Chapter 6 — The Ruthless Brother's Wife
1092 Words
Rowan did not accuse me.
That would have been easier.
He set his phone beside the signed agreement and asked, “Is the render accurate?”
Rain ticked against the depot windows. In the rail yard below, Soren tested an old diesel switcher, the engine’s pulse traveling through the floor.
I studied the impossible image.
The Cedar corridor was accurate down to the chipped green paint beside the service door. So was my older face. The badge had not read Infrastructure Audit in the first life. It had said Helios Safety, but the level-four blue stripe was the same.
“The location is real,” I said.
“That was not my question.”
“I have worn a badge like that inside Cedar.”
His jaw shifted once. “When?”
“I cannot give you an answer I can prove.”
“You signed a no-lethal-omissions clause six minutes ago.”
“The image is labeled a forecast render. Ask why your brother’s system is producing a file dated five years from now.”
“I am asking why you recognize it.”
Because you died with that badge in your hand.
The sentence pressed against my ribs.
“If I tell you now,” I said, “you will either think I am insane or believe me without evidence. Both outcomes are dangerous.”
Rowan moved around the table. He stopped far enough away that I did not feel cornered.
“Then we postpone the wedding.”
Fear hit so quickly it tasted metallic.
I made myself breathe before I answered. “If we postpone, Item Seven passes Thursday. Cole gets the shelter network.”
“That is an argument about the company. Not about whether I should marry a woman my brother’s system depicts breaching my home.”
“You should not trust me.”
The words hurt him. I saw it despite the control in his face.
“Useful advice from a future wife.”
“Trust the evidence chain. Trust the independent trustee. Trust the exit clauses. Do not trust a feeling you developed under pressure.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Friday,” he said at last. “You answer one question under oath. Is the image fabricated by you?”
“No.”
“Then we proceed for the inspection vote. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more.”
Friday morning arrived clear and cold.
We used a small ceremony room in a community legal center, not the courthouse. Leah had found a retired judge authorized to officiate. Juno Park stood as my witness in hospital scrubs beneath a wool coat. Theo Ruiz, a city radio technician Rowan trusted, stood for him with a tool bag still slung across his chest.
Thirty reporters waited on the sidewalk.
Cole waited inside.
He rose from a back-row chair as we entered. His suit was charcoal, his tie the blue I used to choose for board meetings. For one disorienting second, he looked like the man I had planned to marry.
“Mara,” he said. “Talk to me privately.”
Juno stepped beside me. Rowan did not. I was grateful for both choices.
“There is nothing private left between us,” I said.
Cole’s eyes flicked to the officiant. “She is under active criminal investigation. She is not competent to enter a marriage designed to transfer corporate power.”
Leah handed him a copy of the detective’s release notice. “No arrest, no incapacity finding, two independent attorneys, and no corporate transfer occurs here. If you intend to seek an injunction, serve it properly.”
Cole ignored her.
“He will use you,” he told me.
“You taught me how that feels.”
Color rose along his cheekbones.
The officiant asked him to leave. Cole did, because cameras were visible through the glass wall and he still preferred cruelty that looked reasonable.
The ceremony took seven minutes.
Rowan and I made the plain civil declarations required before the officiant and witnesses. No promises about forever. No invented love. When he placed a simple silver band on my finger, his hand was warm and steady.
Mine was not.
“I do,” I said.
The words were smaller than the lie I had told at the Aegis hearing and far more binding.
Juno and Theo signed as witnesses. The officiant completed the certificate and sealed copies for the county and the trustee.
Outside, cameras flashed as Rowan and I crossed the sidewalk.
“Mrs. Mercer!” someone shouted.
I kept walking.
“She uses Vale,” Rowan said without raising his voice.
At the car, he opened my door and then handed me the key rather than closing me inside.
The gesture was so precise that I knew he had noticed my fear of locks.
I drove.
For three blocks, neither of us spoke. The silver band felt heavier than the diamond I had returned.
“The reporter called you Mrs. Mercer,” Rowan said at last.
“I heard.”
“The agreement preserves your name. I will correct anyone using the marriage to absorb your identity into mine.”
“Even when correcting them makes the marriage look less convincing?”
“A trust condition requires a spouse. Not a surrender.”
I tightened my hands on the wheel. In the first life, Cole introduced me as his systems girl long after I became chief map engineer. Every correction caused a private punishment: a lost credential, an excluded meeting, two days of silence.
“Thank you,” I said.
Rowan looked through the passenger window. “Do not thank me for meeting the minimum.”
At Cedar, he carried his own bag upstairs and left mine in the car until I chose to retrieve it. We ate takeout at opposite ends of the kitchen table, wedding witnesses gone, attorneys still exchanging documents downstairs. Nothing about the meal resembled a wedding night.
It was the safest wedding night I had ever imagined.
Safety, I was learning, could feel lonelier than fear.
Saturday morning, the trust’s investigator arrived at Cedar with two accountants, a property lawyer, and a sealed list of questions.
The first ten concerned occupancy and independent advice.
The eleventh did not.
Imani Price, the professional trustee, rotated her tablet toward me. Cole’s forecast render filled the screen.
“Before I certify this household,” she said, “I need to determine whether one spouse entered it using information the other spouse could not reasonably possess.”
- Writer
