No Choice

Chapter Two

Ivan’s POV

The door to my office clicks open without a knock.

I don't look up. I know who it is by the rhythm of his footsteps, confident, unhurried, the kind of stride that belongs to someone who's known me long enough to ignore all my boundaries. Simon has been walking into my spaces unannounced for years.

"Keep it up," he says, settling into the leather chair across from my desk. "When you're done burying yourself in work, we'll have that talk."

I keep my eyes fixed on the quarterly reports spread across my screen. Numbers. Projections. Forecasts. Safe, predictable things that follow rules and never ask questions I don't want to answer. The spreadsheet blurs slightly, but I blink it back into focus.

"What do you want, Simon?"

The question comes out flatter than I intended. I hear it land between us, cold, distant, the kind of tone I've perfected over years of boardroom negotiations and difficult conversations. Simon, of course, doesn't flinch.

"Sylvia is coming into town."

My fingers freeze above the keyboard.

For a moment, the office falls completely silent. The hum of the air conditioning fades. The distant noise of Manhattan traffic thirty floors below becomes nothing more than a whisper. The name settles in my chest like something heavy and familiar, a weight I've carried for so long that I've forgotten what it feels like not to have it there.

"You know?" I ask carefully.

"I do." Simon leans back, crossing his arms. There's something in his expression I can't quite read, concern, maybe. Or warning. With Simon, it's often both. "Okay, so that's the point. Does she know about you and Pretzel ?"

I drag a hand through my hair, the familiar gesture doing nothing to ease the tension coiling in my shoulders. My scalp tingles from the pressure. I've been pulling at my hair all week, and I'm starting to think I'll be bald before Sylvia even sets foot in this city.

"I think she has hunches."

The admission tastes bitter on my tongue. I hate how imprecise it sounds. Hunches. As if what Sylvia and I have built over five years of distance could be reduced to something so flimsy. She doesn't have hunches. She has instincts, sharp, unerring ones that have always seen through every carefully constructed wall I've ever built.

But this time, the walls are real. This time, there's no performance. This time, I'm actually trapped.

Simon studies me for a long moment. His silence is louder than any accusation he could make.

"You're not going to go through with the proposal, will you?"

The words land like a punch to my sternum.

I force myself to meet his eyes. "I will."

"I'm sorry, what now?" Simon sits forward, his casual demeanor evaporating completely. "Ivan, you can't be serious."

"I'm going to go through with it, Simon." My voice sounds strange to my own ears, controlled, measured, utterly hollow. "Or would you rather I turn down the proposal, destroy our future, lose everything that I've built, and face the old man?"

"Ivan, there has to be a way." Simon's voice has lost its edge. Now it just sounds tired. Worried. The same way he sounded when we were twenty-two and I was making decisions that could have ruined us both. "There has to be something we can do. Some loophole. Some"

"There is no way." I cut him off because I can't bear to hear the hope in his voice. It's a cruel thing, hope. It makes you believe in outcomes that don't exist. "I have to let her go."

The words escape before I can stop them. They hang in the air between us, heavy and final.

Simon stares at me. I can see him searching for something in my expression, a crack, a hesitation, any sign that I don't actually mean what I'm saying. He won't find one. I've had years to practice this particular brand of devastation. I've had years to learn how to say the things that destroy me with a perfectly calm face.

"Are you sure you really want to do this?" he asks quietly.

I close my eyes.

Want. What a ridiculous word. As if wanting has ever had anything to do with the choices that actually matter.

I think about Sylvia. I think about the way she laughs, genuine, unguarded, like she's genuinely surprised by her own joy. I think about the letters she sent me over the years, the way her handwriting curved across the page like she was in a hurry to get the words out before she lost her nerve. I think about the last time I saw her in person, five years ago, standing at the airport with tears in her eyes and telling me she'd be back before I knew it.

I think about the watch I gave her when she graduated. The words I had engraved on the back. You and I.

What a cruel joke that turned out to be.

I open my eyes. "I don't want to do this." My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate myself for it. "I do not have an option."

The silence that follows is absolute.

Simon doesn't say anything. What could he possibly say? He knows the situation as well as I do. He knows about the contracts, the partnerships, the carefully constructed web of obligations that my father has spent decades weaving around me. He knows that stepping off this path doesn't just mean losing money or status. It means losing everything. The company. The legacy. The future that was decided for me before I was even born.

But more than that, it means losing the only thing that's ever mattered to me .

Sylvia.

I think about telling her the truth. I think about looking into those eyes that have always seen me, the real me, not the version I show the world and explaining what I've done. What I have to do. The marriage that isn't a marriage. The arrangement that will bind me to someone else for the rest of my life.

"I should have told her," I say quietly. "Years ago. Before it got this far."

"You were protecting her," Simon says from behind me. "You were giving her a chance to build her own life without"

"Without what? Without knowing that everything I gave her came with strings attached?" I turn to face him. "She doesn't know about the arrangement. She doesn't know about my father. She doesn't know that every dollar I spent on her education came with the unspoken understanding that I would eventually comply with his demands."

Simon's expression softens. "You didn't do it to manipulate her. You did it because you love her."

"Does it matter?" The question comes out sharper than I intended. "Does intent matter when the outcome is the same? She's going to find out eventually. She's going to realize that I let her believe in something that was never going to happen."

"She's going to be here in three days," Simon finally says. She's going to want answers. You're going to have to look her in the eye and tell her the truth."

I close my eyes.

"I can’t do this," I whisper.

Simon places a hand on my shoulder. "You've done harder things."

"Have I?"

"You survived your father. You survived losing your mother. You survived building this company from nothing while he tried to tear it down at every turn." His grip tightens. "You'll survive this too."