Bound By Blackmail

Chapter 5: Clara's Defiance

Clara stared at the screen for a long moment before she was able to speak on her own. Filed internally. Vance Enterprises credentials used. Four words that turned the last twelve hours inside out, the fraud flag wasn't some outside actor punishing her for a rumor she'd never earned. It had come from inside his house, which meant either Julian Vance was a far better liar than she'd given him credit for, or someone close enough to him to use his own systems had decided she was worth sabotaging before she'd even signed anything.

"You understand how this looks," she said, setting the phone down carefully, like it might go off again. "I walk in here with a frozen account, and it turns out your own company's credentials filed the flag. From where I'm sitting, I don't see a coincidence where I can shake my hand."

"I understand exactly how it looks." Julian didn't flinch from it, which she noted. "Which is why I'm not asking you to trust me blindly. I'm asking you to let me find out who did it, and to make the decision about this marriage with that information in hand instead of without it."

"Or I could walk away right now and let you sort out your own house without me." She said it evenly, testing him, watching for the flicker of a man who needed her compliance more than he was letting on. "You said it yourself, you don't propose marriage without due diligence. Maybe it's time I did some of my own."

Something shifted in his face at that, not anger, which she'd half expected, but something closer to approval, the particular look of a man recognizing a negotiating tactic he respected because he used it himself. "Fair," he said. "Ask whatever you want. I'll answer what I can, and tell you plainly what I can't right now."

"Who has access to file an internal fraud flag under your company's credentials?"

"Twelve people. Legal, two in finance, my father, and me." He said it without hesitation, which either meant he had nothing to hide or had already rehearsed exactly this answer, and she genuinely couldn't tell which yet. "I'm going to figure out which of the twelve did this before the day is out. In the meantime, I'd rather you hear it from me than read it somewhere less accurate: my father benefits enormously from this marriage falling apart before it starts. He'd rather sell the company on his terms than save it on mine."

Clara sat with that for a moment, turning it over the way she turned over a contractor's excuse, checking it for the shape of a lie. It didn't quite fit one there was no reason for him to hand her a suspect that was damaging about his own father unless it was either true or an extremely elaborate misdirection, and something in his voice when he said my father told her the wound underneath that sentence was old and real. She had grown up watching her own father protect her from harder truths for exactly as long as he could manage it, and she recognized, uncomfortably, the particular exhaustion of a person who'd stopped being surprised by a parent's cruelty a long time ago.

"That's a significant accusation to hand to a stranger," she said, quieter now. "Why tell me at all? You could have kept me in the dark and let the paperwork handle the rest."

"Because you asked a direct question, and I told you on the phone I don't plan to lie to you about how long this thing is going to be." He held her gaze steady, and she was annoyed at herself for noticing that his eyes weren't as cold up close as they'd looked from across the room. "If we do this, Ms. Montgomery, I need you walking in with your eyes open. Not because I'm being generous, but because a wife who's been lied to is a liability I can't afford, and a partner who knows exactly what she's dealing with is the only version of this that actually protects the company."

"Partner," she repeated, testing the word for a hidden edge. "No assets. No arrangement!"

"Partner," he said again, and this time there was no calculation in it that she could find, which unsettled her more than if there had been. "I looked into you for six days, Ms. Montgomery. You didn't strike me as someone who'd accept being called anything less, and I don't waste time offering people terms I already know they'll reject."

She almost laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was, infuriatingly, exactly the right thing to say to her, and she suspected he knew that too. She thought about the wall on her studio floor, about her father's letterhead, about eleven months of proving her competence to rooms that had already decided not to listen. She thought about how satisfying it would be to walk into this marriage not as a woman being rescued, but as one choosing, with full knowledge of the risk, to build something dangerous on purpose.

"Fine," she said. "I'll sign. But I want to find whoever filed that flag, not as a favor you report back to me on, as an equal party with access to whatever your investigation turns up. If I'm risking my name on this marriage, I'm not doing it blind twice."

"Done." He didn't hesitate, and for the first time since she walked in, something like genuine warmth crossed his face briefly, almost startled, like a man surprised by his own reaction. "I'll have a legal draft of the marriage contract with your conditions built in by tonight. The engagement announcement goes out in forty-eight hours, which means the press finds out you exist right around the time we do."

"Forty-eight hours." She stood, gathering her bag, already recalculating her week around a deadline that hadn't existed that morning. "That's not a lot of time to become someone's fiancée."

"No," Julian agreed, walking her to the elevator, close enough now that she caught, for the first time, the exact grey of his eyes in daylight rather than office light warmer than she'd expected, and considerably harder to look away from than was strictly convenient. "It isn't. I'd suggest you clear your calendar."

The elevator doors opened. Before she could step in, his assistant appeared at the far end of the hall, out of breath, phone already extended toward him.

"Sir. You need to see this. Someone's already leaked the engagement to the press twelve hours early, and they have details we haven't finalized yet."