Semua Bab The Vow She Never Meant to Keep: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Her father was asleep in his recliner when she got home, the television murmuring a rerun he'd seen a dozen times, an oxygen concentrator humming quietly beside him. Ivy stood in the doorway a long moment, watching the rise and fall of his chest, and thought about eleven thousand dollars, and about a stranger's office thirty floors above the harbor, and about a proposal so absurd she almost laughed every time she remembered his face when he'd said it — flat, unbothered, like he was offering her a business lunch instead of a wedding ring."You're home early," her father said without opening his eyes."Client meeting ran short." The lie came easily; she'd had a lot of practice lying to him about money since the surgery. "Dad, can I ask you something? Purely hypothetical.""Hypothetically, yes.""If someone offered to pay off everything we owe — all of it, gone — in exchange for something that felt wrong, but wasn't actually illegal, or dangerous, or —" she struggled for the words. "Just

The dress arrived Thursday afternoon, delivered by a woman from a boutique Ivy had only ever seen from the outside, walking past on her lunch break and doing the mental math on window displays she'd never be able to afford. No note came with it. Just a card, in the same cramped handwriting from the contract margins: Wear whatever makes you comfortable enough to survive three hours of small talk. This was my assistant's guess at your size. If it's wrong, tell her and she'll fix it before Saturday.It fit. Ivy stood in front of her bedroom mirror turning sideways, unnerved by how well it fit, and decided not to think too hard about what that meant.He picked her up himself at six, driving instead of sending a car, which she hadn't expected. He didn't say much on the way — a few logistics, who to expect, who to avoid, a warning that Marcus Reyes would likely approach her directly at some point in the evening and that she should say as little as possible if he did. At a red light, he reac

The lake house belonged to Ethan's grandfather before it belonged to no one at all, sitting empty for years except for a caretaker who mowed the lawn and checked the pipes twice a season.Ethan mentioned it the way he mentioned most things — briefly, without inflection, folded into a sentence about needing to sign off on quarterly reports somewhere without his phone ringing every four minutes."You're inviting me?""The board expects photographs of a functioning marriage eventually.A weekend at the lake house photographs better than a weekend in my office." He said it flatly, and then, after a pause that didn't quite fit the rest of the sentence, added, "And I could use two days where no one needs anything from me.It's easier with someone else there.I'm not sure why."It was, for Ethan, something close to an admission, and Ivy chose not to point that out.They drove up on a Friday afternoon that turned to rain somewhere around the second hour, the kind of steady autumn downpour that di

The press conference was Marcus Reyes's idea, though he'd dressed it up as a board initiative — a joint appearance to reassure shareholders after a quarter of choppy earnings, Ethan and two senior board members fielding questions from a room of reporters who mostly wanted to ask about the marriage rather than the merger.Ivy watched from the wings, off to the side where Ethan's assistant had positioned her, closer to the room than she'd expected. She hadn't been asked to speak. She'd been asked, specifically, only to stand where the cameras could find her if they wanted a photograph of support.It went smoothly enough until the fourth question, when a reporter near the back asked about the anniversary of Ethan's mother's disappearance — twenty-three years that month, apparently, a detail Ivy hadn't known and clearly wasn't meant to hear discussed in a room full of microphones."No comment," Ethan said, even and flat, the same voice he used for numbers he didn't like.Marcus, beside hi

She was waiting in the kitchen when he got home, the printed file squared on the counter in front of her, and she watched him clock it the moment he walked in — the way his stride shortened, the way his eyes went to the papers before they went to her face."What is that?""My mother worked for your father. Six months, decades ago. He had her terminated, and someone erased the reason from her file at his instruction." Ivy kept her voice level, though it cost her something to do it. "I found a photograph of the two of them on a boat. My father confirmed she never talked about it, only that it made her cry for years and he never knew why. And now someone on your own board sent me this before Marcus can use it against us, which means Marcus already has it, or will soon."Ethan didn't move for a long moment, and when he finally crossed the kitchen to look at the file himself, his hands weren't quite steady turning the pages — the first time she'd seen them anything less than composed since