His Chubby Obsession

Chapter Eleven: Six Days

(Bruce's POV)

Six days.

I stood at the window of my office, the same window, the same whiskey glass, the same view of the manicured lawn Emma used to fuss over like it was some kind of accomplishment, and watched the sun come up over a problem that should never have existed in the first place.

Six days until Charlotte's birthday. Six days until the papers were supposed to be signed, the empire finally mine, five years of playing devoted husband finally cashed in for something worth having.

Instead I had reporters camped at the end of my driveway, a private investigator team burning through money at a rate that would've impressed even my grandfather, and a wife who'd apparently decided, after five years of doing exactly what she was told, to develop a spine at the single worst possible moment.

"Anything?" I asked, without turning around, when I heard Vincent come in.

"Nothing solid. We think she's local, still in the state. Nobody's used a credit card, nobody's pinged a cell tower under her name since the first night." A pause. "Her mother says she called last night. Emma hung up on her within a few minutes. Didn't give up a location."

"Of course she didn't." I finished the whiskey in one pull. "She's smarter than I gave her credit for. That's the problem with picking someone quiet. Eventually you forget they might actually be paying attention."

I thought back, unwillingly, to that first year. How grateful she'd been. How easy. A woman starving for someone to notice her will forgive almost anything, for a while, if you're patient enough to let the gratitude run its course before you need anything from her. I'd been patient. I'd been so patient. Five years of patient.

And now, six days from the finish line, patience had run out and taken the whole plan with it.

"The press angle's working," Vincent said. "Erratic wife, concerned husband, that's playing well. Nobody's questioning it yet."

"Yet." I set the glass down harder than I meant to. "My grandfather is questioning it. That's the only opinion in this house that actually matters."

—

Papa Niel summoned me to the main estate that afternoon, which was never a good sign. He didn't summon people for good news. Good news, he simply enjoyed in private, the way he enjoyed most things — quietly, without an audience, without ever letting you see exactly how satisfied he was.

He was in the study when I arrived, sitting in the leather chair that had probably outlived more marriages than mine, a folder closed on the desk in front of him. He didn't look up right away. He let me stand there a moment, which was its own kind of message.

"Sit," he finally said.

I sat.

"Explain to me," he said, "how a woman who has spent five years doing exactly as she was told managed to vanish into the night with our heir and not be found within seventy-two hours by a team of professionals I am, at this moment, paying an obscene amount of money."

"She's had help. A biker gang, of all things, apparently. Vincent's working the connection."

"A biker gang." Papa Niel's mouth twisted, something almost like amusement, which was worse than anger would have been. "How romantic. Your wife trades a billion-dollar husband for a criminal in a leather jacket, and somehow that's the part of this story that makes the most sense to me."

"It's temporary. We'll have her within the week."

"You have six days." He finally looked at me directly, and there was nothing warm in it, nothing that had ever been warm in it, not once in the twenty-nine years I'd spent learning how to be exactly what this family needed me to be. "The terms were clear, Bruce. Five years. A stable marriage. An heir. A public image the board and the press and every business partner in this city could look at and believe in. Not a scandal unraveling in real time on the local news."

"The terms will be met. She'll be there for the party."

"Will she." He opened the folder on his desk, turned it toward me, and I felt something in my chest go cold before I'd even fully registered what I was looking at. Photographs. Grainy, long-lens, clearly taken without either of us knowing. Me. Valentina. The two of us, together, in places I'd been careful — I'd thought I'd been careful — to keep private.

"Where did you get these."

"It doesn't matter where I got them. What matters is that I have had them for considerably longer than your wife has been gone." He closed the folder again, slow, deliberate, a man savoring the exact moment he chose to reveal his hand. "I did not build this family's fortune by only watching the people I was worried about, Bruce. I watch everyone. Including my own grandson, when his judgment concerns me."

I said nothing. There was nothing useful to say.

"The terms were never just a marriage on paper," he continued. "I wanted to know if you could actually maintain one. If you could be trusted with something as basic as loyalty, before I handed you something as significant as an empire. And what I have watched, for five years, is a young man perform devotion beautifully in public and treat the woman beside him like disposable inventory in private." He steepled his fingers. "I am, admittedly, disappointed in myself for not seeing it as clearly, as early, as I should have."

"Grandfather — "

"If Emma and Charlotte are not present, unharmed, at that party in six days' time, I am not simply going to be embarrassed in front of the board, Bruce." His voice never rose. It never needed to. "I am going to consider the terms of this arrangement entirely unmet, and I will restructure the succession accordingly. Do you understand me?"

"You can't be serious."

"I have never once in your entire life been anything other than serious." He stood, which meant the conversation was over whether I was ready for it to be or not. "Find your wife. Bring her home. And Bruce — " he paused at the door, not quite looking back at me, "— you might consider, in whatever time you have left, actually being decent to her when you do. I would hate for the last thing I learn about my own grandson to be that he never had it in him at all."

He left me alone in that study with the folder of photographs and a whiskey glass I no longer wanted, and for the first time since I was a boy standing in this same house being measured against a standard I'd never quite believed I'd fully clear, I understood, with real and sudden clarity, that I might actually lose everything.

Six days.

I picked up my phone and dialed Vincent.

"Find her," I said. "I don't care what it costs. I don't care who you have to go through. Find her before the party, or none of this — none of it — was ever worth anything at all."