CHAPTER TEN: The Board Meets His Wife

Damian

The board gala was precisely the kind of event I’d spent twelve years learning to survive without feeling anything at all, and precisely the kind of event I discovered, within ten minutes of Sofia’s arrival on my arm, that I could no longer attend with any pretense of detachment.

She wore deep green, something Priya’s stylist had chosen, and moved through a room full of people who’d spent decades deciding who mattered in this city with a composure that had nothing to do with money and everything to do with three years of managing difficult customers with nothing but her own steadiness to rely on. I watched her charm my chairman within the first five minutes, watched her deflect a reporter’s invasive question about our whirlwind romance with a line so smoothly delivered I nearly laughed out loud in the middle of a room that hadn’t seen me laugh in longer than most of them could remember.

“She’s remarkable,” Marcus said, appearing at my elbow with two drinks, handing me one without being asked. “The board’s already decided they adore her. Elaine from finance hasn’t stopped talking about her since they spoke ten minutes ago.”

“I know.”

“You look like a man watching something he’s not sure he’s allowed to want.”

“I built an elaborate scheme to acquire her family’s business and marry her under false pretenses, Marcus. Allowed isn’t really the operative concern anymore.”

He studied me for a moment, the easy humor fading from his expression. “You still haven’t told her.”

“I will.”

“When, Damian. Every day you wait, you’re building a larger betrayal, not a smaller one. And from where I’m standing, watching you watch her across this room, I don’t think you’re protecting her from the truth anymore. I think you’re protecting yourself from the possibility she walks away once she hears it.”

I didn’t answer, because he wasn’t wrong, and I’d spent twelve years becoming entirely too skilled at not answering things I didn’t want to examine too closely.

Across the room, Sofia caught my eye, something questioning in her expression, like she’d felt the weight of the conversation happening near her without hearing a word of it. I excused myself from Marcus and crossed the room toward her, drawn by an instinct I hadn’t fully earned the right to trust yet.

“Your board chairman just asked me where we honeymooned,” she murmured, once I was close enough. “I told him Italy. I have no idea if that’s a lie you’d have preferred I tell.”

“Italy is fine. I’ve never actually been.”

“Of course you haven’t. You’ve probably never taken a vacation that wasn’t technically a business trip in your entire life.”

“That’s an unfair assumption.”

“Is it wrong, though.”

I almost smiled, the real version this time, not the practiced one I’d been performing all evening for a room full of people who expected to see a besotted new husband. “No,” I admitted. “It isn’t wrong.”

Her expression softened, just slightly, before something sharper replaced it, her eyes tracking past my shoulder toward the entrance, where a man I recognized immediately had just arrived, uninvited, flanked by two lawyers who looked considerably more prepared for a confrontation than a party.

“Who is that,” Sofia asked, “and why does your entire body just went rigid looking at him.”

I followed her gaze, and felt twelve years of careful planning begin, for the first time, to genuinely slip out of my control.

“That,” I said quietly, “is the man your father’s testimony was supposed to protect from prison. And judging by the expression on his face, I don’t think he’s here to offer congratulations.”

His name was Reginald Ashford, a man I hadn’t spoken to in over a decade, not since the trial that had sent my father to prison in his place had quietly rearranged both our lives into shapes we’d never chosen. He crossed the room toward us with the deliberate pace of a man who’d been rehearsing this exact entrance, his lawyers trailing a step behind like an honor guard for whatever confrontation he intended to stage in front of my entire board.

“Damian.” Reginald’s voice carried further than it needed to, pitched for an audience rather than a private greeting. “Married. I confess I didn’t see that coming, given everything I understand about how you spend your time these days.”

“Reginald. I wasn’t aware you’d been invited.”

“I wasn’t. I came anyway, because I thought your new wife deserved to meet the people whose lives your family has spent considerable effort rearranging.” He turned to Sofia with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, something performative and cold beneath the practiced charm. “Has your husband told you yet, Mrs. Castellano, exactly how he came to find you? Or are you still under the impression this was romance rather than twelve years of very patient bookkeeping?”

I felt Sofia go still beside me, her hand tightening slightly where it rested against my arm, and understood, with a sick, falling certainty, that whatever careful timeline I’d imagined for telling her the truth myself had just been taken out of my hands entirely.

“Reginald,” I said, low and even, the warning in it unmistakable to anyone who’d ever negotiated against me. “Whatever you came here to say, I’d advise you to reconsider saying it in front of three hundred witnesses and a press table.”

“Would you.” He smiled wider, clearly enjoying himself now, a man who’d waited twelve years for exactly this opportunity. “Or would you rather I waited until your wife had fallen in love with you first, so the betrayal lands with considerably more weight once she finally understands what you actually built this marriage to do?”

Sofia’s hand left my arm entirely, and when I turned to look at her, her expression had already shifted into something I hadn’t seen from her before, not fear exactly, closer to the particular stillness of a woman doing rapid, horrified arithmetic.

“Damian,” she said quietly, not looking at Reginald at all, looking only at me. “What is he talking about.”

Reginald, apparently delighted by the silence that followed, pressed further before I could answer at all. “Ask him how long he’s owned your father’s debt, Mrs. Castellano. Go on. Ask him whether it predates your first meeting by three years or by considerably longer than that.”

“Reginald,” I said again, sharper now, aware of the small crowd beginning to gather at the edges of the conversation, phones already rising, the particular hunger of a room sensing scandal before it had even fully arrived. “This isn’t the place.”

“It’s precisely the place. You built this entire spectacle for the board, for the cameras, for the story you wanted everyone to believe. I’m simply offering your wife the one piece of it you left out.” He turned back to Sofia, his voice dropping into something almost gentle, almost kind, which made it considerably worse. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this way, truly. But somebody needed to, before you spent any more of your life believing a lie this elaborate.”

Sofia looked at me then, and I watched, in real time, every assumption she’d been building about the last four days quietly begin to collapse.

“Tell me he’s wrong,” she said. “Tell me right now, Damian, that whatever he’s implying isn’t true.”

I had exactly one chance to answer honestly, in front of a room full of cameras, at the worst possible moment I could have chosen if I’d spent a year planning the timing myself. I opened my mouth, searching for some version of the truth that wouldn’t cost me everything in the next thirty seconds, and found that for the first time in twelve years of careful, practiced control, I had absolutely no idea what to say.