Love by Contract

Chapter 6: The Article

Rose POV

The screenshot loaded before I even finished reading the headline.

‘Scott Industries CEO in Secret Affair While Wife Recovers from Alleged Abuse.

’

The photo was timestamped yesterday morning. James, stepping out of a building I didn't recognize. Sofia beside him, her hand pressed flat against his chest like she owned the space.

I set my phone face-down on the kitchen counter.

‘Meet me tonight. 8 PM.’

I'd almost believed it. For exactly four minutes, I'd sat at this table and let myself wonder if something had shifted in him. I'd replayed the way he'd stepped between me and Sofia, the way his voice had gone quiet and dangerous. Get your hands off my wife.

Four minutes. That's all the hope I'd allowed myself, and it had still been too much.

I picked up my phone and typed: Never mind about tonight. I've seen enough.

Then I sent the screenshot.

I waited. Part of me; the stupid, self-sacrificing part, waited for him to explain it away. To tell me the photo was old, and that he hadn't spent the night at her apartment hours after slapping me across the face.

His reply came: I'm sorry.

Two words. Not an explanation, just the hollow, contractual minimum.

I turned off the screen and pressed both hands flat against my stomach.

Six months left on the contract, and then I'd be out of this house with nothing except Bella's new kidney and a lesson I should have learned before I signed my name to anything.

The front door opened upstairs. I could hear Lilly footsteps.

She appeared at the top of the kitchen stairs, still in her school uniform. She looked like she'd been carrying something heavy all day.

"You're still here," she said.

"I live here." For now.

"I thought maybe you left," She descended two steps, then stopped, "After the article."

My chest tightened. "You saw it?"

"Emma showed me at school. She said her mom said you were a gold digger." Lilly's jaw set in a way that looked disturbingly like her father, "I told her that her mom was wrong."

Something small and painful bloomed in my chest.

"Lilly…"

"Are you going to leave because of the picture?"

The question landed harder than she meant it to. I opened my mouth to give her the safe answer: that's between me and your dad. But she was looking at me with those serious eyes, the ones that had stopped trusting easily a long time before I arrived.

"I don't know yet," I said, which was the only honest answer I had.

She came the rest of the way down the stairs and sat across from me at the table, her backpack landing on the floor with a thud. She didn't speak for a long moment.

"Mommy used to cry in the kitchen," she said finally, her voice carefully flat, "She thought I couldn't hear. But the walls in this house are thin."

"She cried a lot last year before she got sick."

I didn't say anything. I just let her talk.

"Daddy wasn't here, he was always somewhere else," Lilly continued, “And then she got sick and then she wasn't here anymore either."

She looked up at me. "I don't want that to happen again."

"Lilly," My voice came out rougher than I intended, "What happened to your mom wasn't your fault either. You know that, right?"

"I know." But the way she said it meant she wasn't sure, "I just don't want you to disappear like she did."

I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. She let me. That was new.

"I'm not disappearing," I said carefully, "But I can't promise you things I don't know yet."

Her fingers curled slightly under mine. "Okay."

That one word carried more trust than she probably knew she was giving me.

***

I was washing the dinner dishes when I heard the car pull in.

James didn't come to the kitchen. I heard his briefcase hit the console table by the door, and his footsteps move toward his study, and heard the door close.

I dried my hands and went upstairs.

Lilly was already asleep. I stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the rise and fall of her chest in the dark.

Then I walked back down the hall and knocked on the study door.

A pause. "Come in."

James sat behind his desk with his jacket off, and his tie pulled loose. He looked like someone had pressed every ounce of certainty out of him and left the shape standing.

He looked up when I entered and something crossed his face too quickly for me to name.

"Rose."

"I'm not here to fight," I said, "And I'm not here to forgive you either. I just need to know one thing."

He paused.

"The photo. Was it what it looked like?"

A long silence.

"I went to her apartment that night," he said, "After I sent you the clinic email. I told myself I needed to think, but the truth is I wanted someone to tell me I wasn't a bad person."

"And did she?"

"She told me what I wanted to hear," He set down his pen, "Nothing happened. But I was there and that's enough to make it what it looks like."

I nodded slowly.

"I'm still deciding about Bella's surgery," I said.

"But I need you to understand something. If I stay; if I accept that money, it's for Bella. Not for you. Not for whatever you're trying to fix in yourself."

“I know,” he said.

He stood up, not coming closer, just standing.

"I scheduled a press conference for tomorrow morning," he said, "I'm going to tell them the truth but not everything. Enough to take the target off your back."

"You'd do that? The deal with the Singapore investors…"

"Might fall through," he finished. "I know."

I stared at him.

"Why?"

He didn't answer right away. He looked at the window instead, at the rain still streaking the glass.

"Because it's the right thing. And I've been doing the wrong thing for long enough."

The James Scott I had married didn't talk like this. That man had a clear ledger; everything either cost something or earned something, and nothing existed outside those columns.

I turned toward the door.

"Rose."

I stopped.

"The baby," he said quietly, "I don't think you went through with it."

My whole body went rigid.

The silence stretched out between us, thin as paper.

I walked out of the room quickly before he could say anything else.

In the hallway, I pressed my back against the wall and let out a slow, careful breath.

He knew.

Or suspected. Which was close enough.

And tomorrow morning he was going to stand in front of cameras and say something true, something that could cost him everything he'd built.

I didn't know yet whether that made him dangerous or different.

But in six hours, the whole city would find out which one it was.