I Married My Father’s Creditor

Chapter 11

Ariana’s POV

Day three of total, suffocating silence from Voss Enterprises, and my patience had completely run out.

Every morning, I checked my student portal, expecting at least a rejection email. Every evening, I refreshed my inbox until my eyes burned from the harsh screen glow. Nothing. Damien had time to run a multi-billion-dollar empire, freeze out political rivals, and dictate what time I ate dinner, but his HR department couldn't even bother to acknowledge a forty-page architectural proposal.

He was deliberately ignoring it. Or worse—he had glanced at my student ID number, realized it was me, and tossed my work straight into the trash without giving it a second thought.

If he was going to treat me like an invisible ghost in his corporate world, I was going to make his home life an absolute nightmare.

It started at breakfast.

Usually, I sat quietly, ate whatever the staff prepared, and answered Damien’s blunt questions with polite, minimal responses. Not today.

When Damien stepped into the dining room at 7:30 AM, dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, I was sitting at the head of the twenty-foot marble table—his usual spot. I had my feet kicked up on the chair next to me, scrolling through my phone, wearing an oversized faded band t-shirt and messy hair.

Damien stopped at the doorway, his dark eyebrows pulling together in a sharp line.

"You're in my chair, Ariana," he said, his deep voice carrying that smooth, unyielding authority that usually made everyone in his path cringe.

I didn't even look up from my phone screen. I took a slow, loud sip of my iced coffee. "It’s a chair, Damien. You have nineteen others. Pick one."

The silence in the room plummeted into a deep freeze. A butler pouring juice near the sideboard visibly flinched and retreated into the kitchen.

Damien didn't move. He stood there, staring at me with those piercing gray eyes, his jaw tightening slightly. Instead of arguing, he walked over, pulled out the chair directly beside me, and sat down. The scent of his expensive cedar wood cologne instantly invaded my space.

"You're in a mood," he noted flatly, unfolding his cloth napkin.

"I'm fine," I snapped, tossing my phone onto the marble table with a loud clack.

When the maid set down his plate of poached eggs and my bowl of fruit, I picked up my spoon, aggressively scraped the bottom of the bowl, and pushed it away after taking two tiny bites.

"Bruce is waiting downstairs to take you to NYU," Damien said smoothly, cutting his food with calm precision. "He mentioned you made him wait twenty minutes on Tuesday."

"Bruce can wait thirty minutes today if I feel like it," I replied, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back. "Since my time apparently has zero value to anyone in this city, I don't see why I should hurry."

Damien paused, his knife hovering over his plate. He turned his head slowly, his icy gaze locking onto mine with a heavy, dangerous weight.

"Care to elaborate?" he asked softly.

"No," I lied, glaring straight into his eyes. "I'm just learning from the best. Cold, dismissive, and arrogant seems to be the official protocol around here."

A dark, dangerous glint sparked in Damien’s eyes. He set his silverware down, turned his entire body toward me, and leaned in close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his chest.

"If you have something to say to me, Ariana," he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, lethal purr, "say it."

I leaned in right back, my chest heaving with three days' worth of bottled-up frustration. "I submitted a design proposal to your open portal on Tuesday night. A full forty pages for the Midtown Tower project. It's been sitting in your system for seventy-two hours without so much as an automated confirmation. Did you even look at it, or did you just delete it the second you saw my name?"

Damien’s expression didn't flicker, but I caught the slight, rigid tension in his shoulders. He didn't deny seeing it. He didn't deny it was mine.

"Voss Enterprises handles hundreds of submissions a day," Damien said smoothly, though his voice sounded suspiciously controlled. "The executive board reviews applications based on merit and protocol, not personal relationships."

"Protocol?" I let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "Right. The protocol of ignoring actual talent because you prefer your world wrapped in a neat, controlling little box. You want me trapped in this penthouse like an ornament, living off your black card so I'm completely dependent on you."

Damien’s eyes narrowed, a muscle in his jaw flexing tight. He knew how brilliant the design was—I could see it in the dark intensity of his stare—but he wasn't budging. He was hiding behind his corporate wall, letting me believe he thought my work wasn't good enough, rather than giving me a single inch of independence.

"If you think throwing a tantrum at my breakfast table is going to get you a corporate contract, you severely underestimate how I run my company," he said, his voice cold as steel.

"I don't want your charity, Damien," I hissed, pushing my chair back so fast it shrieked against the marble floor. "I wanted a fair shot. But now I see exactly what my work is worth to you. Absolutely nothing."

I turned on my heel and walked out of the dining room before he could see the angry tears brimming at the corners of my eyes.

He could keep his money. He could keep his empire. But he was never going to get my obedience again.

The anger didn't fade on the drive to campus; it condensed into something hard and sharp.

Bruce held the SUV door open for me at the curb, his face a calm, stoic wall, but I didn't say a word as I brushed past him and headed straight for the design studios. I couldn't sit through lectures today. I needed to sketch. I needed to build. I needed to remind myself that my mind belonged to me, even if my legal name belonged to Damien Voss.

Jade found me two hours later in the corner of the material lab, buried under mounds of industrial wool, swatches of raw silk, and rusted iron wire.

"You skipped lecture," Jade said, sliding onto the stool next to mine and setting down a fresh iced coffee. "And you look like you're plotting a murder."

"He looked at my proposal, Jade," I said, my voice quiet but sharp as a razor, not stopping the rhythmic snip-snip of my fabric shears. "He didn't deny seeing it. He didn't say it was bad. He just hid behind his corporate rules and told me his company doesn't grant favors based on 'personal relationships.'"

Jade winced, taking a slow sip of her drink. "Ouch. Cold."

"It’s infuriating!" I threw the shears down on the drafting table with a loud metallic clack. "He thinks he's keeping me safe in his gilded penthouse. He thinks if he leaves his black card on my table, I'll just shop, shut up, and be his pretty little trophy wife while his company flounders!"

"So what are you going to do?" Jade asked, leaning in. "Are you giving up on Midtown Tower?"

"Never," I snapped, looking up at her with fire in my eyes. "If Damien Voss won't open his front door for me, I'll find a side entrance he didn't even know existed."

Damien’s POV

By 3:00 PM, the executive conference room on the seventy-second floor was an absolute disaster zone.

Jean-Luc Moreau sat at the head of the glass table, his arms folded across his chest, looking at our latest spatial renderings with total disgust. Miller stood beside the digital projector, sweating so profusely his collar was soaked through.

"It is empty, Damien," Moreau said, his rich French accent dripping with disappointment as he gestured to the screen. "You offer me glass. You offer me chrome. You offer me the same lifeless corporate box that every tired billionaire builds in London, Tokyo, and New York. I told you—Midtown Tower needs a heart. It needs tension. If you do not have a revolutionary concept on my desk by 9:00 AM tomorrow, I am taking my forty million dollars to Marcus Vance."

The room went dead silent. Miller looked like he was about to faint.

"Give us the room, Miller," I said softly.

The executives scrambled out of the space, leaving only me and Moreau at the long glass table. I stood up, pouring two fingers of scotch into a heavy crystal glass, and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window.

"I don't make excuses, Jean-Luc," I said, keeping my tone smooth, cold, and absolute. "And I don't deliver mediocre projects. The firm proposals you saw today were garbage. I know it, and you know it."

Moreau raised an eyebrow, intrigued despite himself. "Then you admit you have nothing?"

"I admit my internal team lacks vision," I corrected, turning to face him. "Which is why I am stepping outside Voss Enterprises' payroll."

I reached into my breast pocket, pulled out a encrypted flash drive containing Ariana's anonymous submission—The Raw Silk & Burnished Iron Concept—and plugged it directly into the wall terminal.

The screen behind us lit up. The brutalist iron frames, the sweeping, hand-woven silk drapery, and the deep bronze lighting flooded the room, casting rich, dramatic shadows across the glass walls.

Moreau stood up so fast his leather chair slid back. He walked slowly toward the screen, his dark eyes wide, tracking every line, every texture, every masterclass in spatial tension.

"Mon dieu..." Moreau breathed, his voice dropping into awe. "This... this is poetry. It is brutal, yet intimate. Who designed this? Which firm?"

"No firm," I said, my jaw tightening as I remembered the handwritten note at the bottom of the blueprint. "Even the strongest steel needs something soft to give it life."

My corporate policy was absolute: no spouses on active contract, no family on the payroll. I could not hire her as an employee. I could not sign her to an internal contract. But my policy said nothing about bringing in a third-party, specialized Independent Design Consultant.

"It is the work of an independent spatial consultant," I said smoothly, keeping my voice utterly unreadable. "She doesn't work for Voss Enterprises. She doesn't answer to my board. She operates entirely on her own terms."

Moreau turned around, a sharp, delighted grin breaking across his face. "I want her. I want her leading the entire interior architecture for Midtown Tower. Bring her to the signing dinner tonight, Damien. If she agrees to consult on this project, the forty million is yours."

I looked at the glowing blueprints on the screen, feeling a sharp, dark pulse of victory mixed with an undeniable spark of pride.

She wanted her independence. She wanted to pay her own way.

Now, I was going to have to bend my knee and ask my stubborn, rebellious wife to save my empire.