The truth about why Marcus had orchestrated the entire marriage came out three days later, and it arrived not as a confession but as a mistake — a document left open on Marcus's desk that Elena glimpsed while delivering papers he'd requested, and couldn't unsee once she had.
It wasn't merely about the shipping contracts. Marcus Cole was in debt — significant, carefully hidden debt, the kind that had accumulated over years of aggressive expansion the public company reports never revealed.
Numbers scrolled across the screen that made Elena's stomach drop the longer she read: refinancing deadlines, collateral requirements, projected losses that dwarfed anything she'd imagined when she'd first heard the word "alliance" used to describe her own wedding. The Marchetti family's shipping routes
