All Chapters of The Ties That Binds : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The silence of the grand hallway was suffocating, a stillness that hung in the air like a thick fog. Savannah’s fingers brushed the edge of a marble column as she made her way toward the study. The mansion was more imposing up close, with every detail calculated to exude wealth, power, and control. There was something disorienting about it, the gleaming floors, the sharp angles of the furniture, the portraits of Jackson’s ancestors staring down at her with expressions frozen in time.Each step she took echoed through the expansive hall, and the rhythmic sound seemed to grow louder, more pronounced with every passing second. It was as if the house itself was alive, waiting, watching, and it knew she didn’t belong.Savannah couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a pretender here. An outsider. In her own marriage, she was just playing a part, a role in a narrative she hadn’t fully signed up for. The gleaming smile Jackson had given her earlier, that perfect mask, now felt like a facade.

The air in the study thickened, heavy with tension and the scent of polished wood and expensive secrets. Savannah’s eyes flicked from Jackson to Delilah, the two forces in the room who seemed so effortlessly capable of shaping her future , one with a contract, the other with a threat.Delilah hadn’t moved. She stood in the doorway like a promise of trouble, a silhouette framed by the chandelier’s cold glow. Her smile was lazy, amused, as though the turmoil she’d walked into was nothing more than an evening’s entertainment.“Well?” she drawled, glancing between them. “No one going to offer me a drink? A seat? Or perhaps a little honesty?”Jackson moved first. Not a step, but a shift , a tightening of the jaw, the set of his shoulders hardening until he was steel carved into a man’s shape.“What do you want, Delilah?” His voice held a coldness that didn’t surprise Savannah but unsettled her deeply; she had never heard him sound so personal, so dangerously familiar.Delilah’s laughter wa

The words hit the room like an explosion.“The press has the documents.”For a moment, nothing moved, not Jackson, not Savannah, not even the air itself. Everything froze as if the house had suddenly been plunged into ice. Grayson’s face was stark with urgency, pale beneath the dim study light. His fingers clenched the tablet so tightly his knuckles stood white beneath his skin.Savannah felt her pulse slip, stutter, then accelerate with dizzying force. Her voice came out in a whisper she barely recognized.“What… documents?”Grayson looked at her with an expression hovering between pity and alarm. “Everything Delilah mentioned. The altered leases. The forged trust clause. Harrison’s signatures.” He swallowed. “And… the marriage contract.”Savannah’s stomach dropped.Not just the company’s dirty secrets.Hers.Her private, involuntary deal.Her signature.Her name tied to a billionaire in a contract that had never been meant for public eyes.Jackson’s entire body went rigid, a man mad

The world seemed to tilt, the study shrinking around them as the weight of Grayson’s words settled like a storm cloud. The press had the documents. All of Harrison’s forged clauses, the manipulated contracts, the timing discrepancies, the fraudulent signatures. Everything.And now the world , or at least every ruthless financial journalist in St. Louis , would feast on it.Savannah felt her breath falter. “How fast?” she whispered.Grayson exhaled shakily. “They’re publishing now.”The air snapped.Jackson moved first. Not with panic, but with the cold precision of a man whose entire world was built on staying ahead of disaster. He strode across the room and locked the office door.“No one comes in,” he said. “No calls. No interruptions unless it’s life or death.”Grayson nodded tightly. “Already instructed the staff.”Savannah remained near the desk, her fingers gripping the wooden edge. She felt like she was standing on an invisible fault line, bracing for a quake. Her heart thumped

Savannah did not sleep.Not that night. Not for a moment.Not with the weight of secrets pressing into her ribs like steel.Jackson had disappeared hours earlier, pulled into late-night crisis calls, meetings behind locked doors, strategy sessions with Grayson that stretched past midnight. And though Savannah had been dismissed from the study with a sharp, “Go rest, you’ve done enough,” her mind refused to be quiet.Done enough?She had barely begun.She lay awake in the guest suite, her new marital suite, as the house staff called it, staring at the silk canopy above her, replaying the same words over and over:“If the amended clause leaks to the press, the marriage becomes evidence of fraud.”“Harrison has been planning this for months.”“Delilah has copies.”“We either fight… or fall.”Fight.The word stuck.By dawn, Savannah had made a choice, quietly, privately, fully.She was done being the one pushed around the chessboard.Today, she would move.The sun had barely cracked the h