The silence in the wake of Amelia's flight was thicker and more suffocating than any sound. Alexander stood frozen in the drawing-room, the crystal tumbler in his hand feeling suddenly like a lead weight. Damian Vance's smirk was a slash of triumph in his peripheral vision.
"It seems I struck a nerve," Damian purred, swirling the brandy in his glass. "I did wonder how much of your charming fairytale she was actually privy to. Now we have our answer, don't we? The blushing bride has no idea she's bedding the architect of her family's ruin. Delicious."
Rage, cold and absolute, surged through Alexander, so potent it was a physical taste of copper in his mouth. It was directed at Damian, yes, for his venomous interference, but also at himself—for his loss of control in Switzerland, for the catastrophic lapse that had led to this moment, and most of all, for the sharp, unwelcome stab of concern he felt for Amelia's shattered expression.
"Get out, Vance," Alexander said, his voice dangerously low, each word clipped and precise. He didn't look at him. His entire being was focused on the doorway Amelia had vanished through.
"Oh, I wouldn't miss this for the world," Damian chuckled, settling deeper into his armchair as if preparing for a show. "The great Alexander Blackwood, finally facing the consequences of his own sentimentality."
That was the final straw. Alexander's head snapped towards him, his eyes blazing with a fury that made Damian's smug expression falter. "I said," Alexander repeated, the air in the room seeming to drop several degrees, "get out. Now. Or I will have security remove you from the premises and ensure you never set foot in a boardroom on this continent again. Test me."
The sheer, unvarnished threat in his tone was enough. Damian's face hardened. He set his glass down with a sharp click and stood, straightening his jacket. "This isn't over, Alex. You can't hide the truth forever. And when it all comes out, I'll be there to watch the empire crack." He strode out, leaving a trail of toxic satisfaction in his wake.
The moment he was gone, Alexander was moving. He took the stairs two at a time, a cold dread coiling in his gut. He had to contain this. He had to re-establish control. He reached her door and, without knocking, overrode the electronic lock with the master code only he and Mrs. Higgins possessed.
The sight that greeted him was a knife to a part of him he thought long dead. Amelia was slumped against the wall, her body wracked with sobs that seemed to tear from her very soul. The black dress she wore was a symbol of her mourning—for her family, for her freedom, for whatever fragile illusion they had built in Switzerland.
"Get out," she choked out, the words raw and broken.
"We are not finished," he stated, stepping inside and sealing them in. The statement was automatic, a commander's response to a breach in the lines. But the lines were already ashes.
"Finished?" Her laugh was a hollow, terrible sound. She pushed herself upright, her tear-streaked face a mask of betrayal and fury. "It was finished the day you decided to use me as your pawn! Was any of it real, Alexander? The contract, the rules—was that all just a sick game? Or was the real plan to seduce the daughter of the man you hated, to make her fall for her family's destroyer? Is that the final, triumphant act of your revenge? To break me so completely?"
Each word was a lash, and they found their mark. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he bit out, the defense weak even to his own ears. The ghosts of the past were crowding the room, their whispers deafening.
"Don't I?" She was a force of nature in her devastation. She stumbled to her bedside table, yanking open the drawer. She pulled out a book and a small, faded rectangle of paper, throwing them onto the duvet between them like a gauntlet. "I found this. 'Swift Construction.' You stood in front of my father's house. You smiled. Damian wasn't lying, was he? Your family and mine… we were connected. My father's failure didn't just bankrupt him, it ruined yours. That's the well this hatred springs from, isn't it? This entire charade—this gilded cage, this contract—it was never about a merger. It was always about vengeance!"
Alexander stared at the photograph. It was a relic from a life he had systematically erased. The smiling boy in the picture was a stranger. The man next to him—his father—was a ghost. The sight of the Swift Construction sign felt like a physical blow, reopening a wound that had never truly healed. The controlled mask he wore like a second skin shattered.
"You think you can understand a decade of ruin from a single picture?" he snarled, the raw pain twisting his features. "You think your privileged, art-history worldview can comprehend what it means to lose everything? To see your father's life's work, his pride, crumble to dust because of another man's negligence and greed?"
"Then make me understand!" she screamed, her body trembling so violently he thought she might collapse. "For God's sake, Alexander, just tell me the truth! What did my father do?"
The plea in her voice, the absolute anguish, clashed with the fury inside him. The room seemed to spin with the intensity of their emotions. And then, as he watched, the anger in her eyes was suddenly eclipsed by a wave of physical distress. She staggered, her face draining of all color, a hand flying to her mouth as a violent wave of nausea visibly swept through her.
All the rage, all the calculated coldness, evaporated in an instant. Instinct, primal and overwhelming, took over. He crossed the room in two strides, his hands gripping her arms to steady her. "Amelia?"
"Don't touch me!" she gasped, but her body was weak, her protest feeble as she leaned into his support, her skin clammy.
He ignored her, his mind racing, cataloging her symptoms. The pallor, the trembling, the nausea. The emotional upheaval was enough to cause it, but a cold, terrifying suspicion began to form in the deepest, most guarded part of his mind. He thought of Switzerland. Of the nights where no barriers existed, where the thought of protection had been obliterated by a need so consuming it had felt like madness.
His gaze, sharp and analytical, scanned her face, then dropped to her waist. His voice, when he finally spoke, was low, stripped of all emotion, yet it carried the weight of a world-ending question.
"Amelia," he said, his tone leaving no room for evasion. "When was your last period?"
The question hung in the air, absurd and devastating. The fight drained from her completely, replaced by a dawning, wide-eyed horror. Her mind, reeling from the revelations about their families, scrambled to catch up. Her cycle. The stress, the travel… it was weeks late. She had blamed the disruption of her new life. She hadn't let herself consider…
Her eyes, filled with a storm of fear and disbelief, met his. The answer was written plainly on her ashen face. The storm in his own gaze had stilled, replaced by a look of stark, calculating realization. The war over the past was abruptly, terrifyingly, superseded by a potential future that changed every single variable.
The tale of revenge and contractual marriage had just twisted into something far more complex, far more binding, and utterly, irrevocably real.