Ch: 6 QUIET MONEY.

Seraphina's POV

I didn't answer him. Anything I said would be a lie or the truth, and the truth would get me sent to a hospital.

Lucius didn't push. He leaned back in his chair and studied me.

"Why cut the dress?"

"I couldn't walk down the aisle in it."

"You didn't have to cut it. You can leave a dress on a hanger."

"I wanted it ruined."

"It cost fifty thousand dollars."

"I paid for it myself."

"Then it was an expensive point."

"It worked."

"It did." The corner of his mouth moved. Then it was gone, and he was all business again. He closed one window on his laptop and turned the screen toward me.

Three names sat in a column. Marcus Vance. David Cole. Richard Helms. Beside each one he had typed a bank, a company and a date.

"My people checked these in an hour," he said.

"You already called them?"

"From the car."

I hadn't noticed. I had been too busy keeping my hands from shaking.

"And?"

"Vance bought a lake house in April. Paid cash." He scrolled down. "Helms moved his daughter to a school that costs more than his salary."

"What about Cole?"

"Cole is careful. His money sits in his brother's shipping company. It opened in March."

"That fits."

"It fits a man who got paid." He looked up. "Now tell me about the contract."

I had been dreading this part. It proved how blind I had been.

"The Halden construction contract," I said. "On paper it costs forty million. The real cost is sixty-two."

"Where do the extra twenty-two go?"

"A company called Brightwell Advisory. A friend of Julian's runs it."

"How do you know the real number?"

There it was.

"I saw a second set of figures in his study," I said.

"And?"

"He told me it was an old draft."

"You believed him."

"I believed everything he told me."

It was almost the truth. I had seen those figures. I had just seen them two years into a marriage that hadn't happened yet.

Lucius watched me a second longer than he needed to. Then he nodded and wrote something down. He didn't ask when I had been in Julian's study. He didn't ask why I had kept quiet about it. I waited for the next question, but it never came.

"The approvals," he said instead.

"There are three. Each one was signed by someone who owes Julian a favor."

"Names?"

"I know their faces better than their names. Give me a pen."

He slid a notepad across the desk. I wrote for twenty minutes. Dates, offices, anything I remembered about each man. Lucius didn't speak the whole time. Somewhere in the middle, a cup of tea appeared at my elbow. I hadn't heard him leave the room. When I finally looked up, he was back in his chair, watching my hand instead of the page.

"When does the board vote?" he asked.

"Three months from now. After that, my father has no say in his own company."

"How much does he own now?"

"Fifty-one percent. The merger cuts him to twenty-eight."

"So he loses control and thinks he's winning."

"He thinks he's gaining a son."

Lucius was quiet for a moment. "Then we protect the fifty-one. We have three months." He pulled the notepad toward him and read what I had written. "I start buying on Monday. Four percent in the first week, spread across six accounts."

"Four percent is nothing."

"Four percent from six directions looks like six strangers."

I almost smiled. "Julian watches the big moves. He never checks the small ones."

"Good. Small is what I want."

"You think like someone who's done this before," I said.

"I've had practice."

"One more thing," I said. "Julian doesn't work alone."

"Who else?"

"Lillian."

"Your stepsister."

"She's been with him longer than anyone knows. Every plan he makes, she hears first."

Lucius sat back. "Does your father know?"

"My father thinks she's a spoiled girl who needs patience."

"And you?"

"I think she's more dangerous than Julian."

"Why?"

"Julian wants the company. Lillian wants me to have nothing."

"That sounds like the same thing."

"It isn't. Julian stops when he wins. Lillian won't stop until I'm gone."

He didn't look surprised. I noticed, but I was too tired to wonder why. He pulled the notepad back, wrote her name at the top of the page and underlined it twice.

"And when this is over," he said. "What do you want?"

"My father's company safe."

"That's what you want him to have. What do you want?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Nobody had asked me that in years. In my first life, nobody had asked me at all.

"I want to build something of my own," I said. "Something Julian never touched."

Lucius nodded slowly. "Hold on to that."

My stomach growled. In that quiet office, it sounded like an announcement.

Lucius raised his eyes. "When did you last eat?"

"Yesterday, I think."

"You think."

"I was nervous this morning." 

He stood up. "Come."

The kitchen was as bare as the rest of the house. Steel counters, a fridge that hummed, nothing out of place. Lucius opened a cabinet. Closed it. Opened the fridge. Closed it.

"You don't cook," I said.

"I made you tea."

"That isn't cooking."

"I know three restaurants that do."

He opened an app on his phone. "What do you eat?"

"Anything."

"That isn't a food."

I thought about it. 

"Noodles," I said. "With chili."

"How spicy?"

"As spicy as they make it."

He typed it in, then leaned against the island and crossed his arms. He looked like a man who wasn't sure what to do with another person in his kitchen.

"You have no pictures on your walls," I said.

"I know what's in my house."

"That's not why people hang them."

"Why do they?"

"So the house doesn't feel empty."

He looked at the bare wall behind me for a while. "Fair."

That was all he said. But he said it quietly, and I got the feeling nobody had ever told him that before.

The food came forty minutes later. We ate at the counter, side by side, out of paper boxes. Lucius ate fast with his eyes on his phone. I ate slowly. The noodles were hot and too salty, and I nearly cried over them. For the first time since the basement, my body remembered it was alive.

Julian's ring was still on my finger. I had forgotten it was there. I twisted it off and set it on the counter, where it made a small click against the steel.

Lucius looked at it. "Don't throw that away."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good. He bought it with company money. That makes it evidence."

I almost laughed. "You think of everything."

"I try."

Headlights swept across the kitchen window. My chopsticks stopped halfway to my mouth.

Lucius glanced at the glass, then at me. "A neighbor."

"I know."

"Julian doesn't know where you are."

"I know that too." My hands were shaking again, so I put the chopsticks down. "I know what he does when he's angry."

"So do I."

He said it quietly. I looked at him, but he had already turned back to his phone.

His phone rang. He glanced at the screen and answered.

"Daniel."

I kept eating and tried not to listen.

"I need a marriage license filed tonight," Lucius said. "No. Tonight. Two names. Mine and..." He looked at me. "Spell your surname."

"D-E-L-A-I-N-E."

He repeated it into the phone. "Ten a.m. Monday. City hall. Get it done."

He hung up and put the phone down.

I set down my chopsticks. "Monday?"

"Yes."

"That's fast."

"The sooner you're my wife, the harder you are to touch."

"You think Julian will come after me?"

"I think he'll come after whoever ruined his plan." He finally looked at me. "I want you to have my name before he has a theory."

"You're sure about this?"

"You made the offer."

"And you accepted."

"Yes." He went back to his phone. "I don't accept things I'm unsure about."

"And after? When Julian is finished?"

"We'll talk then."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have."

He said it the same way he had said you came to me in the car. Short and closed.

The first time, I had planned my wedding for eight months. Flowers, a string quartet, a cake with five tiers. This time it would take one phone call and a pen. I liked it better.

I should have felt trapped. I didn't. I felt something closer to relief, and that scared me more than the marriage did.

My phone lit up on the counter. I had silenced it in the car, but the screen kept glowing, over and over. I turned it over. Twenty-six missed calls. Fourteen from Julian. Three from my father. The rest were numbers I didn't know, most likely guests.

In five years of marriage, Julian had never called me fourteen times in one day. He only called when he needed something.

"Answer?" Lucius asked.

"No."

"Your father?"

"I'll call him tomorrow."

"He'll want to meet me before Monday."

"He'll want to shoot you before Monday."

"That's fair."

"He's a gentle man. But he loves me, and that makes him loud."

"Then I'll let him be loud."

I pictured my father in the wedding hall, checking his watch, telling people I would be right back. I wanted to call him that second. But if I heard his voice, I would tell him everything. He would drive straight here and ruin the plan.

The messages kept coming.

Julian: Where are you?

Julian: Everyone is waiting. Please call me.

Julian: I'm worried sick.

Then one from Lillian.

Lillian: Seraphina, please. Julian is a wreck. Dad is crying. Just tell us you're okay.

I read hers twice. Lillian had never said please to me in her life.

In my first life, I would have called her back in tears. I would have apologized for ruining everyone's day. Lillian knew that. She was counting on it.

I turned the phone toward Lucius. "My stepsister."

"What does she want?"

"To know where I am."

"Then don't tell her."

"I won't. But if I disappear, Julian starts digging. I need him to think I'm still the girl who panics and cries."

"Will he believe it?"

"He already does. That's the problem."

I typed a reply to Julian. I'm sorry. I panicked. I needed to be alone. I'm safe. Lucius read it over my shoulder.

"That sounds like the old Seraphina," he said.

"It's who he expects."

"Who set up that phone?"

"Julian's assistant."

"Then it's his phone. Send the message. After that, it goes to my security team."

I pressed send. The answer came in under ten seconds. Of course it did.

Julian: Take all the time you need. I love you. Come home when you're ready.

I used to keep his messages. I used to read them twice, smiling like a fool. Now the words made my skin crawl.