Alex slammed a fist down on the table. “Dad is still the patriarch of this family. It doesn’t matter that he’s retired. He has a board seat. He could yank the company out from under me if he wants. My position isn’t safe if I push him too far, so yeah, it does matter,Nathaniel.”
“So what?” Charlotte’s voice rose, sharp and shaking. “You’re saying I should marry Gregory just so you can stay on Dad’s good side?”
Alex froze. So did Nate. Hell, evenIfelt my spine lock up at the crack in her voice.
She stepped further into the room, her chin trembling with fury and heartbreak swirling together. “You hate Gregory. You’ve always hated him even when I didn’t. Now you want me to marry him so you don’t lose your corporate crown?”
“Charlotte—” Alex tried.
“No.” She cut him off with a curt shake of her head. “Answer me. Because I’m the one staring down the barrel of this gun,Alexander. And what I’m hearing is that you’d rather have me marry a man none of us like or trust than risk getting into another argument about it with Dad.”
Alex opened his mouth, shut it, then dragged a hand down his face. “Charlotte, that’s not what I said.”
But he was stalling and we all knew it, because she wasn’t wrong. Alex Westwood, usually so polished and steady, completely in control of the entire world, suddenly looked like a man cornered. I watched him scramble for an angle, a thread, or something that would make this seem less like what it clearly was, but he couldn’t deny it.
Douglas was using Charlotte as leverage for something he wanted and it was highly unlikely that anyone would be able to talk him out of it.
Nate stepped in when Alex came up empty, glancing between us with an earnest, open expression on his face. “Look, maybe Gregory isn’t that bad. He’s annoying, but he’s loyal in his own weird, greasy way. He’s not dangerous and heispretty charming.”
Oh, buddy. You really don’t know a damn thing about Gregory, do you?
Nate wasn’t stupid, far from it in fact, but he was operating on partial data. On Gregory’s curated persona, not the real man behind the curtain. Charlotte swallowed hard, looking at Nate, then at Alex, and then, finally, at me.
As our eyes met, I felt it. The shift. The quiet, defeated acceptance sliding into her gaze. She was bracing herself for it, preparing to fold.
Charlotte Westwood, who didn’t fold for anyone, was getting ready to do it for her father. Simply because he was insisting and she didn’t want to disappoint him or her brothers. It punched the air out of my lungs.
“Okay,” she said softly, nodding like she was agreeing to her own sentence. “Maybe Nate’s right. Maybe Gregory isn’t?—”
“No.” The word shot out of me like a bullet, cutting enough that all three Westwoods looked at me. I stepped forward, my head shaking back and forth like a dang pendulum. “You’re not marrying Gregory.”
Charlotte blinked, her frown deepening in confusion. Nate’s eyes widened like he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. Alex muttered, “Jesus, Trent. The game is up. We?—”
“No.” The dam had burst. “We’re not doing this. Do you hear me? You’re not being handed off to that man just because your father wants to pull strings he shouldn’t even be touching.”
Charlotte looked like she might cry. Or yell. Or both. I didn’t let myself soften. If I softened, I’d cave, and if I caved, she’d be trapped. Not forever, but long enough to lose everything and I knew what that felt like. I wasn’t about to let it happen to her.
“You’re coming back to Dallas with me,” I said. “Today. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll have our bags in the car. We’ll put distance between you and Douglas until Alex figures out how to fix this. We’ll stick with the plan we agreed to before. We should never have come back here.”
Everyone looked at Alex, who suddenly looked like I’d kicked his feet out from under him. He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I don’t know how to move forward from here. Not yet.”
I swore under my breath.
“Gregory has signed already. Do you guys realize what that means?” Alex said quietly. “Dad has got all the paperwork. He’s serious about forcing this and he’ll threaten whatever and whoever he has to. Going back to Texas doesn’t change any of that. Fuck, it won’t even delay the inevitable any longer than it’ll take Dad to fly Gregory out there.”
Charlotte closed her eyes and heat climbed up my spine. So I’d been right, then. Our fake relationship was over. Technically, that meant I could walk away right now. I’d done what my friend had asked me to do, and since Chicago wasn’t even my home turf, I didn’t know what else I could really do.
“Then we’ll find another way,” I said, quieter but twice as dangerous. I sure as fuck wasn’t walking away. “She’s not marrying Gregory and she’s not staying in Chicago while your father is calling the shots.” I turned to her, trying to make her see it. Believe it. “You’re leaving with me. No folding. No signing your life away.”
Charlotte let out a shaky breath, but then she spoke again, her voice so quiet I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “You don’t know all of it yet, Trent.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Dad said that, uh, that we don’t date in this family and that if I’m serious about you, I need to marry you.”
Her gaze met mine and I saw the questions in it.Would you? Could you?
They hit me like a damn freight train because I didn’t know the answer and that terrified me more than anything her father could threaten.
