Page 156 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

She got sick.

Lucian slides his fingers into my hair, gently gathering it away from my face before his palm settles against the back of my neck, warm and steady.

Caleb remains on my other side.

For a few moments, none of us speaks.

“I teach people not to do this.” I hear the disbelief in my own voice. “I literally teach people how dangerous it is to keep moving money because you’re convinced something will happen before the next obligation comes due.”

Time loses shape.

Caleb takes a couple of calls near the windows. Lucian disappears long enough to shower and returns in fresh clothes.

Later, Caleb does the same. Room service arrives, and at some point, Lucian offers me a mug of coffee with just the right amount of creamer.

I start to accept it, but my hands are shaking too hard.

He sets down the cup and brushes his thumb beneath one of my eyes. Until this moment, I didn’t realize I’d been crying.

Unable to take a drink, I turn back to the archive.

The next folder bears my name.

I stop breathing.

Sophie Langford.

Caleb swears quietly and places his hand over mine. “Don’t⁠—”

Click.

The screen fills with documents I recognize.

A spreadsheet I built years ago after Dad asked me to double-check cash-flow assumptions on a small property acquisition.

My handwriting appears in the margin of a scanned loan worksheet. And so does my signature.

What is this?

Confused, I continue on. Then my stomach turns.

“No.”

Frantically I scroll.

The analysis I gave my father was attached to a larger financing package, presented as a professional review with my credentials beneath my name.

I had checked his numbers over coffee one evening at his house, providing a second set of eyes while my mother was undergoing treatment.

And he’d presented it to investors as an actual recommendation.

My head spinning, I sit back. “He used me.”

Neither of my men respond.

I open another file and find the same thing. There’s a calculation I remember doing. And then another piece of work that he cleaned up and repurposed, using me to look more respectable.

“He used me,” I repeat, anger flashing through my pain.