Page 356 of A Vicious Love

“I’m using every truth I have.”

“You should have used the truth before.”

He said nothing. I breathed once, then again.

“You kept saying I was your wife. Your house. Your bed. Your ring. And all this time, every legal piece that mattered had her name on it.”

“I had the corrected merger ready.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should. It fixes this.”

“It fixes nothing. It asks me to sign myself back into a place you let them erase me from.”

“I didn’t let them.”

“You knew.”

His silence answered again.

I wiped my face, furious with the tears because they made everything harder to say. “I will not sign another contract. I will not agree to marry you again. Whatever plan you have, stop it.”

“No.”

“Jamison.”

“No. This ends with you as my wife.”

“You don’t decide that.”

“I do, actually.”

I smiled at my reflection with wet eyes. It looked horrible. “Then come decide it in person.”

A faint sound came through the line. A crack. His neck, maybe. I could picture it too easily: Jamison outside the gates, jaw hard, phone at his ear, Reeves watching every guard in the drive as if calculating how many men could be spared.

“Baby,” he said, very softly, “do not bait me. It is very bad for Harlan. You know Daddy has anger issues.”

“I don’t know you.”

“You do.”

“No. I don’t know the man who stood beside Celeste at Veyr House and then got into my bed.”

“I was never in your bed as anyone’s fiancé but yours.”

“Legally, you were hers.”

“I don’t give a fuck what the legal fiction said.”

“I do.”

“You care now?”

“Yes.” My voice cracked, then hardened around the crack. “I’m single now. That’s what your documents mean, don’t they? Released from the merger. No current arrangement. No bride obligation. I could receive another offer tomorrow. I could plead to another dynasty without even choosing a man myself, and no one could stop me.”

“You won’t.”