Chapter three

Cassian’s POV

The door clicked shut behind her, and the room felt too large.

I stood by the long table and looked at the empty chair where Linnea had been sitting. She had left the way she always left, with her chin high and her hands shaking and her back so straight it could have been drawn with a ruler. She had taken the folder. That was something.

I didn’t follow her. I never did.

My phone lit up on the table. I knew the name before I read it, and I let it ring three times before I answered.

“Father.”

“I hear you’ve been taking meetings downtown,” Magnus Voss said. His voice was calm and dry and it carried the way a blade carries. “With a Hartwell.”

I closed my eyes for half a second. “Who told you?”

“Does it matter? Come to the house. Now.”

“I’m busy.”

“You are never too busy for your family, Cassian.”

The line went dead. I stood there with the phone in my hand for a long moment, then picked up my jacket.

My father’s study smelled of leather and old cigars. Magnus sat behind the desk with a glass of whiskey he wasn’t drinking. He didn’t get up. He had never gotten up for me.

“The trust requires a wife by the end of the month,” he said. “I’ve been patient. Marissa Lowell’s family is willing. She’s suitable. She’s agreeable.”

“I’m not marrying Marissa.”

“Then who?”

I said nothing.

My father studied me for a long, cold moment. Then something shifted in his face, and he set the glass down very carefully. “No,” he said.

“The clause doesn’t name a family.”

“Not a Hartwell.” His voice dropped. “Not that family. I will not have that name in this house.”

“The clause says married,” I said. “It says nothing about who.”

“Do you know what those people did to us?”

I did. I knew more than he did. I kept my face still.

“I’m marrying whom I choose,” I said. “You can’t stop it. Grandfather wrote the trust so you couldn’t.”

“I can’t stop the marriage,” my father said softly. “But I can make it very hard on the woman who takes your name.”

He let that sit in the room. Then he picked up a file from his desk and slid it toward me. On the front was a company logo: Voss Properties.

“Their board votes on Friday,” he said. “Their rink is going to be mine. You can marry her. But she will have nothing, and you’ll have given her nothing.”

I picked up the file and set it back on the desk, gently.

“We’ll see,” I said.

I felt his eyes on my back all the way out of the house.

At the office, my lawyer was waiting. Harlan Reed had been with my family for twenty years and had never once raised his voice. He was raising it now.

“Schedule C,” he said. “Cassian, you can’t ask anyone to sign a contract with a sealed schedule.”

“She’ll sign it.”

“She’ll think you’re hiding something.”

“I am.”

Harlan stared at me. “You could at least tell me what’s in it.”

“I already did. You drew it up.”

“I drew up the legal language. I don’t know why you wrote it.” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why her? Any woman in the city would sign this. Half of them would be thrilled.”

“Half of them would sell the story to a magazine within a week.” I looked out at the city lights. “She won’t. She’ll hate me, but she won’t sell me out. And she’ll survive my father, which is more than I can say for the rest.”

“That’s a strange reason to marry someone.”

“It’s the only one I can give you.”

When Harlan left, Jasper Quinn came in without knocking, the way he always did. He dropped onto my couch with a bottle of water and gave me a long look.

“You did it,” he said. “You really asked her.”

“I did.”

“And?”

“She said no.”

“Good for her.” Jasper grinned, but it faded when I didn’t smile back. “You’re doing this the hard way, you know. You could just tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“I don’t know, Cass. Whatever it is you’re not telling me, either.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I’ve known you since we were twelve. You’ve been carrying something around for ten years, and I’ve watched you do it. At some point, you let somebody help.”

“Not this.”

“Why not?”

“Because the person who’d have to help is the person it would hurt most.”

Jasper opened his mouth, shut it, and sat back. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s what I have.”

I stood at the window. In the bottom drawer of my desk, under the signed contracts and the sponsor reports, there was a folder I never opened at the office. It was thick with years of paper. I knew every page by heart. I didn’t need to open it to know it was there.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number. I picked it up before it finished its first vibration. I didn’t need a name.

I’ll sign. But not as written. Bring Schedule C, or don’t bring a contract at all. I want my own lawyer in the room.

I read it three times. The first time I felt relief so sharp it was almost pain. The second time I read the part about Schedule C, and the relief turned into something heavier.

She was going to ask again. She was going to push until something broke.

And Schedule C couldn’t be opened. Not yet. Not until she understood the reason it existed, and she couldn’t understand that without the one thing I could never tell her first.

I typed: Your lawyer is welcome. Schedule C stays sealed. Everything else is negotiable.

I stared at the words. She wasn’t going to forgive that. I knew it.

I pressed send anyway.