Chapter 320

[ 905 words ]

Jude’s POV

“He cornered me about the ring,” I said. “The one she already wears. He asked why I would buy a new one if the first had supposedly come from me. I did not have an answer that satisfied him, and the way he looked at me afterward was not the look of a man who believed my story p>

“Windsor looks at everyone that way,” the voice said. “It does not mean he knows anything p>

“He broke my jaw,” I said, the words coming out sharper than I intended, my free hand curling into a fist against the cold stone behind me. “He broke two of my ribs in a warehouse and made me sign away any claim to her son with my own hand shaking around the pen. That was not in the arrangement. You told me this would be clean. You told me I would walk in, claim the marriage, and walk out with thirty percent of her company once the dust settled. Nobody mentioned I would spend three weeks in recovery because Julian Windsor decided I needed correcting like a misbehaving dog p>

“You knew the risk when you took the money,” the voice said, entirely unmoved by any of it.

I thought about the night I had agreed to all of this, sitting across a low table in a private members’ club in Mayfair, the man on the other end of the phone having sent someone else entirely to meet me in person that first time, a thin, soft-spoken lawyer who never gave a name and who left within twenty minutes of laying out the entire scheme on a single sheet of paper that he took back with him when he left. I had read it twice before agreeing to anything. It had sounded, at the time, like the kind of risk a desperate man justified to himself in the dark, three in the morning, staring at quarterly reports that grew worse every season no matter what I tried.

“I am done,” I said. “I want out p>

“You do not get to choose that,” the voice said. “Not before you have the thirty percent. That was the agreement, and the agreement does not change because your face met somebody’s fist p>

I closed my eyes for a moment, the cold air burning slightly in my lungs, and thought about the version of myself that had walked into that London hotel bar believing this would be a transaction like any other. Money for a name. A name for a claim. A claim for a fortune large enough that I would never have to think about Wolfe Motorsport’s mounting debts again, never have to explain to my own board why the racing division had bled money for three consecutive seasons, and never have to face the quiet, polite disappointment of men who had once respected my father and now only tolerated me because his name was still attached to mine.

None of that felt within reach anymore. It felt instead like a story I had told myself in a different country, in a different version of my own life, before I understood exactly what kind of man Julian Windsor actually was.

“I do not care about the thirty percent anymore,” I said, my voice rising slightly before I caught myself and brought it back down. “I care about staying alive long enough to fly home in one piece p>

“You will get the thirty percent,” the voice said, “or you will explain to me personally why you did not p>

I stood on the sidewalk, the cold finally working its way through my jacket, and felt something close to real fear settle into my chest for the first time since this entire arrangement had begun months ago in a quiet hotel bar in London where all of this had sounded simple enough to risk.

I had met dangerous men before. I had sat across negotiating tables from men who owned entire ports and entire stretches of motorway, men whose displeasure could end careers with a single phone call. None of them had ever made my chest tighten the way this voice did, patient and certain that I would do exactly what was required of me regardless of how I felt about it. Those men had at least wanted something I understood. Money. Territory. Influence. This was something else, something I could not yet name, and the not knowing frightened me more than any threat he had made so far.

“Why does it matter so much to you?” I said. “The company. Katia. None of this makes sense unless this is personal for you, and you have never once told me what she actually did to deserve this much attention from a man I have never even met face to face p>

“It is not about Katia,” the voice said.

“Then what is it about?” I asked, annoyed because I knew that motherfucker called Julian was somehow going to find a way to punch me again.

“When we hurt her,” the voice said, “we hurt him p>

I frowned, my mind turning the sentence over, trying to find the shape of what it actually meant, trying to fit it against everything I thought I understood about why I had been hired for this in the first place. The sentence made no sense against the version of events I had been told when this began.

“Who is him?” I asked.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.