Forced Choice

Emrys’s POV

"Get out, Emrys."

Victoria didn't even look up from her desk. Her office smelled of coffee and lilies.

"Vic, just let me explain..."

"Explain what?" She finally raised her head. Her eyes were red, but her voice was steady. "My father called me six-thirty this morning. He wanted to know why the man I'm supposed to marry is half naked in a hotel bed with another woman, on every blog in Wales. I hadn't even seen it. He had to send me the link."

"Victoria. I don't remember..."

“How convenient.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I'd said the exact same word to Claribel that morning. It sounded much worse from this side.

"The engagement is over," she said.

She said flatly, like reading out a lab result. My mouth went dry.

"And the merger?"

"He's pulled out."

Eight months of meetings, millions had already been committed between both hospitals, everything was all gone.

I took a step toward her desk. "Victoria, I swear I never wanted..."

"Don't." She held up a hand. "There is one thing I am trying to understand here. Claribel Evans has hated you for months and you hated her too. Somehow she ends up in your bed the night after our engagement was announced?”

"I don't know how she got there."

"That's what makes it worse." She turned her chair to the window. "I can't even look at you right now."

“Leave.”

An hour ago, I'd been sitting in my car, still smelling of that hotel room, my cheek still stinging where Claribel's hand had landed.

My phone had been on silent all morning. When I finally checked it in the car, the screen was crowded with notifications. Callum had sent several messages, and there were missed calls from numbers I didn't recognize.

Callum's latest message sat at the top of the screen. “Mate. Please tell me this is photoshopped.”

I opened the link beneath it.

They were pictures of me and Claribel, tangled in white sheets, her head on my chest, my arm wrapped around her waist, both of us had our eyes closed.

They had two million views, and still climbing!

I looked at them for a long time, waiting to feel something familiar but felt nothing.

The hashtags were already everywhere.

#LlewellynHeirScandal. #DrEvansGoldDigger.

I called our family solicitor before I’d even finished reading. “Mr. Davies, those pictures need to come down. All of them. Today.”

“I’ll send takedown notices to every blog, Dr. Llewellyn.”

“Do it before my father sees them.”

I thought of Claribel in that hotel room, shaking, gripping the sheet, swearing she didn't know. I told myself it was a good performance.

I looked at the pictures again, not at us but at the pictures itself. It was taken from the foot of the bed.

Someone had stood in that room, watching us sleep, and taken those pictures.

The cold that settled in my chest got worse. I remembered the ballroom, the champagne, then someone pressed a whiskey into my hand.

I'd never blacked out from two drinks in my life.

Claribel hates cameras, I thought. She hates me even more. She wouldn't have posed for this or posted this. Would she?

But she was in the room.

She was the one who benefited from all these. A woman who'd lost her career in the big city and wanted back into the world could do worse than seduce a Llewellyn.

I walked out of the Victoria’s building with my jaw tight. I was barely through the front doors when my phone rang. It was Mr. Davies.

“Dr. Llewellyn, I’m sorry. The notices went out an hour ago, but it’s no use. The pictures are on every news site and social page in the country. We remove one and ten more go up.”

“Then keep trying.”

I had barely hung up when the phone rang again. It was Rebecca, my father’s assistant. “Mr. Llewellyn wants to see you.”

"Not today." I leaned against my car and shut my eyes. "I've given today to Victoria. I'll be there tomorrow."

"Sir, he won't like..."

I didn't wait for her to finish. I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

~~~

By Monday morning, I still hadn't worked out how to explain any of it. I walked into my father's office anyway.

He was at the window with his back to me. The second I closed the door, he turned, rage radiating all over his body.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

His voice rattled the glass on the shelf. "You were meant to marry Victoria, close that merger and protect this family. Instead I wake up to my son naked in a hotel bed with that Evans girl, in front of the whole damn country!"

"Dad, I don't know how it happened. What I know is that someone..."

“Then find out who it is!” He strode to his desk and planted both hands on it, leaning towards me. “I told you, you don’t have the luxury of being careless. You are the heir to this family, not some doctor who can stumble out of a hotel bed and shrug it off!”

He was so loud I half expected the glass on the shelf to file a complaint. My father could make a boardroom sweat over one late signature. Losing a merger worth millions had him ready to make the whole building sweat.

“The deal is dead,” he snapped, pacing behind his desk. “Months of work, gone. Victoria’s father won’t even take my calls.”

“Then let me fix it. Give me a week and...”

“A week?” He spun round. “You’ve had a weekend, and look what you did with it. No. You’ll fix it my way. You will marry Claribel Evans.”

I actually laughed. "Sorry?"

He stopped pacing and looked at me. I waited for him to smile or tell me he was making a point. He did neither.

"A scandal needs a story people can swallow," he said. "The pictures are out. We can't take them back. But if you marry her, it stops being a scandal and becomes a love story. The investors settle."

"This is insane!” I let out a dry laugh. "You'd marry me off to tidy a mess."

"I'd save you from your own carelessness." He didn't blink. "You've been the heir for twenty-nine years. Start acting like one."

"Why?" I put both hands on his desk. "You could spin this a dozen ways. A statement. A lawsuit against whoever took those pictures. Why would you hand me to the one woman who may have set this whole thing up?"

Something flickered across his face. Quick, like a bird across a window.

"Because if she's the one who did it," he said, "you keep her where you can watch her." His mouth twitched. "Where we can watch her."

We? The word bothered me more than it should have.

My father had a way of making every decision sound like it belonged to the whole family, even when he was the only one making it.

"I'm not marrying her. I hate her, Dad. I'd..."

"Then listen carefully." He didn't raise his voice.

"Refuse, and every pound for the Children's Wing stops today. The orphanages too. All of it."

That landed like a punch to the ribs.

I had spent three years on that wing. Three years of dinners, begging, and smiling at people I couldn't stand, so that kids with nobody could have a bed. I could still see the little boy on my last visit who had asked if the new wing would have a window.

But I straightened up.

"Then stop it," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. My hands curled at my sides, but I refused to let him see how much the threat had shaken me. "I'll raise it again. I did it once."

For a second I thought I'd won. My father said nothing. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a thin blue folder and slid it across the polished wood to me.

I didn't want to touch it. I knew what it was. I knew from the colour, from the red ink circled on the first page.

My mouth went dry.

"I kept this out of the board's hands for six months," my father said quietly. "Tell me again you won't marry her."