Semua Bab Contractually His: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Cross Industries occupied the top eleven floors of a glass tower that seemed to disapproveof Amara the moment she walked through its doors. She’d worn the charcoal suit shereserved for board meetings, the one that made her feel like she took up more space thanshe did. It didn’t help much. The lobby alone was larger than Whitfield Textiles’ entiresecond floor.“Miss Whitfield.” The receptionist said her name like she’d been expected, which was itsown small unpleasantness. “Mr. Cross is ready for you. Eleventh floor.”Her father hadn’t come. Richard Whitfield had wanted to had, in fact, insisted on it thenight before, until a coughing fit left him gray-faced and gripping the kitchen counter foralmost a full minute. Amara had made the decision for both of them then: she would goalone, and he would rest, and neither of them would say out loud what they were boththinking about his health lately.Julian’s office was exactly what she expected and somehow still unsettling glass walls

Richard Whitfield found out about the offer two days later, and not from Amara.She came downstairs to the smell of coffee and the sight of her father at the kitchen tablewith his laptop open, his reading glasses pushed up into thinning gray hair, and anexpression on his face she hadn’t seen since the week her mother died. The morning lightcoming through the kitchen window made him look older than he had even a month ago,and Amara felt the familiar tightness in her chest that came from watching a parent agefaster than they should.“Dad…”“His lawyer called the office this morning.” Richard’s voice was quiet, careful, the voice heused when he was holding something back by sheer force of will. “Asking for updatedfinancials ahead of a I believe the phrase was personal arrangement between ourfamilies.” He looked up at her, and there was something raw in his eyes that made her wish,briefly and uselessly, that she’d told him first. “Sit down, Amara.”She sat.“Tell me what happened

The press release went out at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, timed, Amara suspected,to hit the news cycle before the market opened. Cross Industries CEO Julian Cross to MarryAmara Whitfield, Operations Director of Whitfield Textiles. No mention of a courtship. Nomention of how they’d met, or when, or any of the details a real engagement announcementwould have included, because a real engagement had actual answers to those questionsand theirs had a contract instead.By ten, it was the top story on three different business news sites. By noon, Nia had sent herseventeen screenshots of comment sections, most of them speculating about a whirlwindromance neither Amara nor Julian had had, and a few the ones that made Amara’sstomach turn speculating about something closer to the truth.Convenient timing, considering Whitfield Textiles’ debt situation, one commenter hadwritten, and someone had clearly done their homework, because the reply underneath citednumbers that weren’t publ

Amara couldn’t sleep the night before the wedding, which she supposed was traditional,even if almost nothing else about the wedding was.She sat on the edge of her childhood bed, still in her father’s house for one last night,running her thumb over the plain gold band Julian’s assistant had delivered that afternoon his ring, not hers, a detail she hadn’t thought to ask about until it arrived in a box with nonote attached. Tomorrow she would put it on his hand in front of a small audience of boardmembers and lawyers, and he would put a considerably more expensive one on hers, andsomewhere in a courthouse with too much fluorescent lighting, two years of her life wouldofficially begin.Her father knocked softly around midnight, letting himself in without waiting for an answerthe way he had since she was a child.“Couldn’t sleep either,” he said, settling into the chair by her window, moving more slowlythan he used to, though the color had come back into his face over the past we

The penthouse was larger than any home Amara had ever lived in, all glass and clean linesand the kind of silence that came from too much space and not enough life lived in it. Juliangave her the tour himself that first night, brief and efficient her wing, his wing, a sharedkitchen neither of them apparently used much, a housekeeper who came Tuesdays andFridays and had been instructed, he said, to treat Amara’s privacy with the same discretionas his own.“Your study is stocked with whatever you need for Whitfield Textiles’ files,” he added,opening a door onto a room she hadn’t expected a proper office, not an afterthought,with a desk already arranged facing the window. “I assumed you’d want to keep workingfrom home some days. I had it set up this week.”“You didn’t have to do that.”“I know.” He said it simply, without making anything of it, already moving toward the nextdoor on the tour. “I did it anyway.”She stood in the doorway of the study a moment longer than she meant t