Chapter 6 - THE BREAKING POINT
The private elevator ride back down to the ground floor was suffocatingly quiet.
When the doors slid open to the subterranean parking garage, Grant didn't head straight for his car. He stopped beside his black Bentley, turned to Lydia, and let out a long, ragged sigh that seemed to drain ten years from his shoulders.
“You shouldn't have called Sterling out like that,” Lydia said, though her heart was pounding with a fierce, intoxicating adrenaline. “You made an enemy of the most powerful man on the board.”
“Sterling was already an enemy,” Grant said, leaning against the cold metal door of the car. “He’s been trying to unseat me for three years, waiting for any excuse—my father’s legacy, my personal life, anything. Last night gave him ammunition. But today, you proved something to him.”
“What?”
“That you aren't a liability,” Grant said, looking down at her with an intensity that made her breath catch. “You’re stronger than half the people sitting in that boardroom.”
Lydia looked away, suddenly feeling the weight of the past six months crashing down on her. The exhaustion, the burns on her arms, the constant scrutiny, the fake marriage that had somehow morphed into something terrifyingly real.
“I’m tired, Grant,” she whispered, her voice cracking slightly. “I’m so tired of fighting for a place in a world I don’t belong to. Every time I take a step forward, your mother reminds me where I came from. Every time I try to breathe, your board members look at me like I’m a stain on your reputation.”
Grant stepped closer. The scent of his cedarwood cologne mixed with the cold air of the parking garage.
“You belong wherever I put you,” he said softly, his fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face.
“It’s a contract, Grant,” she reminded him, her eyes searching his face for answers she was suddenly terrified to find. “Six months left. That’s what we agreed on. At the end of the year, my father’s debts are gone, and I walk away. Isn't that how this works?”
Grant’s hand froze against her cheek. For a second, the impenetrable armor he wore cracked, revealing a raw, painful vulnerability beneath.
“Did you want to walk away, Lydia?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Lydia couldn't answer. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She looked into his dark, searching eyes and realized with blinding clarity that the contract wasn't protecting her from him anymore. It was protecting her from the terrifying truth that she had fallen completely, irrevocably in love with her husband.
Before she could speak, a sharp flash of light cut through the dimness of the parking garage.
Both of them snapped their heads toward the sound.
May you like
Standing twenty feet away, half-hidden behind a concrete pillar with a telephoto camera raised to his eye, was a man in a dark jacket. A tabloid reporter.
And he had just captured everything.
