The CEO reluctant bride

Chapter6

CHAPTER SIX: Breaking Point

POV: Benjamin

I stayed in Judith's hospital bed for three days straight while doctors monitored her and the baby, and somewhere during those endless hours of watching her sleep and willing her to be okay, I realized that I had been lying to myself about everything. I told myself this was just a contract, and she was just a means to an end, but the truth was I had been falling for her since that night in my office and maybe even before that, and the thought of losing her made me understand what real fear felt like.

She woke up on the third day and the first thing she asked was whether the baby was okay, and when I told her yes, we both cried with relief even though I could not remember the last time I had cried about anything. The doctor said she needed bed rest and reduced stress, and I made arrangements to work from the hospital because I was not leaving her side again, not when I had just figured out that she mattered more than anything else in my world.

We talked during those hospital days in a way we never had before, and I told her things I had never told anyone. About the guilt I carried over Clara's death and the way my father blamed me for destroying our family. She told me about growing up poor while knowing her father was a billionaire who chose not to acknowledge her, about the shame of wearing secondhand clothes to school while other kids had everything handed to them, about how she learned to make herself invisible so no one would ask questions she could not answer.

I realized that Judith had been surviving her whole life the same way I had been, by building walls and pretending not to need anyone, and maybe that was why we understood each other in ways no one else ever could. I was about to tell her that I wanted to make our marriage real, that I was done pretending I did not care about her, when the door opened and Andrea walked in like she had every right to be there.

Judith tensed beside me, but Andrea ignored her completely and focused on me with eyes that looked almost sorry, and she said she needed to tell me something I deserved to know even though it would destroy me.

My father had orchestrated her betrayal, she said, had paid her to seduce me and then sell company secrets as a test of whether I could handle real corporate warfare. She had done it because Solomon promised her ten million dollars and a position in his company after.

The room started spinning as Andrea kept talking, explaining how Solomon had been sabotaging my deals for years to keep me dependent on his guidance, how he had arranged for me to fail over and over again while pretending to bail me out. Then she said something that made my heart stop completely, that the kidnappers who took Clara were hired by Solomon to teach me a lesson about the dangers of being weak and careless, but they went rogue and killed her when Solomon refused to pay the higher ransom they demanded.

I heard Judith gasp beside me, but I could not move, could not breathe, could not process what Andrea was telling me because it was too horrible to be true. My father had killed Clara, had turned me into the broken person I became, had spent fifteen years letting me believe it was my fault when he was the monster who destroyed our family, and my mother knew and had blamed me anyway to protect him.

Andrea handed me a folder full of documents and recordings that proved everything she said, and she told me Solomon was planning to remove me as CEO within the week using a hostile takeover he had been arranging with my cousin Nicholas. She said she kept the evidence as insurance after Solomon betrayed her too once she finished his assignment, and she was giving it to me now because I had once shown her kindness when no one else did. She wanted to repay that debt before she disappeared forever.

Then she looked at Judith and said something that made my blood run cold, that Solomon had given me twenty-four hours to choose between divorcing Judith and marrying Valerie Chen for the shipping alliance or losing everything I had built. The board meeting was scheduled for tomorrow morning and Solomon expected me to announce my divorce and new engagement, and if I refused he would proceed with the takeover and destroy me completely.

Andrea left, and I sat there holding documents that proved my father was a murderer and my whole life was a lie. Judith was crying beside me, but I could not comfort her because I was falling apart too completely to hold anyone else together. She said through her tears that she would leave, that she would give up all rights to our baby and disappear so I could keep my company, and I realized she actually believed she was the problem when my father was the real poison in both our lives.

I had twenty-four hours to decide between the empire I had devoted my entire life to building and the woman I had finally admitted I loved, and I had no idea how to choose between them or whether there was any way to have both.