Page 69 of Vow to Claim You

We return to the estate. Leandro leads us through the front doors into a foyer. White marble underfoot, a staircase curving up both walls like a pair of cupped hands, a chandelier scattering fractured light across all of it.

We’re meant to leave for the funeral within the hour. I’m already counting the cars, the route, and deciding where Maylin sits, when the sound of heels striking the marble makes everything else go quiet.

Ayanna comes down the staircase in an elegant black dress, hair pulled back in a low ponytail, her face stripped to nothing but the grief she’s too proud to carry in the open and the fury that’s apparently arrived to keep it company.

“You promised me,” she seethes, glaring at her father. “I spoke to Naomi.”

Leandro’s expression settles into its familiar calm, the one he’s hidden behind all afternoon. “Ayanna⁠—”

“She told me you’re arranging a marriage for her.” Her voice doesn’t rise. It sharpens, which is worse. “You looked me in the eye, and you swore. That was my condition. The one thing I asked. My life for your alliance, and Naomi left out of it. You promised she would never be used the way I was.”

Used. The word stung in my chest more than I’d care to admit. But what really bothers me is that she made a deal with Leandro, he took the trade, and he’s already breaking it.

And I don’t tolerate people breaking deals with my wife.

“This is not a conversation for the foyer.” Leandro’s composure falters. “You forget yourself. You’re a married woman. Naomi is my daughter, and what becomes of her is my concern, not yours. You will not question me in my own house like some⁠—”

“Careful.” I offer Leandro the courtesy of a warning. “Watch your tone when you speak to my wife.”

Silence falls. Leandro studies me, baffled. Whatever he expected from me—agreement, indifference, the bored neutrality of a husband who married for leverage and nothing more—it wasn’t this.

“You,” he says slowly, the smile sliding back into place, “of all men, should understand the value of an arranged marriage. You’re living proof of its usefulness.”

“I understand them fine.” I study him. “I also understand that Naomi is eighteen. A daughter isn’t a resource.” Now his jaw tightens, while I cock my head slightly. “Or did you forget that after the first one?”

The temperature in the foyer drops several degrees.

Leandro’s teeth grit. Clearly, he isn’t used to being spoken to this way under his own roof—least of all by the son of the man he spent a decade at war with, standing in his own house telling him what his children are worth.

“What a long day it’s been for all of us.” Nesrine, Ayanna’s mother, slides neatly into the space between her husband and me, her eyes finding mine, careful. “Aric. I know you meant to fly back to Norway tonight, after… after the service.” A delicate pause around the word. “But the hour will be late, and grief is exhausting. Perhaps the two of you might extend your stay. Take a room. Leave in the morning, rested.”

“We’re going home,” I say coolly.

“This is her home, Vold.” Leandro’s tone hardens. “It always will be. She was born in this house.”

I look at Ayanna. She’s watching me with that sharp dark gaze, trying to work out what I’m doing, and why.

“It used to be.” I look Leandro directly in the eyes. “Her home is with me now.”

I don’t wait for an answer. I turn for the door, and I feel her fall into step behind me without being told—not because she’s obeying, but because for once we want the same thing. Out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Aric

Funerals and weddings aren’t so different. Same black suits. Same forced solemnity. Same quiet understanding that something irreversible just happened.

The only difference?

At weddings, people lie about happiness. At funerals, they lie about forgiveness.

I didn’t want to come, but Ayanna is my wife, and a husband stands beside his wife. I make it clear she isn’t alone, and that no one gets near her unless I allow it. That’s the role now. Duty.

Or that’s the lie I keep telling myself, because the truth would mean admitting I didn’t come out of obligation at all.

The Monsera sun sits high, too warm and too bright even at this hour, almost an insult given the reason we’re gathered. Ayanna stands beside me, hands clasped in front of her, chin lifted as though to keep herself from breaking. Her gaze stays fixed on the coffin, and I hate how instinctively I track it. Hate how aware I am that the man inside once filled a space in her life I’ll never fully erase.

Dead, and still standing between us.