Chapter Four: A Marriage with Condition

POV: Lilly Roswell

“Forty percent?” My voice cracked across Pierce’s glass desk. “Forty percent of my father’s money goes to a husband?”

Pierce didn’t flinch. His tie hung crooked, and a cold cup of tea sat by his elbow. Morning light poured through the window behind him, hard and white.

“Richard Knight wrote that clause himself,” he said. “He read it to me twice.”

“Why?”

“He missed twenty-one years of your life.” Pierce rubbed his eyes. “No birthdays. No bad days. He wanted someone beside you when he couldn’t be. A man with a reason to stay. Sixty percent for you. Forty for him.”

I stared at the page. My father had tried to buy me a bodyguard out of love and arithmetic. Any other week, it might have made me cry. This week, my hands curled into fists.

“Ryan sat in your waiting room yesterday and asked for exactly forty percent,” I said. “He knew the number, Mr. Pierce.”

Pierce went quiet. He slid a thin folder across the desk.

“Last night I went through the old investigator file.” He turned a page toward me. “Read the highlighted line.”

A typed note, three years old. Subject: Roswell, Lilly. Westmoor University. Possible match. Interviewed classmate R. Fox. Fox pressed hard. Informed him subject may be heir to a major estate.

I read it twice. My finger found the date and stayed there. “Three years ago.” My mouth had gone dry. “He proposed eleven days later.”

“Ryan knew before you did,” Pierce said gently. “Years before.”

Two years of in this lifetime, I choose you. He hadn’t chosen me. He’d chosen a number.

The room tilted, then steadied, and what steadied it was cold.

“There’s more,” Pierce said. “The trustees will freeze the estate until a judge rules on his claim. Months. And I can’t advise you to marry Mr. Kingsley next week. I won’t put my name to it.”

“So you won’t help me.”

“I won’t help you run.”

I stood. My chair scraped the floor. “Only your receptionist had my hotel address, Mr. Pierce. Yesterday a stranger’s courier knew it. And your investigator handed Ryan my future for free.” I pressed my folder to my chest. “I’ll find another lawyer.”

“Lilly—”

The door shut on my name.

The card said forty-first floor, noon. I rode up with my own reflection, a pale woman in yesterday’s coat, and stepped onto gray carpet that swallowed every footstep. Lex stood at a wall of glass, hands in his pockets. The city lay under him like a model he owned.

“How did your courier find my hotel?”

“Your lawyer’s receptionist gave it to my assistant for the sale papers.” He turned. “I didn’t ask her to be careless.”

“And my husband?” The word tasted like ash. “Your card says he contacted you.”

“Eight this morning. He said his wife was unwell and I shouldn’t deal with her.” His eyes held mine. “I hung up.”

I dropped the card on his desk. “The husband gets forty percent of everything my father left. Marry me, and you’d take it.”

“I know. I read the trust.” He opened a drawer and laid one page in front of me. The ink on the signature still shone. Alexander Kingsley renounces all claim to the Knight estate. “I signed at seven.”

“Before I even said yes.”

“You asked what I wanted. I don’t want your father’s money.”

“Everyone wants money.”

“Then I’m a poor bet for you to worry about.”

I read the line again. My knees picked a chair for me. “I haven’t said yes.”

“I know.”

“If I do, my money stays mine. My own lawyer reads every page. Nobody pretends to feel what they don’t.” I hesitated. “And nobody turns Ryan into a show.”

One eyebrow lifted. “He earned it.”

“Maybe. But I’m not building my life out of revenge.”

Something crossed his face, quick as a shadow over a window. “Agreed.”

“And you don’t control me.”

“I wouldn’t recommend trying.”

I almost smiled. Almost.

Then he set a black folder in front of me. “This has nothing to do with marriage. It’s about Ryan.”

Inside was a stack of stapled pages. Fox Holdings. Share Transfer Agreement. Twenty pages of tight print. I flipped to the last one, and my breath stopped.

At the bottom, over the line marked Guarantor, was a signature,My signature . Every loop and slant. Dated four months ago.

I had never seen this paper in my life.