Page 74 of Vow to Claim You

Father-in-law. The word sounds absurd.

But I sit, and an attendant sets a second cup at my side before I’ve fully finished lowering into the chair.

Leandro folds the paper with meticulous, unhurried precision, as though the world has always adjusted to his pace.

“I’ll admit,” he says, “I didn’t expect to see you at the funeral yesterday.”

“Ayanna is my wife.” I take the coffee black. “I needed to be beside her.”

“Mm,” he hums. “Admirable. Though I doubt your presence did much for the optics.” He puts the newspaper away on a coffee table. “There’s talk, you understand. About the boy’s message. About what it implied. About who had reason to want him to never speak again.”

So that’s this morning’s game: coffee and a knife held under the table.

“Convenient, isn’t it?” I keep my expression neutral. “Whoever killed him knew exactly where the suspicion would land. Aimed it like a rifle. The husband. The rival. The Vold.” My head angles slightly. “Almost too clean.”

Something changes in his expression, and he drowns it in a sip of coffee.

“So.” He sets the cup down. “You didn’t do it.”

“No.” My eyes never leave his. “Did you?”

There’s a flicker of hesitation in his eyes before he smiles. The trouble with politicians is that they spend their lives learning how to lie with their expressions. The trouble with men like me is that we spend ours learning how to see through them.

Finally, he laughs, low and dry. “What a thing to ask a man in his own home.”

But I caught that flicker, and it tells me one of two things. Either he didn’t do it, and the question merely caught him off guard. Maybe it even offended him. Or he did. And the only thing that unsettles him is the thought that someone might believe him capable of it.

I don’t know which. Yet. But I know that look. I’ve put it on enough faces to recognize it on someone else’s.

I drink my coffee and say nothing more.

Whoever arranged that message at the graveside started something. And I’ll hunt the person who decided my name was a convenient place to hang a corpse, then I’ll make sure they never make that mistake again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Ayanna

The moment we step into the house, Aric shifts. I watch it happen like a door closing in slow motion. Shoulders squaring. Expression smoothing into that impenetrable calm. Phone already in his hand, instructions going out in low, clipped tones—reminding me, in case I let myself forget over the past two days, that he isn’t just my husband. He’s the heir of the Vold dynasty. The Viking. The Second of a society that rules half the world’s sins.

The man who held me together in my childhood bedroom last night, who told me I didn’t have to pretend, is gone. Folded away the instant his boots hit Norwegian stone. In his place stands the version of him this country demands.

I knew he’d come back. I just didn’t think I’d miss the other one this fast.

Elske reaches me before anyone else, a streak of white fur pressing her whole weight into my legs, and I sink my fingers into her scruff and let myself have one honest second of being glad to be somewhere.

“Mrs. Vold.” Ingrid bustles in from the corridor, already beaming, already reaching for my coat. “Oh, you look frozen through, kjære. And you—” She rounds on Aric with the fearless fondness only she gets away with, nodding at the phone glued to his hand. “Not even through the door and already barking orders. The world will keep turning if you take five minutes to breathe, Mr. Vold. Sit. Have tea. Be a person.”

Aric doesn’t smile, but the cold in him thaws half a degree, which from him is practically laughter. “The world keeps turning because I don’t take five minutes.”

“Mm.” Ingrid is unbothered. “And one day it’ll turn right over you, and I’ll say I told you so at the funeral.”

I huff a laugh despite everything. Bless this woman.

But Aric’s already heading toward his office, the cold efficiency clicking back into place.

“I have meetings.” He pauses by the door, and for a moment his gaze lingers on me. “Make her something warm. She’s not used to the cold yet,” he instructs Ingrid without looking away from me.

Such a small thing. A throwaway instruction tossed over his shoulder on his way to something more important. Yet it lodges somewhere under my ribs and refuses to leave.