Contracted by the billionaire

Chapter 3

ROMAN’S POV

I watched Vivienne Ashworth read that message and I watched her face do almost nothing.

Almost.

There was a fraction of a second, less than that, something moved behind her eyes, not fear, not even worry. It was colder than that. Calculated. The expression of someone who had already anticipated this and was simply noting that the clock had started.

Then she set the phone face down on the table and looked at me as though the message hadn't arrived at all.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You were about to hear something important."

I had been in enough rooms with enough people to know when someone was performing composure and when composure was simply what they were made of. Vivienne Ashworth was made of it. I had met her twice before today and both times she had been quiet, unremarkable on the surface, the kind of woman a room forgot when she left it. I had not forgotten her. I had noticed things about her both times that I hadn't been able to articulate and hadn't tried to, because at the time I was being guided firmly toward her sister and the arrangement had seemed settled.

It had not been settled. Someone had settled it for us.

"Tell me about the betrothal contract," I said. "Specifically why your name was removed from it."

She was quiet for a moment, not hesitating, organizing. I got the impression that everything Vivienne said was organized before it left her mouth and that very little of what she was thinking ever made it to the surface unless she wanted it to.

"My mother told me Clarissa had fallen in love with you," she said. "She told me the kind thing would be to step aside. I stepped aside."

"And the contract was dissolved on your behalf without your legal consent."

"Yes."

"By whom."

"Griffin Hale. He handles the Ashworth family's legal affairs. He's been handling them for twenty years." She paused. "He's also been burying documents for twenty years. That's what Iris Lowe is currently building a case around."

I looked at her. "You went to a lawyer this morning."

"Before I came here, yes."

"You filed before you spoke to me."

"I filed before I spoke to anyone," she said evenly. "Because the people most likely to interfere are the people who would find out when I spoke to someone."

That was either the most disciplined thing I had heard in a long time or the most reckless, and I hadn't decided which. I leaned forward slightly. "Miss Ashworth. What exactly is in those estate records that required an immediate freeze?"

She looked at me for a moment across the table. Something in her expression shifted, not softening exactly but opening slightly, the way a door opens when someone has decided to let you through.

"My identity," she said simply. "I'm not who the Ashworth family records say I am. I'm Nathaniel Ashworth's biological daughter by his first wife, Celeste Vane. Clarissa is not his biological child. The estate inheritance belongs to me in full, and it has belonged to me since birth. The records that say otherwise were forged."

The room was very quiet.

I had pulled the original betrothal agreement from my family's legal archive three days ago because a detail in it had bothered me for longer than I had admitted to anyone. The contract named Vivienne Celeste Ashworth specifically, not simply the eldest Ashworth daughter, which was the standard phrasing in arrangements like this one. Specifically her. By a name that included her mother's name as a middle name, which was not something fathers typically did unless the mother was already dead and the naming was an act of preservation.

Celeste. I had looked that name up. Celeste Vane. Nathaniel Ashworth's first wife. Died in a car accident when their infant daughter was four months old. Survived by her husband and daughter.

Except the official Ashworth family record listed no surviving daughter from that marriage.

"Your mother's name was Celeste," I said.

Vivienne looked at me with an expression I couldn't fully read. "Yes."

"Your full name on the betrothal contract is Vivienne Celeste Ashworth."

"Yes."

"That wasn't a coincidence."

"No," she said quietly. "My grandmother made sure of it. She knew. She couldn't prove it while Margaret was alive and in control of the family records but she made sure my name carried enough of a trace that someone looking closely would find the thread."

I sat back. I thought about the witness signature I had found on the betrothal document, a name I had run through my own records and traced back to a man who had worked as a private solicitor thirty years ago. A man whose son I knew. Whose son was currently a silent director in a holding company I had recently discovered attached to my own fund's original capital structure.

Victor Crane.

I had not told Vivienne that yet. I needed to understand exactly how much she knew before I decided what to do with what I knew.

"The legal filing," I said. "How long before it becomes public."

"Iris said forty-eight hours before the estate freeze is visible in the public record."

"And your family. How long before they move."

Vivienne glanced at her phone, still face down on the table. "They've already started."

I made a decision. "I'm going to have my legal team pull everything related to the original betrothal arrangement and submit it as supporting documentation to your filing. You'll want the Steele name attached to this case before your family has time to apply pressure to the court."

She looked at me steadily. "Why would you do that."

"Because I was lied to," I said simply. "And because the contract names you. Not Clarissa. You." I held her gaze. "That means something to me."

She was quiet for a moment. I couldn't tell what she was thinking and I found that genuinely unusual. Most people were readable to me. Vivienne Ashworth was not, and I didn't know yet whether that was something she had cultivated or something she simply was.

"There's something you're not telling me," she said.

It wasn't a question. I looked at her across the table and felt something I hadn't felt in a long time, the particular quality of attention that came with meeting someone operating at the same level as you.

"There is," I said. "But I need to verify it before I say it out loud."

She nodded once, as though that was a reasonable answer, which it was. She reached for her bag and stood, and I stood with her.

"Mr. Steele," she said. "Whatever you're verifying. Verify it quickly."

She walked out and I sat back down and picked up my phone and called Carter.

"I need everything you can find on Victor Crane's father," I said when he answered. "And I need it before tonight."

Carter was quiet for a second. "Roman. What's going on?"

"I'm not sure yet," I said. "But I think someone tried to bury a woman's entire existence and I think it connects back to us."

There was a pause. Then Ca

rter said the last thing I expected.

"Roman. Victor called me an hour ago. He knows about the filing.”