Married to a Scandal

Selene's POV The story was going to die tonight. Selene just had to decide how. "Three options." She tapped her stylus against the tablet, the sharp click echoing through the otherwise silent office. "One, we say nothing and let it burn out on its own. Bad. Two, we issue a formal denial. Worse. Three—" "Three?" Mia asked, her fingers frozen over the keyboard. "We give them a better story." Selene finally looked up, letting her gaze land on her assistant. "Councilman Reyes didn't take a bribe. He met with a nonprofit. That group just happens to have a board member in common with the developer. It's not corruption, it's about appearances. So we fix the appearances." Mia's fingers paused over the keyboard. "That's a stretch." "It's not a lie. That's all that matters." Selene stood, smoothing the front of her blazer. Nineteen floors below, the city was doing what it always did at seven p.m., pretending the day wasn't over yet. "Draft it and have it to me by nine. I want it live before the Post wakes up tomorrow." Her phone buzzed against the glass desk. She didn't need to look at the screen to know who it was. Only one person in her life called instead of texting, and only when he wanted to be obeyed rather than answered. She let it ring twice more before she picked up. "Selene." Her father's voice was the same as always: flat, efficient, a voice built for board meetings and nothing else. "Come to my office tonight." "I'm working." "This isn't a request." A bitter laugh burned in her throat, but she swallowed it down. Nothing from him ever was. "I have a client crisis, Father. Unless Kang Holdings is on fire, it can wait until-" "It's about your marriage." Selene went very still. The air left her lungs in a single, silent rush. "I don't have a marriage," she said carefully. "You will by the end of the month." A heavy silence stretched across the line. She could feel him waiting, waiting for her to c***k, to argue, to give him the reaction he fed on. She refused to give him that satisfaction. "My office. Tonight." The line went dead. Selene stood there for a long moment, the phone pressed to her ear, the dial tone humming in her ear like a warning. When she finally lowered it, her reflection stared back at her from the dark screen, composed, sharp, untouchable. The face of a woman who had spent six years building an empire from nothing, who had sworn she would never need a man's name to survive in this city. And yet. Her father had just told her she was getting married, and she didn't even know who to yet. ***** Kang Holdings occupied the top six floors of a Park Avenue skyscraper designed for the sole purpose of making everyone below the fortieth floor feel insignificant. Selene bypassed the double mahogany doors and the gatekeeper assistant in less than a minute. Her name might not carry weight with her father, but it still cleared a path. Chairman Kang was standing at the window when she walked in, hands behind his back, watching the city as if it owed him something. "Sit," he said. "I'd rather stand." When he finally faced her, the weight of his sixty-one years was on full display. He wore his exhaustion deliberately in front of her, a calculated visual cue, a reminder of the burdens he carried, the sacrifices he had made. For the family. For her. "Luca Kensington," he said. The name hit like a physical blow. Selene's mind raced through the headlines: the three-million-dollar Bugatti wrapped around a hydrant, the nightclub lockdown, the senator's daughter, the endless parade of scandals that followed the Kensington heir like a shadow. "The one who wrapped a Bugatti around a hydrant last spring?" "I don't know about that." A flicker of something crossed his face. Annoyance, perhaps. "But he sounds like the reckless one. So yes, that one." "You want to do business with him." "I want you to marry him." Selene's crisis-management training kicked in, the icy professionalism that had carried her through a hundred disasters, that had taught her to keep her face perfectly still while the world burned around her. She channelled it now, forcing her posture to remain rigid, her expression unreadable. "No," she said. "It's not a discussion." "Then what is it?" "It's an agreement between his father and me that helps both companies.” He explained it just like he talks about everything in her life, already agreed upon. "Kensington Group needs to improve its image, and Arthur's subsidiaries need funding to stabilise." And there it was. The real sentence was hidden in the middle, as if he believed she would overlook it. "So this is for Arthur." "This is for the family." "It's always about Arthur." Her voice shook, just slightly, a small c***k that she hated herself for showing. "You want to tie me to the most notorious trainwreck in Manhattan just so my half-brother's failing businesses can survive another quarter? What about my own life? My company? Do you realise what that is?" "You make it sound ugly." "It is ugly." "It is practical." He moved toward his desk, entirely unbothered by her defiance, since the conversation had already ended the way he wanted. "You've spent six years building a firm that fixes other people's images. Now you'll build one for a marriage. You're uniquely qualified." "I built Apex so I wouldn't need anyone's name to survive in this city. Least of all yours." A brief flicker passed behind his eyes, a shadow of irritation, there and gone before she could trap it. "You'll keep the firm," he said smoothly. "You'll keep your independence. This changes nothing about who you are." "It changes everything about who I have to pretend to be." "That's the job, Selene." For just a fraction of a second, his tone softened into something almost resembling pity. "It has always been the job." Her mind flashed to the locked notebook in her desk at Apex—six years of secrets, blackmail, and carefully traded favours. The invisible scaffolding she had built to ensure she would never have to stand in this room, begging for her freedom. And yet here she was, being traded off like an underperforming asset. "I won't sign anything," she said, her voice dropping an octave. Her father didn't even blink. "You don't have to." He opened the top drawer of his desk, unhurried, and set a single sheet of paper on the surface between them. She didn't need to read it to know what it was. She recognised her own signature from across the room, the one she used on Apex contracts, the one she'd given her father's assistant three months ago on a stack of routine paperwork she hadn't thought twice about. "It's already signed," he said. If this had been anyone else's crisis, she would have already labelled the file as “Forced Marriage, Volume One.” It might have seemed humorous to her, considering how outrageous it is, but unfortunately, it’s happening to her right now. For the first time in longer than she could remember, Selene Kang had absolutely nothing to say.