The CEO's 25th Hour Bride

Chapter 10

Max’s POV

The city blurred past the tinted windows of the car, steel and glass bleeding into one another as we cut through traffic toward St. Clair Group’s headquarters.

I should have been reviewing reports—thinking about the board, the hostile acquisition still circling like a vulture, the dozens of moving parts that demanded my attention before noon. Instead, my thoughts kept drifting backward, returning to a quiet registry room and a woman in a white gown who had looked nothing like someone about to secure her future.

Lyra Blackwood had stood there pale and distracted, her attention divided between the paperwork in front of her and the watch on her wrist, as though she were counting down to something only she could see.

Most women would have walked into that registry with a strategy already mapped out. They would have known exactly what they wanted and how to extract it. They would have smiled for the cameras they pretended not to notice and negotiated for money, visibility, protection, access.

Lyra had asked for discretion.

It wasn’t what she wanted that unsettled me. It was the deliberate absence of everything else. She hadn’t tried to negotiate the six months, hadn’t asked for extensions or clauses or assurances meant to soften the reality of what she’d agreed to.

And then when the papers were finally stamped and the agreement sealed, she hadn’t lingered to test the power she’d just acquired. She’d offered a breathless apology and vanished down the corridor, the sound of her heels fading almost immediately.

Anyone else would have stayed, savoring the moment.

I rested my elbow against the door, fingers tapping lightly against the glass as the car descended into the underground bay.

Different, I reminded myself, didn’t mean harmless. It meant unknown—and unknown variables required observation.

Close observation.

St. Clair Group’s headquarters rose from the pavement like a monument to precision and restraint. I stepped out of the car and moved through the building without breaking stride, the familiar hum of power settling easily around me.

By the time I reached my office, three files had already been arranged on my desk with surgical neatness.

Three.

I arched a brow slightly. Someone had been productive.

I loosened my cufflinks, shrugged off my jacket, and reached for the first folder.

Board Resolution – CEO Chair.

The proposal had moved faster than expected. A formal vote to ratify my position permanently, stripped of interim titles or conditional language. I skimmed the signatures, my gaze catching on the name at the top.

Valerie St. Clair.

A faint smirk tugged at my mouth. My sister never did anything halfway. If the board was voting now, it meant she’d secured the outcome weeks ago.

I closed the file and set it aside.

The second folder was thinner than I liked, its contents obvious before I even opened it.

Lyra Blackwood – Background Report.

I reviewed it carefully, noting the absence of anything sensational.

Her family lineage was unremarkable, her education solid, her employment history clean. There were no scandals, no arrests, no conveniently buried disasters—nothing that suggested recklessness or ambition gone wrong.

Her mother’s death lingered in the margins of the report, described in clinical language that explained everything and nothing at once. Sealed away beneath terminology designed to discourage further questions.

Her father’s company, however, told a different story.

Blackwood Holdings was bleeding—not catastrophically, but steadily enough to be dangerous. Declining contracts, mounting loans, investors growing restless as patience wore thin. And there, woven neatly into the financial projections, was the proposed merger-by-marriage.

Maverick Cole.

I leaned back against the desk, the folder still open in my hands as the implication settled.

So that was the pressure. The escape route that would have stabilized the company and bought time, if not salvation.

Any rational person would have taken it.

Lyra hadn’t.

She had chosen me instead.

A stranger with a reputation sharp enough to make most families cautious, if not outright afraid.

Why?

If her priority had been protecting her family, Maverick Cole would have been the safer, more controllable option. I offered neither familiarity nor predictability.

Maverick Cole had been presented as “safe” only because men like him understood how to hide their damage.

On paper, he was unimpeachable. A public image carefully curated around philanthropy and tasteful discretion. The kind of man families trusted because he knew how to perform stability convincingly enough to pass for substance.

But reputations were rarely built on what was visible.

I’d crossed paths with Maverick often enough to know what lived beneath the polish.

His marriages—three, if one counted the annulment everyone politely ignored—followed a pattern no one ever documented openly. The women entered his life luminous, confident, socially sharp. They left quieter, smaller, their names faded from headlines not through scandal, but through absence.

No mess that could be traced back to him.

Men like Maverick didn’t break women with force. They did it with patience, control, and the slow rearrangement of reality until resistance felt futile. By the time anyone noticed, the damage had already been normalized.

If Lyra had married Maverick Cole, she wouldn’t just have disappeared overnight. She would have dimmed gradually, quietly enough that no one would have thought to intervene.

And Lyra Blackwood was not built for quiet erosion.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

I glanced down, unsurprised by the name on the screen.

> Lyra Blackwood.

“Got it. Thanks for saving me from myself.”

I exhaled slowly, something close to amusement stirring despite my awareness of it. She didn’t text like someone seeking reassurance or permission. She stated facts and moved on.

I replied with a single word.

“Anytime.”

I didn’t ask where she’d gone or press for explanations. If Lyra wanted space, she would take it regardless of whether I granted it. Better to let her believe she had control.

I set the phone aside and reached for the third file.

The letterhead alone was enough to draw my full attention.

Eleanor St. Clair

I opened it and found not a report, but a proposal carefully structure.

She had prepared a formal meeting between the Blackwood family and ours. She had laid out the arrangements, outlined the introductions, and mapped the timelines with meticulous precision.

I scanned faster, my expression sharpening as the intended candidate became clear.

Odette Blackwood.

A slow, almost incredulous smile tugged at my lips. The coincidence was… remarkable. The woman I hadn’t expected, the sister of the one who had upended the registry that morning, now appeared on a formal introduction list as the designated bride.

It wasn’t a plan I’d known about. It wasn’t something I could have predicted. Just the alignment of threads—Lyra’s disruption and Eleanor’s intentions—lined up in a way that made me pause.

Fate had a sense of irony.

I reread the document more slowly. Odette was described in terms Eleanor favored—polished, composed, strategically aligned.

Everything Lyra had made no effort to be.

I closed the file and turned my attention to the skyline beyond my office windows.

Confidentiality.

That was what Lyra had asked for. Eleanor’s arrangement fit neatly within those boundaries. If my family believed I was still entertaining external alliances, they wouldn’t question my silence or scrutinize my marriage too closely.

And the Blackwoods…

This would give me access, controlled and deliberate, to the family Lyra seemed determined to keep at a distance.

I picked up my phone and sent a brief message to Eleanor’s office.

“Proceed.”

Then I placed the device face-down and returned my gaze to the city beyond the glass.

Lyra Blackwood had entered my life as a disruption. And I had the distinct sense that she wasn’t finished unsettling things yet.

Good.

I had always preferred challenges that didn’t announce themselves.