Chapter 4: The favor that was owed

My mother summoned me to brunch four days after the engagement dinner, which was how I knew it wasn't really brunch.

She waited until the waiter had poured the coffee and disappeared before she got to the point.

"You'll be maid of honor," she said. "Gracie wants to announce it this week."

I nearly laughed. "You're joking."

"I'm not."

"Mom. She stole my engagement. You handed it to her. And now you want me to stand next to her at the altar smiling?"

"It's not about what either of us wants." My mother's voice stayed level, the same tone she used for everything unpleasant — flat, final, like weather. "It's about what this family needs."

"What this family *needs*." I set my cup down harder than I meant to. "Enlighten me."

She hesitated. That alone told me it was bad.

"The Marshalls have carried this family financially for six years," she said finally. "Since your father's business partners pulled out after he died. Edward stepped in quietly. Loans. Investments. The house we live in isn't fully ours, Samantha — it's leveraged through one of his holding companies."

The coffee cup felt suddenly very heavy in my hand.

"You never told me that."

"Because it wasn't your burden to carry. It was mine." For the first time, something almost like exhaustion cracked through her composure. "Edward has been patient. Generous, even. But patience like that has a price eventually, and the price is this family staying close to his. Gracie marrying into it seals that. Publicly. Permanently."

"So that's it." My voice came out flat, disbelieving. "That's why you gave him my engagement. Not because Gracie 'fits better.' Because you needed the Marshalls happy, and Gracie was easier to manage than me."

My mother didn't deny it. That was somehow worse than if she had.

"Then why not just use Dad's trust?" I asked. "If we're this bankrupt, why hasn't anyone touched my shares? They're worth more than whatever Edward's been quietly covering."

"Your trust is locked until you're twenty-five, or married. You know that." My mother's voice tightened, something evasive sliding beneath it. "It isn't liquid. It isn't cash we can put toward a mortgage or a bank's patience. Edward's help is the only thing that's actually kept a roof over our heads these past six years."

"Convenient, then, that Edward's the one who benefits either way. Grateful family if he keeps helping. Untouched trust if I stay single long enough."

Something flickered across my mother's face, there and gone too fast to name.

"You're reading too much into it," she said. But she didn't meet my eyes when she said it.

"You've always asked questions," she said quietly. "Pushed back. Gracie doesn't. Edward likes people who don't push back."

"And I'm just supposed to smile through her wedding, knowing all of that."

"You're supposed to protect this family," my mother said, sharper now. "Whatever it costs you personally. That's what family means, Samantha. Sacrifice."

"Funny," I said. "I don't remember anyone sacrificing anything for me."

She flinched, just slightly, and for a second I almost felt bad.

Almost.

"There's more," she said, before I could stand up and leave the table entirely. "Edward wants a joint statement from both families before the wedding. Something for the press, about unity, continued partnership. He specifically asked that you be photographed at the engagement events. All of them."

"He wants me on display."

"He wants proof that the Rogers family is still fully behind the Marshalls," my mother said. "That nothing was lost in the... reshuffling."

"You mean he wants proof I'm not humiliated enough to cause a scandal."

My mother didn't answer, which was answer enough.

"Fine," I said, standing, my chair scraping loud against the floor. "I'll smile for the cameras, Mom. I'll stand next to Gracie in whatever dress she picks. But don't mistake my silence for forgiveness. You don't get both."

I made it two steps before I turned back.

"One more thing," I said. "I want to see the statements. Dad's shares. Six years of them."

My mother's expression didn't move, but her hand went very still around her cup.

"They're not simple documents, Samantha. It would take time to pull together."

"Take the time, then. I'll wait."

"I don't appreciate the accusation buried in that request."

"I haven't accused you of anything." I held her gaze. "Yet."

She watched me walk away without calling after me, which told me everything about how this brunch had really gone — exactly as planned, on her end, right up until the very last thing I said.

I didn't tell her about Liam. Not the texting, not the second coffee, not the quiet, careful way something was building between us that had started as a weapon and was starting to feel like something else entirely.

If she knew the Marshalls' finances were the leash keeping this family in line, then Liam Wade — the one Marshall untouched by Edward's control, the one who ran circles around all of them — was worth more to me now than he'd been the day before.

He wasn't just revenge anymore.

He was leverage.

---

Two days after the garage, I told myself I was doing reconnaissance. That's the word I actually used, walking into his coffee shop on a Wednesday afternoon with no car trouble to justify it this time, just me, a laptop I had no intention of opening, and a plan that suddenly felt very thin as an excuse.

He was already there, tucked into the corner table like he owned it, and he looked up before I'd even fully cleared the doorway.

"No hood popped this time," he said, closing his own laptop halfway. "I'm almost disappointed."

"I figured I'd let you have a day off from rescuing me." I sat down across from him without waiting to be asked, which surprised us both, I think. "This seat taken?"

"It is now."

A waiter came and went. I ordered the same latte as last time, mostly because I hadn't actually thought this far ahead.

"So," he said, studying me with that particular unhurried attention that made my pulse do something inconvenient. "Reconnaissance, or coincidence?"

"Does it matter?"

"It might." His mouth curved, just slightly. "I'm trying to work out if I should be flattered or concerned."

"Can't it be both?"

"Everything with you seems to be both," he said. "I've noticed that pattern already."

I wrapped my hands around the mug, buying myself a second to decide how much truth to hand him. "Fine. Coincidence that leaned very heavily on me remembering which coffee shop you liked."

"That's the most honest non-answer I've gotten from anyone in weeks."

"Don't get used to it. I have a reputation to protect."

"So you've said." He leaned back, arms crossed, though nothing about his posture felt closed off. "Tell me something true, then, since we're apparently doing that today. What do you actually do, Samantha Rogers, when you're not fixing batteries you didn't break?"

I hesitated, caught between the lie I'd already told him and the strange, growing reluctance to keep lying at all. "Marketing. It's about as thrilling as it sounds."

"You say that like you don't believe it."

"I don't, most days." I turned my cup slowly, surprised at how easily that admission came out. "What about you? Actually running a company, or is that a rumor too?"

"Depends who you ask." Something flickered behind his eyes — old, well-worn resignation. "Some days it feels like running it. Other days it feels like managing a very expensive inheritance I never fully agreed to."

"That sounds lonely."

"It is." He said it plainly, without asking for sympathy, which somehow made it land harder. "Most people I deal with want something specific from me. A signature. An introduction. A seat at some dinner that'll make them look good. It's strange, actually talking to someone who hasn't asked me for anything yet."

"Give it time," I said, lighter than I felt. "I might surprise you."

"I'm counting on it." He said it like a joke. It didn't entirely land like one.

We stayed for nearly forty minutes after that, trading nothing of real consequence — a bad review he'd read of some restaurant, my theory that his coffee order revealed a deeply repressed sweet tooth, which he neither confirmed nor denied convincingly.

It was easy in a way that unsettled me more than any of Claire's later warnings ever would, easy in a way that made the plan sitting underneath all of it feel, for the first time, like something I was going to have to work considerably harder to remember.

When his phone finally buzzed with some reminder he silenced without looking at it, he didn't reach for his coat right away.

"Same time next week?" he asked. "Purely coincidentally, of course."

"Purely," I agreed, and meant it a little less than I should have.

---

Jayden called that night, which I hadn't expected.

"Can we talk?" he asked, before I'd even said hello.

"About what, Jayden? The wedding you're apparently having with my stepsister?"

"About the rumor," he said. "That you've been seen with someone. Twice now, according to Claire."

My stomach dropped, cold and fast.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Claire has people everywhere, Sam. You know that." His voice tightened. "Someone spotted you at a coffee place near the Wade building. Twice this week. Sitting awfully close to him, from what I heard."

I kept my voice carefully bored. "I live in the city, Jayden. There are a limited number of coffee shops."

"That's not an answer."

"It's not your business anymore who I get coffee with," I said. "You made that very clear at your own engagement party."

Silence on the line. When he spoke again, his voice had changed — quieter, more careful, almost afraid.

"Sam. If this is about hurting the family somehow — if you're doing something with someone connected to us to get back at Gracie, or at me—"

"You think very highly of yourself," I said, "if you believe I need a man to get back at you."

"That's not what I—"

"Goodnight, Jayden."

I hung up before he could finish, my heart hammering harder than I wanted to admit.

They were already watching. Already circling, connecting dots faster than I'd planned for.

Which meant whatever I built with Liam Wade, I needed to build it fast, and I needed it to be strong enough to survive Claire's spies and Edward's warnings and my mother's quiet, desperate need to keep this family tethered to Marshall money.

I picked up my phone and typed a message before I could talk myself out of it.

Me: Same garage tomorrow? I think I might actually be unlucky this time.

The reply came faster than I expected.

Liam: Looking forward to it.

I stared at those four words longer than I should have, torn between the cold satisfaction of a plan accelerating exactly as it needed to, and something warmer and far more dangerous curling underneath it.

Whatever this was becoming, there was no slow version of it left. Not anymore.