CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

I DIDN ’ T KNOW what to expect. He reached out and took me by the arm and began to propel me out of the grotto.

“You’re certain?” he asked, just before we entered the church again.

“Of course I’m certain,” I said. “I’m not the one that had a secret fiancée while we were... Yes, I’m certain.”

“You are certain you’re pregnant .”

His eyes burned into mine. I could sense that he was at the end of his control. I’d experienced this in other ways, other places. When his desire for me had been beyond him. This was different.

“Yes. I took a test on the plane.”

“And you’re certain it’s mine.”

“It couldn’t be anyone else’s.”

Ever. Because he was the only one. But I couldn’t bring myself to say that, not now. Not while this was happening.

I was in shock, so I really didn’t anticipate what he might do next. But he took me straight back to that room I had gone to only moments earlier and said that I was a florist. He knocked on the door, and it opened.

The maid of honor appeared again. “Hades,” she said. “You can’t see Jessica before the wedding.”

“I will see my fiancée when I wish to. We have an important matter to discuss.”

The maid of honor looked at me. “A flower matter?”

“Yes,” he said.

He pushed his way into the room, bringing me with him, and looked around at all the bridesmaids. “Leave us,” he said.

Jessica Lane was sitting there in front of the mirror, her dark hair styled into an artful updo.

I looked at her, and my stomach just about hit the floor. She was beautiful. In an iconic way. Soft and luxurious. Her dress was a cascade of silk, so beautiful and perfectly fitted to her. I was ruining her wedding day. Of course, I hadn’t meant to. But that was the end result.

I felt so small then.

She saw me, and she frowned. “You’re Florence Clare,” she said.

“Yes,” said Hades.

“What is this about?” Jessica asked.

“Things have changed,” said Hades. “I’m sorry that this is happening right now. I will give you the allotted sum that we outlined in the prenuptial agreement.”

“What?” she asked.

“We cannot get married.”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? We spent so much money.”

“It was nothing to me,” he said. “As is the money I offer you to go quietly.”

“Hades,” I said. “Are you for real right now? You were engaged to be married to her. You are practically jilting her at the altar. And you’re offering her money? When you told me that your marriage wasn’t going to change anything, I knew you were a coldhearted bastard, but I had no idea...”

I didn’t know why I was defending her. Or why it made me so angry. Maybe because in part I looked at her and saw a woman I had something in common with. I had been foolish enough to get into bed with him.

As had she, apparently. It was apparent now that led nowhere good.

“And what do you have to do with this?” she asked.

“She’s having my baby,” said Hades.

“Oh,” said Jessica.

“I see you understand why this changes things,” he said.

Jessica blinked. “Not really. Can’t you just... Come up with an arrangement?”

“The arrangement is that she will be my wife. My child will not be a bastard.”

“Unless he takes after his father,” I said. And then I realized what he had just said. “Wait a minute. You think I’m going to marry you?”

“I know that you’re going to marry me, agape . There is no question.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jessica. “You two hate each other. It’s literally all over the news. I mean, there’s some fanfic but, that’s all.”

I blinked. “There’s what?”

“You know, it’s when people write...”

“ I know what it is, ” I said. “Why is there...? That. About us?”

“Because some people think that your apparent hatred of each other is just disguising your desire to sleep together. And... It seems like it’s true.”

I couldn’t understand what was happening. Because she should be crying. Throwing things. Maybe even threatening me. Instead, she was talking about the media.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know about you. Not before... Not before the last time. There was one time when I did know, but I was really angry, and...”

“I’m not in love with him,” she said. “He was looking for a dynastic bride, somebody who wanted to have his babies and take pictures in his gorgeous house. I have a media empire. It seemed like a good move. But I don’t have any desire to get between you two. I mean, if we could have done a cool blended family thing for the internet, that would’ve been fine. But... I just need a way to come out of this looking good.”

“You’re a storyteller,” he said. “Come up with something you have been doing ever since the engagement was announced. If you must make yourself into a victim, then do it, but don’t paint Florence as a villain.”

“No. People like to see women supporting other women these days. Also, you two are going to be a very big story.” She tapped her chin. “Well. With all of my new money, I suppose I will embark on a year of wellness as I travel around the world. I’ll do stirring posts about the importance of self-care. And how sometimes you have to get out of the way of true love.”

“Love!” I sputtered. “I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word.”

Jessica laughed. “He doesn’t. But then, neither do I. I’m a big can of self-love. But one reason that his proposition was so tempting was that it was going to leave me free to do whatever I wanted.”

I felt like I was standing between two of the coldest people I had ever met. Jessica was likable, but I thought she had to be hollow inside. Because all she cared about was finding a way to spin the wedding. She didn’t care that he was jilting her. In fact, it was almost like she thought being jilted was a bigger story, and therefore far more fun than wafting off to become a wife and mother.

“Perhaps you should escape the church dramatically in your gown. Maybe there is a photographer that can capture the image for you to put on your web page. You can claim that you had a feeling and had to follow your heart,” he said.

“I like that. You really are very good with image.”

I looked at him. And I was certain I was looking at a stranger. Yes. He was very good with image. But I wondered if there had ever been anything else there. Or if he had always been this...

This hollow man who saw people as playthings.

Perhaps I had deluded myself.

I had thrilled in his arrogance. I had let myself rage when he was stubborn. I had enjoyed the fight. Because in the end, I had believed there was something underneath that.

I had let myself believe that the man I let inside my body had more to him than that.

I had bought into a convenient lie, because I was no different than most women when it came to sex. I had told myself that we didn’t have feelings for each other. But in the end, I’d had feelings.

Without another word, she slipped out of the room. I heard talking on the other side of the door. And I peered out for just one second, as she began to run down the stone corridor. And her maid of honor stood there, snapping photos on her phone.

I felt like I had just witnessed a play.

Because it was beginning to feel like a farce. That was for sure.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “That it was a marriage of convenience? Why were you even... Having one?”

“That’s what you wish to talk about?”

I felt like I was sitting in the middle of the debris resulting from a detonated bomb. So picking which piece of detritus that we might talk about first seemed a little bit silly. It nearly didn’t matter.

Because it was such a mess. How would we ever make sense of it?

He was supposed to be getting married in one hour.

“Is Sarah still here?”

“How did you know that Sarah was here?”

“I only assume that you would not come and do this without her. She is your best friend.”

“She’s here, but—”

“Excellent. I will have a selection of wedding gowns brought to you, what color bridesmaid dress would you prefer?”

“You are...” I sputtered. “ You are kidding me . You think I’m going to marry you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m not marrying you. You were set to marry another woman not two minutes ago. I’m not going to be your backup just because I’m having a baby.”

“I was marrying her to fulfill the terms of my father’s will. I was to marry and produce children within a certain amount of time. I had five years. That has come to a close. You happen to already be pregnant with my child, and that is extremely convenient for me.”

“Hades,” I said. “You’re forgetting something. We have kept this a secret for ten years because of the potential ramifications for our businesses. People are going to think that we... are price fixing and heading toward monopolizing areas of the marketplace. There might not just be financial consequences, there could be legal consequences.”

“And we are going to have to work at figuring out how to manage that. We may have to dissolve different parts of the companies.”

“Oh. Is this how you’re going to get me to dissolve my space division.”

“You don’t have the NASA contract—you might as well.”

Somehow, even in the middle of all of this, that enraged me. “And are you going to sell your cruise line to me?”

“Perhaps, Florence, but that is not my biggest concern at the moment.”

My brain was spinning. His father had left a will saying he had to get married. He had to produce an heir. Technically, our child would be the heir to both companies. Unless we had more than one child.

I looked up at him. For one moment, it was like having an out-of-body experience. For one moment, I didn’t understand why I shouldn’t be wildly happy about this turn of events. Because he wasn’t going to marry another woman. He was going to marry me.

He was on the phone.

He was ordering dresses.

“You didn’t say what color,” he said.

“Red,” I said, and then clapped my hand over my mouth, because I was annoyed that I had answered the question at all. “My mother is in Italy,” I said.

“Come now, Florence, don’t you think that your mother will love the drama so much that she won’t care that she couldn’t be here? In fact, she’ll probably like it better that she couldn’t come, because it will allow her to tell the story and center herself as a victim of some kind.”

I hated that he was right. And she wouldn’t even really be mad at me because her new son-in-law would be a billionaire. And not only that, one that made for a sensational headline.

If nothing else, she would love it because my father would’ve hated it so much.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“Are you?”

For a moment, he looked genuinely concerned.

“I might be,” I replied.

“We can stop for a moment, if you need.”

“I haven’t agreed to marry you.”

“But you will,” he said. “Because it makes the most sense.”

“What happens to you if you don’t marry?”

“The company reverts to the board.”

“So you’re telling me it would actually benefit me to not marry you.”

“You’re having my baby regardless. The production of an heir was the biggest issue. I am certain I could make the case to the lawyers that this counts. But is that honestly the legacy you want for the beginning of our child’s life? Do you want to be your parents? Or worse, mine?”

We didn’t talk about these things openly. I knew he didn’t have a functional home life, even without knowing details. This was the first time it had occurred to me he might know the same about me.

I was still lost in the futility of everything. I had tried to hide myself from Hades, and apparently I wasn’t as successful as I’d thought. I’d tried to hide us from the world, and now that was crumbling too.

My failures were mounting.

“But we kept it a secret,” I said.

Mostly because the pain from the last ten years felt compounded in this moment. And futile. Because here we were. Ready to make this as public as we possibly could.

“If what Jessica says is true, we are poised to make a very popular move with the public. Many people will delight in being correct about the fact that we’ve been secretly carrying on for years.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Maybe I was hysterical. It was entirely possible. “What was it all for? All of this. The years of sneaking around.”

“Our fathers never knew. Your father never knew. I assume that’s a big reason for the secrecy.”

“If he knew that his grandchild was going to be...”

“We would both have lost our positions. There’s no doubt about that.”

Right then, all I wanted to do was let my guard down. All I wanted to do was to have another moment like the one we had in DC. When he’d come in and told me traffic had been terrible. When he kissed me. When he’d ordered me a cheeseburger because he knew exactly what I wanted.

That was what I craved. Another moment like that.

But I couldn’t afford it.

I had to keep my wits about me.

“We have to get our legal team in here. Because there has to be a prenup.”

“Wonderful. I’ll put in another phone call. You keep all of your assets, I keep all of mine.”

“Perfect,” I said.

I knew him well enough to know if I defied him, he was going to start issuing threats. Still. I felt like it was time to give him the chance. To either be the man that I had wished he might be, or the man I knew him to be.

To tell me flat out he wouldn’t be a monster. To say if I refused him he wouldn’t try to destroy me professionally or personally.

I wanted to give him the chance to be...

Human.

“What if I walk away? What if I tell you you’ll just have to deal with having your child on the weekends the way many men do.”

The look on his face was enough to stop me cold. For the first time I realized that when he dealt with me he didn’t unleash the full strength of his fury onto me. That he had never truly been the god of hell in my presence before.

The man I saw before me now, that man fit his name. Hades. That man would think nothing of dragging me down into the underworld along with him, where we could both burn together.

“I don’t want to ruin you, Florence. But I will. We both know that a big reason you didn’t want our affair coming out was the way you would be looked at as a woman sleeping with her competitor. If I let slip the wrong thing, imagine what it will do to your employees’ confidence in you. To your investors’ confidence. People might even be tempted to imagine I had the upper hand when it came to the NASA contracts because you took information from me and they realized it.”

My stomach went cold. “I didn’t.”

“Later, I saw the proposal you put forward. Sections were alarmingly similar to mine.”

“You know that I didn’t take anything from you. We were very careful. I never wanted you to blame me for anything like that, and I know you wanted the same.”

“It is not about what happened, it is about what is believable. And you know it.”

“You would do that to me.”

“I would. Where you got the idea that I am soft or movable, I don’t know. But I learned one thing from my father of any value, and that is to never bend. I will have what is mine. The child is mine. You are mine.”

“You,” I said, “are not the man I hoped you were.”

He didn’t care about what I wanted. His priority would be what he saw as the right thing, whether I agreed or not. I was gutted to have it confirmed.

But I’d had to know. For sure. Because if I was going to do this, then I had to protect myself. If I was going to marry Hades, then I had to remember who he was, and who I was.

This was never going to be a union about feelings. Just like everything that had happened between us before this was not about feelings.

It was about control. It was about possession. Obsession. But it had never been about feelings.

“You will walk down that aisle toward me in forty-five minutes. Be ready.”