Chapter 4 - The Secret I Had Kept Since I Was Sixteen
We stopped the board vote by seven minutes.
Not permanently.
But long enough.
Victoria’s documents raised questions about undisclosed financial relationships between Charles and executives linked to Halcyon. Daniel threatened an emergency injunction. Two independent directors panicked at the possibility of regulatory exposure.
The vote was postponed.
Charles lost his temper.
I learned that because he came directly to Ethan’s office.
The doors opened without warning.
He walked past two assistants and one security guard like the building still belonged to him.
Technically, much of it did.
“You brought Victoria into this?” he demanded.
Ethan stood behind his desk.
“You did.”
Charles’s eyes moved toward me.
“And your wife.”
“My wife was already in it when you bought her building.”
“I didn’t buy anything.”
“Halcyon did.”
“Then complain to Halcyon.”
Victoria stood near the windows.
“Tell him about Oliver.”
Charles finally looked at her.
His expression changed for less than a second.
Enough.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then explain the payments.”
“I don’t explain private consulting arrangements to emotional women.”
Victoria laughed.
“That line probably sounded more impressive in 1987.”
I nearly liked her.
Charles turned toward Ethan.
“You think these people will save you?”
“These people?”
“A bitter ex-fiancée. A florist you rented as a wife.”
Ethan moved before I did.
One second he was behind the desk.
The next he was standing two feet from his father.
“Say that again.”
Charles smiled.
There was something ugly in it.
“You want to defend the authenticity of your marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps you should ask Claire why she agreed so quickly.”
My entire body went cold.
Ethan’s eyes shifted toward me.
Charles noticed.
Of course he noticed.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“Get out,” Ethan said.
Charles reached into his briefcase.
He placed a thin blue notebook on the desk.
I stopped breathing.
No.
No.
No.
I recognized the faded cover.
Tiny white flowers.
A torn corner.
My journal.
The one I had kept from sixteen to eighteen.
The one I thought I had lost when my mother’s house was cleared after her death.
I couldn’t move.
Ethan looked from the notebook to me.
“What is this?”
Charles opened it.
My handwriting covered the page.
Teenage handwriting.
Round letters.
Purple ink.
He read aloud.
“March 14. Ethan smiled at me in the greenhouse today. He was only asking where Mr. Bell kept the fertilizer, but I thought about it for the rest of chemistry class.”
I wanted the floor to open.
Victoria looked horrified.
“Charles.”
He turned another page.
“May 2. Victoria wore his sweater today. I know jealousy is ugly, but I hate that she gets to stand beside him like she belongs there.”
“Stop,” I whispered.
Charles looked delighted.
Ethan’s face had gone completely blank.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“My investigators found several boxes from the Summers estate in storage.”
“You stole from her?”
“Purchased abandoned property.”
“It wasn’t abandoned,” I said.
My voice shook.
“That belonged to my mother.”
Charles shrugged.
“Then perhaps your family should have paid the storage fees.”
I moved toward him.
Ethan stepped between us.
Not to stop me.
To stop himself.
“Leave.”
Charles closed the journal.
“I’m not finished.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You want the court to believe this marriage developed naturally?”
He tapped the notebook.
“Your wife had been obsessed with you for fourteen years.”
“I was not obsessed.”
Charles looked at me.
“Would you prefer devoted?”
I hated him.
I hated the room.
I hated the seventeen-year-old girl who had written everything she felt because she thought no one would ever read it.
Charles turned to Ethan.
“She knew about the trust.”
“No,” I said.
“She knew about your company.”
“Everyone knew.”
“She knew Victoria left.”
“Everyone knew that too.”
“She went on a blind date and happened to find you.”
“I did not arrange that.”
Charles smiled.
“Prove it.”
Mia.
My stomach turned.
Had Mia known?
No.
She couldn’t have.
Could she?
Ethan looked at me.
“What else is in the journal?”
His voice was calm.
That was worse.
“Nothing important.”
Charles laughed.
“Oh, I disagree.”
He flipped toward the back.
“December 20. Someday I’ll stop loving someone who doesn’t know me. I have to.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Just for a second.
It hurt more than anger.
Charles placed the journal down.
“If the judge sees that, your wife’s motivation becomes rather obvious.”
Then he looked at me.
“You didn’t marry him to save employees, Claire.”
“That was part of it.”
“You married him because he finally asked.”
Silence.
No one defended me.
Because the worst part was that Charles wasn’t entirely wrong.
He left.
The door clicked shut.
Victoria was the first to move.
“I’m going to find Daniel.”
She escaped.
Coward.
Or kind.
I still don’t know.
Ethan remained standing by the desk.
I stared at the journal.
“Say something.”
He didn’t.
“Ethan.”
“How long?”
I swallowed.
“How long what?”
“How long were you in love with me?”
There was no point lying anymore.
“Since high school.”
His jaw tightened.
“Sixteen?”
“Yes.”
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“You agreed to marry me without telling me.”
“Yes.”
He laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“I asked why you.”
“I remember.”
“And you asked why I chose you.”
“Yes.”
“But you never thought maybe I should know why you chose me?”
“I chose you because you needed help.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is.”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“You loved me.”
“Yes.”
The word broke something.
“You sat across from me at Lark while I offered you a contractual marriage and never said it.”
“What was I supposed to say? Hello, Ethan, I’ve had feelings for you since tenth grade, but sure, let’s discuss tax implications?”
“You were supposed to tell me the truth.”
“I was embarrassed.”
“We made one rule.”
I knew.
Honesty.
The word stood between us like an accusation.
“I never lied about the contract.”
“You withheld the one thing that changed what your consent meant.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
My voice rose.
“You asked me to marry you for voting shares. You were not offering love.”
“I was offering honesty.”
“And I gave you honesty about every practical part of our marriage.”
“Except your reason.”
“You want my reason?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
I stepped closer.
“I married you because I loved you. I married you because you asked. I married you because three hundred people might lose their jobs. I married you because I trusted the boy I remembered from high school even though the man standing in front of me barely knew me. I married you for all of those reasons at once.”
He stared at me.
“And if I had never learned this?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the problem.”
Tears burned my eyes.
“I didn’t manipulate you.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You’re looking at me like I did.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“Then understand this.”
My voice cracked.
“I never expected you to love me back.”
The room went silent.
That hit him.
I saw it.
But I was too hurt to stop.
“I knew exactly what I was signing. Two years. Separate rooms. Separate lives. I thought I could survive being near you because at least I would finally know you as a real person instead of some stupid idea I had carried since I was sixteen.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
I wiped my face angrily.
“I never used my feelings to trap you. I never asked for more money. I never asked for jewelry. I never asked you to stop seeing people. I never asked you to come home early.”
His face changed.
“I know.”
“I didn’t make you bring me lunch.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t make you remember my mother.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t make you start becoming my husband.”
His eyes closed.
There.
That was the truth neither of us could survive pretending not to see.
When he opened them, the anger was gone.
Something more frightening had replaced it.
Pain.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
That sentence destroyed me.
I stepped backward.
“Then I’ll make it easy.”
His expression sharpened.
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll stay somewhere else.”
“No.”
“You said you don’t know what’s real.”
“I didn’t tell you to leave.”
“You don’t have to.”
I walked toward the door.
He caught up.
“Claire.”
“I need space.”
“Don’t do this because of something my father said.”
“I’m doing this because my husband just told me he doesn’t know whether our marriage is real.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It is what I heard.”
I left.
I spent that night above Wild June.
There was a storage loft I had converted into a tiny apartment years earlier for late holiday seasons.
Mia brought Chinese food.
She didn’t say I told you so.
She didn’t tell me to go back.
She simply sat beside me while I cried into lo mein.
At eleven thirty, someone knocked downstairs.
Mia checked the camera.
“It’s him.”
My heart hurt.
“I don’t want to see him.”
She looked at me carefully.
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
She went downstairs.
Five minutes later, she returned with a small cardboard box.
“What is that?”
“Ethan left it.”
Inside was my journal.
Nothing else.
No note.
No flowers.
No argument.
Just the piece of my past his father had weaponized.
I opened the cover.
There was one new piece of paper tucked inside.
Ethan’s handwriting.
I DIDN’T READ IT.
That was all.
I cried harder.
The next morning, the preliminary hearing was moved up.
Charles’s attorneys submitted the journal as evidence.
Daniel objected.
The court temporarily sealed it.
But the damage was done.
Reporters learned enough to print another headline.
BILLIONAIRE’S WIFE LOVED HIM FOR YEARS BEFORE “FAKE” MARRIAGE.
By noon, I had become a joke.
By three, someone uploaded my high-school yearbook photograph.
By four, there were memes.
By five, Ethan called.
I didn’t answer.
At six, Victoria arrived.
Mia looked at her.
“You people need normal hobbies.”
Victoria ignored her.
She walked upstairs.
I was sitting on the floor among buckets of roses.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I mean emotionally.”
“That improves it.”
She sat across from me.
For a moment, we were just two women who had loved the same impossible man.
Then she said, “Ethan threw Charles out of Whitmore headquarters.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“Security escorted him.”
“That’s his father.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Charles used your mother’s storage property.”
My chest tightened.
Victoria looked away.
“He also froze every consulting contract connected to the Ashfords. He’s tearing the company apart looking for payments.”
“That doesn’t mean he trusts me.”
“No.”
She met my eyes.
“But I know Ethan.”
There it was.
The sentence I hated.
She continued before I could react.
“When he stops caring, he becomes polite.”
I almost laughed.
“He was not polite today.”
“No.”
“He destroyed a conference table.”
“What?”
“Not intentionally.”
“How do you accidentally destroy a conference table?”
“Apparently by throwing a phone.”
That sounded unlike Ethan.
Which frightened me.
Victoria leaned forward.
“Claire, I came back because I thought Charles might help me understand what happened to my marriage.”
“To Oliver?”
“To Ethan.”
I went still.
She smiled sadly.
“Don’t worry. I’m not asking for him.”
“Then why say that?”
“Because three years ago, I believed Ethan chose Whitmore Capital over me.”
She looked toward the dark shop below.
“Now I think Charles made sure I believed it.”
“What happened?”
“Oliver appeared exactly when Ethan and I were worst.”
Her voice quieted.
“He was easy. Warm. Available. He told me Ethan would never choose a person over the company.”
“Did Charles send him?”
“I think so.”
“That’s insane.”
“So is buying your daughter-in-law’s building through a merger partner.”
Fair point.
Victoria reached into her bag.
She handed me an envelope.
“What is this?”
“A photograph.”
Inside was a picture of Charles and Oliver at a hotel bar.
Date stamp.
Three years ago.
Before Victoria left Ethan.
“You found this where?”
“My divorce attorney.”
“Why does your divorce attorney have it?”
“Because Oliver kept records on everyone.”
A chill moved through me.
Victoria’s eyes hardened.
“I think Charles paid Oliver to break us apart.”
“Why?”
“To keep Ethan focused on the company.”
“That’s monstrous.”
“Yes.”
She stood.
“And now he’s doing it again.”
I looked at her.
“With us.”
“With you.”
Victoria’s voice softened.
“The difference is Ethan isn’t twenty-seven anymore.”
She walked toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“To London tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“I found what I needed.”
“And what was that?”
She smiled sadly.
“Proof that losing Ethan wasn’t because I wasn’t enough.”
Then she paused.
“For what it’s worth, Claire?”
“What?”
“He never came home early for me.”
She left.
I sat alone for a long time.
At ten fifteen, my phone rang.
Ethan.
I stared at the screen.
Then answered.
Neither of us spoke.
Finally, he said, “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I needed.”
He started to hang up.
“Ethan.”
Silence.
“Why didn’t you read the journal?”
His voice was quiet.
“Because it wasn’t mine.”
My eyes closed.
May you like
That simple answer was why I had loved him at sixteen.
And why I was terrified I might love him much more now.
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