Page 67 of The Marriage Blunder

“I need you to hear me,” I said. “Not as a contingency. Not as the man you accidentally married while I was engaged to your sister. I need you to hear me as the person who has been watching you think for months and has run out of reasons to pretend that doesn’t mean something.”

He went very still.

“I don’t want the annulment,” I said. “I haven’t wanted it. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me you don’t want it either, and I’m done waiting.”

Something moved behind his eyes.

He didn’t speak.

I said, “In Vegas, when we woke up and I saw your face—before either of us said a word—I thought: there it is. And I have been fighting that thought every single day since.”

He looked at me for a long time. Then: “You picked today.”

“I know.”

“Your assistant just turned out to be a spy.”

“Ex-assistant,” I corrected.

He exhaled, almost a laugh. He looked down at the paper in front of him. His thumb moved to the edge of the pen and stayed there. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

I waited.

I would have waited longer.

When he looked back up, something had shifted. The deflection was gone. He said, “The engagement dinner. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. I kept thinking—” He stopped. Started again. “I’m not a careful person about most things, but I was careful about this, because I knew if I wasn’t, I’d burn everything down.” He said the next part quietly. “I wasn’t careful enough.”

I reached across the table and took his hand. He turned it over without hesitating, fingers closing around mine like he’d been waiting for permission.

The afternoon sun had gone gray, the city outside the glass gone to shadow, but the kitchen was warm, and the only thing that mattered was the press of his thumb against mine.

We didn’t need to say anything else. There was nothing left to decide. We sat there, hands together, in the silent aftermath of war, and waited for the rest of the world to catch up.

* * * *

By evening, the penthouse had the look of a war room after the generals had all gone home. The table was littered with printouts, pens, half-drained coffee cups. The only light was the city at dusk, spilling up the walls and over the floor in elongated, blurry grids.

Jude had commandeered the kitchen again, this time reheating leftovers and humming something tuneless under his breath. The last call from Miles had ended with the assurance that everything was “in process,” which in Cranston-speak meant nobody was sleeping until a restraining order had been filed and every asset Pryce touched was under legal quarantine.

I watched Jude as he plated the food—deliberate, careful, the way he was with numbers or with me when he thought I needed handling. I wanted to say something, but the mood was calm, and the prospect of a normal evening was rare enough to make me reluctant to break the spell.

The phone rang at eight p.m. sharp. Jude looked at the screen, read the ID, and slid it across the island to me without a word.

I answered. “Miles.”

He didn’t waste time. “We have a wrinkle.”

I closed my eyes, bracing for it. “Go.”

“Aldous Pryce is not only a competitor, he’s a minority partner in a holding company that’s been quietly acquiring shares in the Southside redevelopment. That in itself is not a problem. The problem is that the holding company is three layers deep, and the person with co-sign authority on every decision is Jude’s sister.”

It landed, but not with the shock I’d expected. More a cold logic, each piece falling into place.

“She’s been on the paperwork for eight months,” Miles said. “She’s the only party that could have set up the Voss connection without going through Mercer. I need to know how you want to play this. If she’s the mastermind behind all of this, the legal move is different than if she’s a participant.”

I looked at Jude, who had stopped mid-stir and was watching me, waiting. “Can you prove it?”

“I will by morning,” Miles replied. “But you have to decide how hard you want to hit.”