My Ex Married My Enemy

CHAPTER 2: THE STOLEN COMPANY

The Bentley did not smell like a car. It smelled like money.

Cold leather, clean cologne, and quiet. Too quiet. The driver did not talk. Adrian Blackwood did not talk. He just sat beside me, his long legs crossed, his phone in his hand, typing something fast.

My dress was dirty at the back from sitting on the sidewalk. My hair was sticking to my sweaty face. My eyes were red. I must have looked like a crazy woman. He looked like he was going to a board meeting on Fifth Avenue.

"Where are we going?" I finally asked. My voice was small.

"My office," he said without looking up from his phone. "My lawyer is waiting."

I swallowed. My throat was hurting from crying. "Adrian, I need to tell you something. I have no money to pay a lawyer. Mark froze our joint account last week. He said it was for tax reasons. I believed him."

Adrian finally looked up. His eyes moved slowly from my face to my dirty dress to my shaking hands.

"I know," he said.

"You know?"

"I know everything about Carter Designs, Julia. I know you have thirty-two staff. I know you owe your fabric supplier fifty thousand dollars. I know your father is in a private hospital on the Upper East Side that costs twenty thousand dollars per week. And I know Mark Harris took two hundred thousand dollars from your company account yesterday morning as a 'consulting fee' before he gave the company away."

My mouth opened. No sound came out. How did he know? How did he know about my father's hospital bills? I had not told anyone.

"How..." I whispered. "How do you know about my father?"

"Because I paid his bill last week," he said flatly.

The car went silent.

"What?" I said, too loud. The driver looked in the mirror quickly, then looked away.

Adrian sighed and put his phone down. He turned his whole body to face me. His knee almost touched mine.

"Your hospital called my office," he said. "They called every supplier you owe. They were trying to find anyone to pay. Your assistant, Lily, gave them my number because my company is your biggest creditor. If your father dies in that hospital because of an unpaid bill, your workers will riot and my investment in your factory dies too. So I paid it. It was business."

Business. Everything was business with him.

But his eyes... his eyes did not look like business when he said my father. They looked tight. Painful.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

"Don't thank me. Pay me back by not being weak."

The car stopped. We were in front of Blackwood Tower. Fifty floors of black glass shining in the Manhattan sun. I had only ever seen it from outside. This was where he destroyed companies. People said when you enter this building as a small owner, you leave with nothing.

My legs shook as I stepped out. My heel caught on the curb and I stumbled.

Adrian's hand shot out and caught my elbow. His grip was firm and hot.

"Careful," he whispered close to my ear. His breath touched my neck. I shivered.

Inside, everyone stared. The receptionist's eyes went wide. Two women in suits stopped walking to look at me - dirty dress, cracked phone, standing next to their boss who never brings women to the office.

Adrian did not let go of my elbow. He led me into the elevator and pressed 50. The doors closed.

Suddenly we were alone. Too close. I could see the small beads of sweat on his forehead. I could see how his jaw tightened when he was thinking.

"Why are you really doing this?" I asked again. I needed to hear it. "The truth, Adrian."

He leaned against the elevator wall. He looked tired for the first time.

"Because Mark Harris is my half-brother," he said.

The world stopped.

"What?"

"My father," he said, his voice getting quieter and harder. "My father left my mother when I was ten. He told her he found a better woman, a richer woman. That woman was Mark's mother. He married her. He raised Mark in a big house in the Hamptons while my mother and I were in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens. He paid for Mark to go to Yale. I had to work in a grocery store to buy my first school suit."

His hands were in fists now. His knuckles were white.

"So when Mark gives your company to his new wife as a wedding gift... he is doing what my father taught him. Take from people who trust you and give to people who flatter you. I hate that. I hate him for it."

I stared at him. My own pain felt small for a second compared to the pain in his voice.

"I am sorry," I said. And I meant it.

He looked at me, surprised. Like no one had ever said sorry to him before.

The elevator dinged. Floor 50.

His office was huge and cold. White and black and glass. No family pictures. No color. Just a big desk and a wall of awards. And a huge window showing all of Manhattan, tiny cars and people far below.

A woman in a sharp red suit was waiting - his lawyer.

"Julia, this is Attorney Sarah. She is the best in New York," Adrian said. He walked to his desk and picked up a file. "Show her."

Attorney Sarah opened her laptop and turned it to me. On the screen was a document. TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP - CARTER DESIGNS LLC.

At the bottom was my father's signature. It looked like his signature, but... wrong. Too smooth. My father had a tremor after his stroke. His hands shook. His real signature always had a little shake at the end.

"This is not my father's signature," I said loudly, my whole body shaking now. I stood up, my hands hitting the table. "This is fake! My father cannot even hold a pen straight! Look! Look at this line! It is too clean! Mark forged it! That bastard forged my sick father's signature!"

My voice broke. I was shouting and crying at the same time. My chest was heaving up and down. I paced around the room, my hands in my hair, pulling it.

"He came to the hospital with flowers! He smiled at my father! He told him to rest! And he was stealing from him! He stole from a dying man!"

I kicked the trash can beside the desk. It flew and hit the wall. Papers scattered.

Attorney Sarah did not move. Adrian did not move. They let me break.

When I finally stopped, I was leaning against the window, my forehead on the cold glass, breathing hard. My body felt empty. Far below, New York kept moving. Taxis, people, life.

"Can you prove it is forged?" I asked quietly, not turning around.

"Yes," Attorney Sarah said. "But it will take three months in court. And in three months, Mark will have sold the building, taken the money, and moved to Miami. The law is slow. Bad people are fast."

I turned around. Tears were running down my face again, but silently this time.

"So I have lost," I said. "He won."

Adrian walked to his desk. He opened his drawer and took out another file. He slid it across the long table towards me. It stopped right in front of me.

"What is this?" I asked, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

"A marriage certificate," he said.

My eyes widened. "What?"

"Not real. Not yet," he said. "It is a draft of a partnership contract. If you are married to me, Adrian Blackwood, no judge in New York will allow Mark to sell Carter Designs until our case is done. Because then he is not stealing from poor Julia Carter. He is stealing from the Blackwood Group. And everyone in Manhattan knows I will burn down a court before I let someone steal from me."

I stared at the paper. It was thick and heavy.

"Clause one," Attorney Sarah started reading. "Six months fake marriage. You will live as husband and wife in public. You will live in Mr. Blackwood's residence for appearance. No intimacy required unless both parties consent. Clause two: Mr. Blackwood will fund Carter Designs and pay all legal fees and medical bills. Clause three: After six months, you both file for quiet divorce and you keep one hundred percent of your company."

It sounded perfect. Too perfect.

"Why me?" I whispered, looking at Adrian. "You could marry any model, any actress..."

"Because you hate Mark as much as I hate him," he said simply. "And because..." He hesitated for a second. His eyes dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes. "Because you are the only woman in this city who ever told me to go to hell to my face and meant it. I need a wife who is not scared of me."

Silence hung in the office. The air conditioning hummed.

I thought of Mark's text. No hard feelings?

I thought of Vanessa wearing white, holding my company like a bouquet.

I thought of my father in that hospital bed, his hand shaking, signing a paper he did not understand because he trusted his son-in-law.

Something hard and cold formed in my chest. It was not sadness anymore. It was steel.

I walked to the desk. My legs were not shaking now. I picked up the pen. It was heavy, like the divorce pen this morning.

"Give me another pen," I said.

Adrian frowned. "Why?"

"Because I want to sign this one with a pen that does not have my tears on it."

Attorney Sarah smiled for the first time and handed me her pen.

I signed. Julia Carter. Big and bold this time. No shake.

"Done," I said.

Adrian stared at my signature, then at me. Something changed in his face. Respect.

He took the pen from my hand. Our fingers touched. A small spark. Both of us felt it. Both of us pretended we did not.

"Welcome to the family, Mrs. Blackwood," he said quietly.

"Don't call me that," I said. "I am not Mrs. Carter anymore."

"What should I call you then?" he asked.

I looked at his hand still holding mine.

"Call me your partner," I said.

He laughed for the first time. A short, real laugh.

"Partner," he repeated. "I like that."

He led me towards the door. The driver was waiting. As I was about to walk out, my new phone buzzed. Lily: Julia where are you? Mark and Vanessa are here at the studio! They brought a locksmith! They are changing the locks on your mother's studio!

My new husband saw the message over my shoulder. His jaw tightened. His whole body became tense, like a lion about to jump.

He grabbed his suit jacket from the chair in one sharp movement.

"Let's go," he said. "They want to play husband and wife? Let's show them what a real husband does when someone touches his wife's property."

He held the door open for me. But before I walked out, he leaned down close to my ear, so close his lips almost touched my skin.

"One more thing, Julia. From now on, when you are with me, you don't walk behind me. You walk beside me. You don't look down. You look them in the eye. Understand?"

I looked up into his dark eyes. My heart was beating fast again. Not from fear.

"Yes," I whispered.

"Good girl."

We rushed to my Brooklyn studio, but we were too late - the gates were already locked with a new giant chain, and standing in front of it with the key in her hand, wearing MY mother's old sewing apron as a joke, was Vanessa, and she smiled and said, "Sorry darling, this is mine now. Your new husband can't save you here."