I Married My Father’s Creditor

Chapter 10

Damien’s POV

By 8:00 AM, my top-floor office smelled of burnt espresso, stale air, and sheer corporate panic.

I stood at the massive glass window, staring down at the blur of Manhattan traffic while Miller, my Chief Operating Officer, practically wore a hole in my rug pacing behind me. Forty million dollars was on the line. Jean-Luc Moreau, our biggest European client, was ready to yank his contract for the Midtown Tower project because my design team had handed him another sterile box of cold glass and polished chrome. He wanted "soul." He wanted "texture." And right now, my firm was giving him a corporate graveyard.

"How many do we have lined up?" I asked, keeping my voice flat to hide the low, grating headache building behind my eyes.

"Six, sir," Miller stammered, frantically wiping sweat from his forehead. "HR pulled the top spatial and textile conceptualists in the city. The interviews start now."

"Three minutes each," I turned around, dropping into my leather chair. "If they bore me, toss them out."

The first applicant strutted in carrying a leather binder the size of a small dining table. He spent his allotted time laying out swatches of neutral velvet and pale grey marble, talking with a smooth, rehearsed confidence that made my stomach turn.

"Moreau wants warmth," the man insisted, tapping a swatch of beige. "Soft, luxurious tones that whisper quiet wealth."

I didn't bother touching the fabric. "Quiet wealth looks like a hospital waiting room in your vision. Next."

The second candidate was an edgy architect who pulled up a 3D model of jagged brass structures and dark metal mesh ceilings. It looked less like a luxury building lobby and more like a high-end torture chamber.

"It’s aggressive," she argued, leaning over my desk when I cut her off thirty seconds in. "It challenges the human perspective!"

"It gives people a migraine," I said coldly. "Get out."

By noon, my patience wasn't just thin—it was completely dead. The third applicant brought an eco-concept featuring live moss walls that would rot in ninety days, while the fourth and fifth presented recycled versions of the exact glass layout Moreau had called "soulless trash" twelve hours ago.

"Is this the absolute best this city has to offer?" I slammed my palm against the marble desk, the sharp crack echoing through the room and sending Miller flinching backward. "I asked for a visionary, Miller! Not people who copy-paste luxury catalog layouts!"

"Sir, HR is scraping every database," Miller squeaked, pulling at his collar as if the room had lost oxygen. "We put an open call on the executive portal. Applications are flooding in live right now."

"Cancel the rest," I snapped, pinching the bridge of my nose as the ache in my temples sharpened. "If Moreau walks tomorrow morning, clear out your desk."

The rest of the day was a slow, agonizing blur of financial reports, emergency damage control, and legal filings. By the time the clock on the wall ticked past 8:00 PM, the executive floor was dead silent. My neck was stiff, my muscles burned with tension, and my blood felt heavy with pure exhaustion.

I unbuttoned my vest, ready to head back to the penthouse and face the other brewing war waiting for me—Ariana.

Just as I pulled my suit jacket off the rack, my private laptop chimed with a low, sharp alert.

I froze. A notification flashed in the corner of the screen from our open portal: NEW EMERGENCY CONCEPT SUBMISSION - MIDTOWN TOWER.

My finger hovered over the power button. I was tired. I wanted a glass of dark scotch and four hours of sleep. But something pulled my gaze back to the glowing blue screen. I leaned over the desk and clicked the file open.

The title slide loaded instantly: The Raw Silk & Burnished Iron Concept.

My eyes scanned the first blueprint, and the background noise of the city completely faded away.

It wasn't a corporate sales pitch—it was pure, unfiltered tension. The designer had paired brutalist, heavy dark iron frames with sweeping, hand-woven raw silk drapery, using deep bronze lighting to transform a giant concrete space into something intimate, dangerous, and impossibly rich. It didn't just fix the design—it felt alive. It had a heartbeat.

I scrolled rapidly to the bottom, looking for a firm name, a credential, anything.

There was no resume. No corporate title. Just an anonymous student portal ID from New York University and a single line of messy, handwritten text scrawled across the bottom of the last blueprint:

“Architecture shouldn't feel like a cage. Even the strongest steel needs something soft to give it life.”

A slow, dark smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth as I stared at the screen. My chest tightened with a sudden spark of recognition. I’d know that stubborn, poetic defiance anywhere.

Ariana.

She had stayed up all night in my studio, pouring her soul into saving my forty-million-dollar deal. The design was brilliant—better than anything my top executive firms had produced all week.

My finger hovered over the green button to call her in for an emergency interview. But then reality hit me like a splash of ice water.

Voss Enterprises Policy: Section 4, Clause 12. Spouses and immediate family members of board executives are strictly prohibited from holding active contracts, consultancy roles, or employment within the firm.

It was a non-negotiable rule I had personally enforced to protect the company from scandal and conflict of interest. If the board or my corporate rivals found out my newly signed wife was awarded a multi-million-dollar design contract under my watch, they would tear her apart. They’d call it favoritism, strip her of her credibility, and use it as ammunition to weaken my authority.

Either the husband leads, or the wife works. Never both.

I slowly closed the laptop screen, darkening the blue glow of her blueprints.

I couldn't accept her proposal. I couldn't even acknowledge that I had seen it. I had to let her application sit untouched in the system until the deadline passed, even if it meant watching her burn with frustration.

"I'm protecting you, Ariana," I muttered into the quiet, empty office, gripping the edge of my desk as my jaw set tight. "Even if you hate me for it."

Ariana’s POV

My eyes felt like they were full of dry sand, and my lower back burned with a dull, persistent ache.

I had been hunched over my drafting table in the penthouse’s private studio all night. The floor around me was littered with charcoal-dusted tracing paper and half-empty cups of cold black coffee. When the confirmation prompt flashed green across my laptop screen at 5:45 AM, I felt a terrifying rush of adrenaline.

“Architecture shouldn't feel like a cage,” I had written on the final blueprint. It was a direct throw down to Damien's cold, controlling world.

I showered, threw on an oversized sweater, and let Bruce drive me to campus. By the time I sat down in my 8:30 AM lecture, my body completely gave out.

"Ariana... Ariana!"

A sharp elbow jabbed my ribs. I jerked upright, disorientation clouding my vision.

Jade, sitting next to me with her signature bright purple braid thrown over one shoulder, was staring at me like I had grown two heads. "You look like you were run over by a delivery truck. What the hell happened last night? Is your... husband keeping you up?"

"No," I whispered, rubbing my bloodshot eyes. "I submitted a redesign concept for Voss Enterprises' Midtown Tower project."

Jade froze, her eyes widening in disbelief. As she shifted in her seat, her hand accidentally bumped my canvas tote bag on the floor, knocking my slim leather cardholder out onto the floor. It spilled open right at her feet, exposing the edge of the sleek, heavy matte-black titanium Amex card Damien had forced on me at dinner.

Jade leaned down, scooped it up, and ran her thumb over the unbranded black metal before her head snapped up to look at me.

"Wait... is this what I think it is?" Jade gasped, her voice rising in a squeak. "Ari, you're carrying an unrestricted Black Card in your wallet that could probably buy this entire campus, but you're pulling all-nighters for corporate design competitions?!"

"Because the money isn't mine, Jade," I whispered, taking the card back and shoving it deep into my bag out of sight. "Every cent Damien hands me comes with a leash. The credit card, the penthouse, the private driver—it’s all a golden cage. If I live off his wealth, I become his property. I need to earn my own way. I want to look him in the eye and pay off my own independence with my own hands."

Jade’s eyes softened, her initial shock melting into deep respect. She reached over and squeezed my hand tightly. "Then go get your money, girl."

I checked my email every ten minutes for the rest of the day. Then every hour. By nightfall, there was nothing.

No confirmation. No interview invite. Just dead silence.