Married to the Wrong Billionaire

Chapter 10

We drove back to Silverline Tower at two in the morning with the drive in my pocket and a plan that had exactly one night to work before Victor decided we were moving too slow and accelerated whatever he was already doing.

In the car, Caiden wrote on his phone and showed me the screen. *When we get inside, follow my lead. Talk naturally. Give him something to hear that keeps him comfortable.*

I nodded. Typed back: *What are we going to give him.*

He thought for a moment. Then: *A couple who found out about the device and are frightened. Not strategic. Just scared and unsure what to do next. Victor understands fear. He'll it and it'll slow him down because he'll think he has time.*

I looked at him. He was looking at the screen, jaw set, the operational version of him that had emerged somewhere in Eleanor's kitchen and hadn't left. I typed: *You're good at this.*

He glanced at me. Typed: *I learned from my father. Unfortunately.*

---

The apartment felt different when we walked back in. Not physically — everything was exactly as we'd left it, the fruit bowl, the furniture, the city doing its indifferent nighttime thing through the windows. But knowing about the devices changed the texture of the air, the way knowing about a camera changed how you stood in a room.

Caiden dropped his keys on the hook. Loosened his tie. Moved to the kitchen with the normal sequence of coming-home movements, and I watched him make the transition from the man in Eleanor's kitchen to the man Victor expected to hear on the recording — slightly tired, slightly unsettled, doing a good impression of someone who had just spent the evening at his uncle's house trying to process a difficult day.

"We should have a lawyer look at the arrangement documents," he said, his voice carrying the specific flatness of a person who was tired and talking about something practical to avoid talking about something emotional. "Before you sign."

"I was going to do that tomorrow," I said, matching his register. "Ji-yeon mentioned a firm."

"Not Ji-yeon's recommendation." He opened the refrigerator. Stood there for a moment looking at nothing. "I want someone outside the usual network. The Black company's legal team has too many connections to too many things." He paused, the pause of someone deciding how much to say. "Today was more complicated than I expected."

"Yes," I said.

"The woman. V. Cole." He closed the refrigerator without taking anything. "It's bothering me. The name. The fact that Ji-yeon didn't flag it." He said it with the careful uncertainty of a man who was questioning something for the first time and wasn't sure where it led. "I don't know what to do with that yet."

"Maybe it's nothing," I said. Giving Victor the comfortable version. The version of me that was uncertain and slightly overwhelmed and definitely not holding my dead father's encrypted evidence in my jacket pocket.

"Maybe." He moved toward the hallway. Stopped. "I'm going to have Marcus look into a few things. Quietly. He has contacts I don't." He said it like a man making a small, careful decision rather than executing the second stage of a plan they'd already fully mapped. "I should have listened to him sooner. He's been asking questions about the historical assets division for two years."

"What kind of questions," I said.

"The kind I told him to stop asking." He looked at the floor for a moment. The expression of a man with something on his conscience. "I trusted my father's version of too many things for too long. I think I've been doing that." He looked up at me. "I'm going to fix it."

"Okay," I said. Soft. Uncertain. The version of me Victor would find reassuring.

"Get some sleep," he said. "Tomorrow is going to be a long day."

He went to his room.

I stood in the kitchen for a moment longer, beside the fruit bowl, beside the device underneath the apple that was sending everything we'd said to wherever Victor was listening. Then I went to my room and closed the door and sat on the bed in the dark with the drive in my hand and thought about whether the performance had been convincing.

It had felt convincing. The question was whether Victor was good enough to hear the difference between a man who was cautious and uncertain and a man who was cautious and certain and performing uncertainty. Those things sounded the same from the outside. They felt completely different from the inside.

I had to trust that Caiden was good enough to close that gap.

---

My phone buzzed at two forty-seven.

Unknown sender.

*Good. He'll buy it for twenty-four hours. Maybe thirty-six. He's going to make a move against the arrangement — he'll try to get the marriage annulled through a third party before you have time to use the access it gives you. Expect something tomorrow involving a legal challenge or a public statement.*

I stared at the screen. Typed back: *How do you know what he's planning.*

A pause longer than usual.

*Because I've been inside his operation for three years. Not as an ally. As someone he thinks is an ally.*

I sat very still. Typed: *You're feeding him information too.*

*I've been feeding him enough to stay trusted. Not enough to do real damage.* Another pause. *Until now.*

*Who are you,* I typed. For the fourth time. Knowing the answer was going to come when it came and not before.

This time, instead of deflecting, the reply was different.

*Meet me tomorrow. Alone. Not Caiden, not Vivienne, not Eleanor. You.* An address followed — a café in a part of the city I didn't know. *Ten o'clock. I'll explain everything.*

I looked at the message. Thought about showing it to Caiden. Decided against it, not because I didn't trust him but because the sender had said alone and alone was the only way to find out who this was, and finding out who this was felt like the most important thing I could do with tomorrow morning.

I typed: *I'll be there.*

Then I put the phone down and lay in the dark and thought about Victor making a move against the marriage tomorrow. A legal challenge or a public statement. Something designed to destabilize the arrangement before I could use the access it gave me. Which meant he was afraid of the access. Which meant the marriage itself — accidental, thirteen minutes in a private dining room, a woman who went through the wrong door — was something he hadn't planned for and couldn't control.

Good.

The things Victor couldn't control were exactly where I needed to be.

---

I woke at seven to the sound of Caiden in the kitchen.

For a moment, half-asleep, I almost forgot about the device. Almost walked out to make coffee and say something true and unguarded. I caught myself at the bedroom door, hand on the handle, and stood there for a moment running through what I could and couldn't say in the kitchen until this was over.

It was a strange feeling. Like learning that a space you'd started to feel comfortable in had different rules than you'd thought.

I went out anyway. Made coffee. Stood at the counter while Caiden sat at the island with his laptop, the morning version of him, sleeves not yet rolled, the day not yet fully assembled.

"Ji-yeon wants to schedule a meeting with the PR team," he said, without looking up. "About the photograph situation."

"The column," I said. Referencing the City Life piece that felt like it had happened in a different life, before Eleanor's kitchen and my father's letter and a drive that was now in my jacket hanging in the wardrobe.

"She wants to get ahead of it." He scrolled something. "I told her to hold off. I want to make some decisions about communications strategy before we involve the PR team."

Meaning: he didn't want Ji-yeon arranging anything she could report back. Delivered in language that sounded like normal professional caution.

"Makes sense," I said.

My phone buzzed on the counter. I looked at the screen.

A news alert. Not from the unknown sender — from an actual news aggregator I'd set up years ago for financial news related to my father's case, a habit I'd never broken.

The headline: *Black Family Company CEO's Surprise Marriage Under Legal Scrutiny — Sources Suggest Registration Irregularities.*

It had gone live six minutes ago.

Victor's move. Faster than the unknown sender had predicted. Not tomorrow. This morning, before seven, before I'd finished my first coffee, before we'd had a single hour to execute anything.

I set the phone down on the counter screen-up so Caiden could see it. Watched his face as he read the headline.

His jaw tightened. Just once. Then it released. "Ji-yeon," he said quietly.

"She filed it last night," I said. "After we left. While she thought we were still inside processing what we'd heard."

"He didn't wait for us to move first." Caiden looked up from the screen. His eyes were very clear and very cold. "He's already declared."

"Yes," I said.

"Then so have we." He closed the laptop. Looked at me across the kitchen. "The lawyer Eleanor mentioned. Can you arrange the meeting for this morning."

"Yes," I said. "But Caiden—" I paused. "There's something else I need to do this morning first. Alone." I held his gaze. "I need you to trust me."

He looked at me for a long moment. The clear cold eyes doing something more complicated than assessment. Something that had been building since the restaurant and the wrong door and his hand on mine at Eleanor's table.

"Okay," he said. Simply. Without conditions.

"I'll explain everything when I get back," I said.

"I know you will."

I went to get dressed. The drive was in my jacket pocket. The café address was in my phone. The news alert was spreading across the internet, Victor's opening move, designed to create doubt and delay and public pressure before we could establish anything solid.

He'd moved first.

We were going to move better.