“But—”
“If we lose that account to another company, it ruins us, Kate. Completely. We won’t recover from it. Not during my tenure, anyhow. I suppose you can try. You might even succeed, but for as long as we keep leaving things to chance, there’s always a possibility that even your luck will run out.”
The words sat heavy and immovable between us. When he put it like that, the Westwoods’ ridiculous tradition sounded responsible. Like the only fiscally sound way any empire couldmake decisions. And yet, neither of my parents had had to choose between love and doing the right thing for the sake of acompany.
Mom reached across the table, her fingers hovering for a beat before resting lightly over mine. “We’re not marrying you off as if it’s a simple transaction.”
“It feels like that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“The Westwoods are honorable,” she said gently. “They protect their own.”
“I’m not their own.”
“You would be.”
My chest flipped over on itself. “I don’t think their protection will ever extend to me.”
“It will, Katie.” Dad leaned forward slightly. “We would never force you to do this, of course. It remains your choice and yours alone, and I wish we’d had time to prepare you better, but Nate has known this is coming his whole life. He’s prepared for it and hewilltake care of you.”
I searched his face, looking for cracks, for hesitation, or for any sign that he might secretly want me to refuse, but I found none. He even smiled at me. “I would lose everything before I forced you, but I’m asking you to consider it. Not as a sacrifice, but as a strategy. One you would control.”
Control.
The word echoed bitterly in my mind, conjuring images of Nate’s rigid posture, the storm he tried to keep leashed behind his eyes, and the way he’d looked almost furious on my behalf.
“I understand the logic from a business point of view,” I said slowly.
Mom squeezed my hand. “Then you understand why we brought it to you.”
I stared at our joined hands, my voice barely audible when I spoke again, my gaze rising back to hers. “Youdidn’t bring itto me, though. Nate did. Alex did. Not you. You just sat there and told me how old I am and reminded me that I haven’t dated seriously in a long time.”
I turned to my dad. “You told me about the mistakes your grandfather made. They were big ones. Big enough that we’re still paying for them, but they weren’t my mistakes. All I’ve done, my whole life, was try to help you fix them and I’ve done that. I’ve brought in clients who might not make us as much as Abram, but your grandfather wasn’t the only one who made mistakes. You spending your career focusing almost exclusively on him was another gigantic fucking mistake.”
Watching them both just sit there, justifying themselves and how all this had gone down made me bristle. Heat crawled up my spine, the words clawing at the back of my throat to tell them they didn’t know anything about my personal life. About my prospects. About the quiet pieces of myself I kept locked away, but I swallowed it all down.
I didn’t know how Nate did it, always keeping it all in. The restraint burned my tongue and made my throat constrict, but somehow, I managed to bite it back. Because that was mine and mine alone.
Nate was onto something in that sense. The more you gave of yourself, the more people could twist it into talking points and variables to be taken into account.
“I’m not sure I can forgive you for this,” I said finally, my voice steady enough to surprise even me.
Mom’s fingers tightened around mine. Dad’s expression went still in that way that meant he’d taken a direct hit but refused to show it.
“Kate,” Mom whispered. “Please don’t be like that.”
“I’m going to do it. I’ll marry him.” I pulled my hand free and folded my arms across my chest. “I’ll do it for the company. I’ll do it for you, but I hate that you’ve put me in this position.”
Mom flinched. Dad inhaled sharply.
“You have no idea what you’re really asking me to do,” I said, my voice finally cracking. “You have no idea what you expect me to give up.”
“We aren’t asking you to give up anything,” Mom said quickly.
“Yes, you are.”
“Kate, listen?—”
“No, I’ve already done that,” I said quietly. “You can listen now. You’re asking me to legally bind myself to a man who barely tolerates me. To merge my life with a family whose expectations of their own leaves zero space for personal desires and to surrender every choice about my future to protect a company’s balance sheet.”
