CHAPTER 4

MY FIANCÉ'S SECRET

Ethan was waiting in the living room when I walked in.

He stood the moment the door opened, crossed the room in four strides, and pulled me into a careful hug like I might break.

"I came as soon as I finished the meeting," he said against my hair. "Chloe told me you refused the ride. You should have called me."

His arms felt the same. Warm. Steady. The exact pressure he always used when he wanted me to feel safe.

I let him hold me for three seconds. Then I stepped back.

"I'm fine."

He searched my face the way he used to after every small argument—soft eyes, slight frown, the look that said he would fix whatever was wrong if I just told him.

"You don't look fine. Sit. I'll get you water."

I sat on the edge of the couch. He moved through my kitchen like he lived here. In the original timeline he almost did. He had a key. He kept clothes in the second closet. He knew which drawer held the headache pills.

He handed me the glass and sat beside me, close enough that his knee touched mine.

"Talk to me," he said. "The hospital said it was stress and low blood sugar. That doesn't explain why you looked at me like a stranger yesterday."

I drank. The water was cold.

"I was disoriented."

He nodded like that answered everything. Then his hand found mine.

"I've been thinking," he said, voice low. "About us. About the future. Your father's health isn't what it used to be. The company's pressure is increasing. I want to make sure you're protected."

There it was.

The same gentle opening he had used in the future right before the first transfer.

I kept my expression open. Tired. Trusting.

"Protected how?"

He rubbed his thumb across my knuckles. "I looked at some of the subsidiary structures last month. A few of them are exposed. If something happened to you—or to us—Chloe's mother already has partial claims through the marriage. I think we should move a few assets into a joint holding. Just temporarily. For safety."

Joint holding.

In the original timeline that phrase had been the start of everything. I had signed. I had trusted. Three months later the joint holding belonged to Chloe.

I looked at our joined hands.

"Which subsidiaries?" I asked.

He named two. The exact ones I remembered.

My stomach turned, but my voice stayed even. "The valuations on those are higher than people think. The east-side logistics chain alone is worth more than the last report showed."

That was the lie.

In truth the east-side chain was over-leveraged and struggling. I had learned that the hard way in the future when Chloe used its weakness to force a sale.

Ethan blinked once. "Higher?"

"Significantly. I had a quiet audit done last quarter. The numbers haven't been updated publicly yet."

He went still for half a second. Then the loving smile returned.

"That's good to know. I'll have my people double-check before we draft anything."

He leaned in and kissed my forehead. "Rest today. I'll handle dinner. I already told Chloe not to come over so you can have quiet."

I watched him stand and walk toward the kitchen, already pulling out his phone.

He thought I couldn't see the screen from this angle.

I could.

He typed quickly. One message. Then he slid the phone into his pocket and opened the refrigerator like nothing had happened.

I waited until he started chopping vegetables.

Then I stood, walked to the hallway bathroom, and locked the door.

My own phone was already in my hand.

I opened the tracking app I had installed on his device three years from now—in a different life. The same app still worked. He had never changed his cloud password.

The message he had just sent sat at the top of the thread with Chloe.

"She claims the east-side chain is undervalued. Quiet audit. Need confirmation before we move. If she's right, we accelerate."

Chloe's reply came thirty seconds later.

"Accelerate to next week. Mother already has the lawyer on standby. Don't let her look too closely at the other two."

I stared at the screen until the words blurred.

Next week.

In the future I remembered, their first major move had been six weeks away. They had needed time to set the board, to make the loan documents look clean, to wait until my father left for the annual conference.

Now they were moving in seven days.

Because of one lie I had fed him.

Because I had changed the information.

I unlocked the bathroom door and walked back into the living room.

Ethan looked up from the cutting board and smiled the same warm smile he had given me the night he proposed.

"Feeling better?"

I smiled back.

"Much better."

Inside, the cold certainty settled deeper.

Their first major plan was no longer weeks away.

It was already in motion.

And I had just forced it to start early.