The CEO reluctant bride

Chapter4

CHAPTER FOUR: Cracks in the Ice

POV: Benjamin

Judith had been living in my penthouse for two weeks and I barely saw her except when she brought me coffee in the mornings before we left for work, always perfectly prepared and never meeting my eyes. I told myself this arrangement was exactly what I wanted, a wife who stayed out of my way and asked for nothing, but every night I lay awake listening to sounds from her room and hating myself for caring whether she was sleeping or crying or thinking about me at all.

The corporate gala was mandatory, and I needed to bring my new wife to prove to my father and the board that I was settled and responsible. I had my assistant buy Judith a dress that cost more than most people's cars and told her to be ready by seven. She came out of her room looking nervous and beautiful, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe before I remembered that this was just a contract, and she was just an employee I happened to be married to.

The gala was full of people who wanted things from men and women who looked at Judith like she had stolen something that belonged to them. I kept my hand on her lower back more for my own comfort than hers. Valerie Chen found us within minutes, the woman my father had been pushing me to marry for years, and she greeted Judith with false sweetness while her eyes promised violence.

Everything was going according to plan until Robert Davidson, a rival CEO who hated me for reasons I never bothered learning, made a loud comment about how I must have been desperate to marry my secretary. He laughed and said everyone knew secretaries were interchangeable, and my new wife would be warming someone else's bed before our first anniversary. I felt my hands curl into fists as rage flooded through me.

Before I could respond, Judith stepped forward and in a voice that carried across the entire room, she proceeded to destroy him. Listed every failing deal his company had made in the last year and explained in precise detail exactly why his stock was plummeting, and his board was looking for his replacement. She quoted numbers and dates and insider information that should have been impossible for her to know, and by the time she finished, Robert's face was purple with humiliation and the whole room was staring at her in shock.

I was staring too, because I had no idea where she learned to do that, how she knew things about Davidson's company that even my intelligence team had not uncovered.

Suddenly, I was looking at my wife like I had never really seen her before. She excused herself to the restroom and I followed her, held her arm in the empty hallway and demanded to know how she knew all that information.

She looked terrified and guilty and tried to pull away, but I held on, and finally she admitted that she did consult work on the side under a fake name to pay for her mother's medical bills. My blood went cold as I realized what she was saying, that my wife was the mysterious consultant, Harper Gray, who had been advising my competitors for the past two years. I felt betrayed in a way I had not felt since Andrea sold my company secrets.

I accused her of being a spy, of marrying me to get inside information she could sell, and she tried to explain, but I could not hear anything past the roaring in my ears. I told her our contract was void, and I would sue her for everything she had. She went white as paper, but her eyes flashed with anger instead of fear.

She said I was so obsessed with being betrayed that I could not see when someone was actually loyal to me, that she had never once shared any information about my company with anyone, that every consulting job she took was carefully chosen to avoid conflicts of interest. She said I was exactly what Andrea warned her I would be, someone who destroyed everything he touched because he was too broken to believe anyone could actually care about him.

Then she walked away and left me standing in that hallway feeling like the floor had dropped out from under me. I went back to the gala and smiled and made small talk while my mind replayed everything she said. That night, I went home to an empty penthouse because Judith did not come back, and I told myself I did not care even though I could not sleep until I heard her key at the door at three in the morning.