Married to My Family's Enemy

EVERLY "You're marrying Julian Ashford." My father said it the way he announced quarterly earnings, flat and final, already moving on before I'd finished processing the sentence. I set down the tablet I'd been using to walk him through the Whitlock contract numbers, numbers I'd spent eleven months building a case for, and stared at him across his own desk like he'd started speaking a language I didn't recognize. "I'm sorry, what?" "The government's not awarding that contract to two competing bids." He didn't look up from his own screen. "They want one consortium. Proof we can actually work together instead of suing each other every fiscal quarter. Edward Ashford and I discussed it this morning. A marriage solves the optics problem faster than any press release could. You and Julian, engaged by Friday." "No." That got him to actually look up. "Everly." "No, as in that's not happening, as in you can call Edward Ashford back right now and tell him his son can find someone else's daughter to sacrifice." I stood, because sitting suddenly felt like agreeing with my body to something I had no intention of agreeing to with my mouth. "I built this deal. Eleven months, Dad. I know the Whitlock account better than anyone in this building, and you're telling me the solution you and Edward Ashford landed on, together, without me in the room, is handing me over like a signing bonus." "It's not handing you over. It's a partnership." "It's a wedding, not a joint venture agreement." I paced toward the window, needing the distance. "Find another way. Buy out Whitlock's second choice bidder. Restructure the consortium. I don't care what it costs." "There is no other way. I've spent three weeks looking for one before I ever brought this to you." Something tired crept into his voice. "The government wants proof. When it's done, this company is yours to run, exactly the way you've earned." "Grant is running it. You made that decision this morning too, apparently, without consulting me on that either." "Grant needed something visible. The board still isn't entirely comfortable with—" "With what, exactly?" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, some old, familiar wound cracking open faster than I could stop it. "Say it. With me? With the fact that half this family has spent twenty-six years treating me like a mistake you brought home instead of a daughter you actually wanted?" "Everly, that's not—" "Is that why it's this easy for you? Handing me over to the Ashfords, I mean. Would you have fought harder if I were actually Margaret's daughter instead of just the one you had to explain to her?" He flinched, actually flinched, and for one raw second I watched something like real grief cross his face before he buried it back under the composed neutrality he wore for every occasion that required it of him. "Your mother's death was not your fault, Everly. It was never your fault. And I have spent twenty-six years trying to make up for the way this house treated you for something you had no part in causing." "You could have started by not marrying me off the same morning you gave Grant a job he never earned." He didn't answer that. I walked out without agreeing to anything, and he let me, both of us understanding that the calendar, not my consent, was going to decide how this actually played out. Grant was leaning against the wall outside, close enough to the door that there was no version of events where he hadn't heard every word of it. "Well," he said, pushing off the wall with the particular ease of a man who had never once had to fight for anything he'd been handed. "Congratulations, I guess. Mrs. Ashford. Fitting, honestly. The bastard daughter finally gets shipped off to the other bastards." "Don't." "I'm serious. This is good exposure for you. Face of the merger." He fell into step beside me, infuriatingly unbothered. "Really, when you think about it, this is probably the closest you were ever going to get to actually belonging somewhere in this family." "Grant." A new voice, sharp and immediate, cut through the hallway before I could respond. Camille appeared from the direction of the elevators, and the look on her face when she caught the tail end of what he'd said could have stripped paint. "Say one more word to her like that and I will personally make sure every woman at your country club hears exactly what you just called your own sister." Grant's ears went red so fast it would have been funny under any other circumstances. "Camille, I didn't mean—" "I heard exactly what you meant." She crossed her arms, entirely unmoved by whatever he tried to arrange his face into next. "Leave." He left. Actually left, practically tripping over his own feet to get to the elevator, and I would have laughed if I weren't still shaking. "He has had a ridiculous crush on you since college," I said, once the elevator doors closed behind him. "You know that, right?" "I'm aware." Something calculating flickered behind Camille's eyes, gone as quickly as it came. "Filing that away for later. Right now, I want to know why I just opened my phone to a business alert announcing your engagement to Julian Ashford." "It's already out?" "Apparently. Everly, what is happening?" "I need to go somewhere first," I said, already reaching for my coat, my mind already moving past Grant's cruelty and toward the one thing that might actually still fix this. "I'll explain everything, I promise. I just need an hour." "Everly—" "An hour, Camille. I need to go see if there's still a version of this I can undo." Senator Diane Whitlock's office sat on the ninth floor of a federal building that smelled like old carpet and newer ambition, and I'd booked the meeting myself, without telling my father, on the theory that if this contract's fate was going to be decided by optics, I could at least try to control which optics did the deciding. I walked in already mid-argument, three sentences into a case for restructuring the consortium without a marriage certificate attached to it, and stopped cold the moment the door swung shut behind me. He was already there. Julian Ashford stood near the window with his back half turned, dark hair, a jaw sharper than any photograph had ever managed to capture. He turned when he heard the door, and something in his expression sharpened the instant he saw exactly how far into my own pitch I already was. "You beat me to it," I said, before I could think better of it. "Did I." Something almost like amusement flickered across his face. "I wasn't aware this was a race, Calloway." "It's not a race. It's a problem, and apparently we're both here trying to solve the exact same one." "Then it's a good thing," I said, straightening my shoulders, "that I came here to do exactly the same thing." Senator Whitlock, who had been watching the two of us with the calm, assessing patience of a woman who'd spent twenty years in rooms far more hostile than this one, finally set down her pen. "If you two are both here to talk me out of the marriage," she said, "you can save your breath. I already have a solution, and it isn't the one either of you is hoping for."