unfold­ing scene. Before she could con­tin­ue, Ger­ry approached, his voice sharp and author­i­ta­tive, remind­ing her and the oth­ers about the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments they had all signed before the event.

As Hugo knelt beside Gwendolyn’s motion­less body, a heavy silence set­tled over the crowd. His expe­ri­enced eyes scanned her face, tak­ing in the unset­tling expres­sion frozen on her features—her lips slight­ly part­ed, eyes wide, and her body unnat­u­ral­ly stiff. The absence of any imme­di­ate injuries was puz­zling, though the still­ness of her frame sug­gest­ed she had been in the water for some time. Maggie’s mind reeled as she replayed her last encounter with Gwen­dolyn just hours before. She had seen the young woman stand­ing alone near the docks, a far­away look in her eyes, her pos­ture tense, as though she had been deep in thought. Mag­gie recalled Aidan’s ear­li­er remark about Gwendolyn’s his­to­ry of drug use, sug­gest­ing that she had like­ly been under the influ­ence, which only added to the spec­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, her father, Errol Gard­ner, took a dif­fer­ent approach—his sharp gaze lin­gered on the body, his expres­sion unread­able as though he were try­ing to extract mean­ing from the sit­u­a­tion beyond the obvi­ous tragedy.

A sud­den move­ment caught Maggie’s eye as one of the secu­ri­ty guards lift­ed a blan­ket to cov­er Gwendolyn’s remains. That was when she noticed some­thing unusual—red marks, deep and dis­tinct, stretch­ing across the woman’s throat. A chill ran down her spine as she stepped clos­er, her eyes nar­row­ing as she tried to make sense of what she was see­ing. Hugo, now aware of the marks as well, bent down for a clos­er look, his brow fur­rowed in con­cern. He turned to the secu­ri­ty staff and gave a curt order to clear the area, ensur­ing that no fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the scene occurred before law enforce­ment arrived. The weight of the moment was unde­ni­able, and despite the sense of detach­ment some of the guests dis­played, Mag­gie could feel the rip­ple of unease pass­ing through the crowd. The med­ical exam­in­er and local author­i­ties were called imme­di­ate­ly, and the loom­ing uncer­tain­ty over Gwendolyn’s death deep­ened.

Deter­mined to make sense of what had hap­pened, Mag­gie stepped for­ward, vol­un­teer­ing to inform Aidan of the trag­ic news. Her offer was met with a mix of sym­pa­thy and reluc­tance, but she remained firm in her deci­sion. If any­one need­ed to deliv­er this infor­ma­tion to Aidan, it had to be her. She had been close to him, had wit­nessed first­hand his dynam­ic with Gwen­dolyn, and per­haps, deep down, she need­ed to know how he would react. Would he be shocked? Would he grieve? Or would he already know the truth behind what had hap­pened? The thought sent a wave of unease through her, but she sup­pressed it, focus­ing instead on the task at hand.

As the scene slow­ly dis­persed, Mag­gie found her­self walk­ing away with a lin­ger­ing sense of dread. The day had start­ed as anoth­er step toward a grand wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion, but now, the weight of some­thing much dark­er hung over them all. The dis­cov­ery of Gwendolyn’s body had set some­thing into motion, an unrav­el­ing of secrets and hid­den truths that would not be ignored. Deep in her gut, Mag­gie knew that this was only the begin­ning of a far more sin­is­ter rev­e­la­tion, and she had no choice but to fol­low the path it would take her down.