The first time another woman told me my husband still belonged to her, she was wearing a necklace worth more than my flower shop.

“You had me investigated,” I said, my voice shaking as I pointed the documents toward him. “Long before that restaurant. Long before Mia set up that blind date.”

Ethan stepped into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. The sound of the latch engaging was like the click of a trigger.

“Put the file down,” he said quietly.

“Did you pay Mia?” The thought tore through me like broken glass. “Did you hire my best friend to manipulate me into that dinner?”

“No,” Ethan snapped, closing the distance between us. “Mia had nothing to do with it. She genuinely thought she was setting you up with an acquaintance from college. I found out about the arrangement through mutual connections and swapped the reservation.”

“Why?” I demanded, tears finally burning the backs of my eyes. “If you needed a fake wife to satisfy your grandfather's trust, you could have picked an heiress! You could have picked anyone from your world! Why me?”

“Because an heiress has an empire behind her!” Ethan’s voice cracked with uncharacteristic raw fury. “An heiress would have been bought off by my father! Do you have any idea what Richard Whitmore is capable of?”

He tore the folder from my hands and tossed it onto the desk.

“My father discovered that the trust had a marriage clause six months ago. He went to Victoria. He offered her ten million dollars and a seat on the board of his new shell company if she convinced me to marry her before the deadline. She agreed, Claire. She left London not because she loved me, but because my father offered her a payday to hand him control of Whitmore Capital.”

I stared at him, stunned. “Victoria is working for your father?”

“She always was,” Ethan said bitterly, running a hand through his dark hair. “Three years ago, when she left me, it wasn't for a developer. It was because my father paid her off when he thought I was getting too independent. She's a weapon he uses whenever he wants to control me.”

The air left my lungs. “And what am I, Ethan? A counter-weapon? A pawn you moved across the board to block his queen?”

Ethan looked down at me, his gaze softening into something dark and tortured.

“I vetted you, Claire. I looked into your business, your debts, your character. I needed someone my father could never buy. Someone with an untouchable spine.” He took half a step closer, his breath warm against my temple. “And God forgive me... I remembered the girl in the greenhouse who refused to apologize for being poor, who looked through every piece of bullshit our classmates put on display.”

“You didn’t know me,” I whispered.

“I wanted to,” he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly murmur. “And since the day you walked into that City Hall wearing cream, you’re the only thing in this miserable life that feels real.”

He reached out, his fingertips grazing my jawline.

For a single, electric second, neither of us breathed. The air between us cracked with unspoken desire, years of buried longing rising to the surface.

Then his phone rang loudly on the desk.

The caller ID displayed a number neither of us could ignore: *Wild June - Security Alert.*

My heart plummeted into my stomach.

“Claire,” Ethan said, his voice instantly snapping back to ice. “Don't panic.”