He presses on carefully. “Then may I advise urgency. Your father is already positioning himself publicly. He is implying to certain investors that a transition in control may be inevitable.”
I turn back slowly. “What did he say?”
The attorney wets his lips. “Only that you are… unsuited to domestic stability. That you will never settle. That your preferences are too volatile to produce a timely marriage.”
My grip tightens around the glass.
The attorney sees the danger in my face and tries to soften the moment. “It may be a bluff.”
“No,” I say. “It’s an insult.”
He doesn’t answer.
I know exactly what my father thinks of me. Ruthless enough to build, reckless enough to ruin it. Too much of him to be trusted, too much of my mother to be contained. A son who could inherit power but never peace.
Usually, I don’t care what he thinks.
Usually, I would already have solved this.
Now I have Zatanna standing in the middle of it, rearranging the women, adjusting the venues, trying to help me marry someone else while every time she looks at me my entire body remembers exactly what she feels like.
I drain the rest of my whiskey.
The attorney notices. “Sir… are you genuinely prepared to go through with this?”
I look at him. “What do you think?”
He hesitates. “I think you are trying to.”
That, annoyingly, is honest.
I set the empty glass down. “Trying is enough for now.”
He folds his hands over the briefcase. “And if no suitable match presents?”
I laugh then. Quiet. Bitter. There are suitable matches everywhere. That is the entire problem.
But suitable is not the same as possible.
I’m half-tempted to explain it to him in the cruelest possible terms: that the more efficiently Zatanna does her job, the more impossible the job becomes. That every woman she places in front of me only clarifies the shape of what I actually want, and what I actually want is exactly the one thing I cannot have.
“You wanted a plan. Here it is. I go on the dates. I evaluate the candidates. I make a decision before the week is out.”
The attorney visibly relaxes. “Good.”
He shouldn’t. Because the decision I’m trying not to make is the only one that feels like one at all. And that decision would be catastrophic.
“You should also prepare a draft agreement,” I say. “Prenup. Ownership structures. Succession language.”
His brows rise. “You have someone in mind?”
I hold his gaze just long enough to make him nervous again.
“No,” I say.
Lie.
He nods quickly and opens the briefcase to take notes. “Of course. A draft, then, broad enough to adjust when the bride is selected.”
