Married to My Ex's Father

Chapter3

Chapter 3: Behind Closed Doors

"You expected someone to spy on us?"

Adrian didn't answer right away. He crossed the room toward a small decorative lamp on the side table, ran his fingers along its underside, and pulled free a tiny black device no larger than a button. He studied it without a trace of surprise, then pried the back off and removed the battery with the same calm he might have used to set down a set of keys.

"Not spy," he said. "Confirm. There's a difference." He set both pieces on the table, and that calm frightened me more than the device itself, because it told me this wasn't the first time he'd done this, and it wouldn't be the last.

"You knew someone might be listening," I said. "Before we even walked in here."

"I suspected. Now I know."

I sank into the nearest chair, my wedding dress pooling around me like something already belonging to a stranger, and waited for him to explain himself. He remained standing, his fingers moving briefly to adjust the cufflink at his left wrist, a small, deliberate motion I would later come to recognize as the quiet prelude to something important.

"Someone close to me has been leaking information for months," he said. "Someone I trusted."

Vivian's voice returned to me unbidden, the memory of her leaning close outside the cathedral doors, her breath cold against my ear. Do you know why Ethan never chose you? I hadn't been able to answer then, and I still couldn't now.

Because I made sure he never had the chance. I pushed the memory aside and forced myself back into the present, where a different Ashford stood in front of me with secrets of his own.

Adrian held my gaze for several seconds before continuing. "Ethan wasn't acting alone."

I waited.

"So who was with him?"

"That's exactly what I'm trying to find out."

"And the wedding failing benefited someone."

"It made me look weak," Adrian said, his voice hardening slightly. "A man who cannot control his own son, on the day the board decides whether he can still control his company. That timing was not an accident."

"Who wanted that?"

"I don't know yet. And even if I suspected someone, I wouldn't say their name in a room I just found bugged."

That answer should have satisfied me, but it didn't, and I made no effort to hide my frustration. "You're asking me to marry you based on a conspiracy you can't name, orchestrated by someone you won't identify, for reasons you've only half explained. Why should I believe any of this is real?"

"You don't have to believe me," he said. "You only have to decide whether the risk is worth what I'm offering."

"How do I know you aren't using me the same way you think someone used Ethan?"

"Because I'm telling you exactly what I want from this marriage, in front of you, right now. Manipulation depends on hiding intentions. I'm not hiding mine."

"If this is only business," I pressed, "why marriage? Why not hire security, hire a publicist, hire someone whose job is exactly this?"

"Because a marriage cannot be broken the way a contract can," he said. "The board respects permanence. They respect a man who appears settled far more than one surrounded by employees he pays to protect him. And because you are the only person in this city right now that no one would suspect of working for me."

"Even so, you're asking me to trust a stranger for the rest of my life."

"I'm not asking you to trust me today." He met my eyes directly, without softness, without performance. "Trust isn't something I expect from you, Amelia. It's something I intend to earn."

Ethan had promised forever, and forever had lasted exactly until this morning. I wasn't sure another promise, no matter who made it, could survive the wreckage he had left behind.

Until that moment I hadn't noticed how exhausted Adrian looked. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of confidence could hide, and I wondered how long he'd been carrying burdens he never allowed anyone else to see.

A soft knock interrupted us before I could respond, and Charlotte slipped inside without waiting for an answer, holding the small ivory box she'd pressed into my hands earlier. "I think you should see this," she said, her voice tight in a way that made my stomach drop.

I untied the ribbon and lifted the lid, expecting nothing more than a keepsake from a wedding that no longer existed.

Inside sat the engagement ring Ethan had given me, resting against white silk exactly where I'd left it that morning, except now it had been placed here deliberately, alongside something that had never belonged there. Beneath the ring lay a second envelope, unmarked, and when I opened it, a single photograph slid into my palm.

It showed Ethan shaking hands with another man in what looked like a private office. Both of them were caught mid-conversation, neither aware of the camera. The second man's face had been torn away completely, leaving only a jagged, deliberate absence where his identity should have been. I turned the photograph over with trembling fingers and found three words written in sharp black ink.

Ask your husband.

I stared at the words until they stopped making sense. My husband. I wasn't married yet, not to Adrian, not to anyone, and yet whoever had written those words already seemed certain of an answer I hadn't given.

Adrian's fingers tightened around the photograph almost imperceptibly, and although his expression remained composed, I noticed the tiny crack in his calm for the first time.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, his voice quieter than before.

"Charlotte said it arrived with the box this morning. No note, no explanation." I watched him carefully. "Adrian, who tore that man's face away?"

"I don't know," he said, and for the first time since I'd met him, I believed he meant it completely.

"People rarely fear the truth," he said quietly. "They fear the person who discovers it."

The silence between us stretched long enough that I finally asked the question I'd been avoiding since the moment he extended his hand at the altar. "If I agree to this marriage, what exactly happens?"

"No lies," he said. "No pretending this is anything other than what it is. A legal marriage. Temporary. One year, and then either of us may walk away."

"I have conditions," he continued. "No secrets that endanger this agreement. No public disagreements, regardless of what happens privately. And after one year, if either of us wants out, neither fights the other for it."

"I have one condition too," I said, and he raised an eyebrow, waiting. "You never lie to me. Not to protect me, not to manage me. Never."

It wasn't much of a smile, yet it softened the sharpness of his features just enough for me to glimpse the man hidden beneath the reputation, and somehow that felt more dangerous than if he had smiled broadly. "Agreed," he said.

The door burst open before either of us could say anything else, and Victor stepped inside with an urgency that immediately silenced the room, because I'd learned enough about him in the last hour to know he never interrupted Adrian without reason.

"They found Ethan at the airport," Victor said.

Adrian's eyes narrowed. "And?"

Victor hesitated.

"He isn't traveling under his own name."