2026-01-05 17:03:05The marriage certificate felt like a brick in Kai’s pocket. He stood on the sidewalk outside the registry office, watching people stream past—normal people living normal lives. Twenty-four hours ago, he’d been planning revenge. Now he was married to a woman who looked at him like he was trash.
“Well?” The grandfather’s voice boomed behind them. “Now that it’s official, you two should spend time together. Lila, take your husband for a walk. Get to know each other.”
Lila’s smile looked like it hurt. “Grandfather, I really should—”
“I insist.” The old man’s tone left no room for argument.
She turned without a word and started walking. Kai followed, keeping a few steps behind. The grandfather waved them off like he’d just orchestrated the romance of the century.
Half a block later, Lila stopped so abruptly Kai nearly collided with her.
She spun around, eyes cold. “Let’s be clear. Yes, we’re legally married. Yes, I signed that paper. But don’t get any ideas.” Her voice dropped. “My grandfather forced this. That’s all it is. We live separately. You don’t touch me, you don’t talk to me unless necessary, and you definitely don’t tell anyone about this. Understood?”
Kai met her gaze. “Understood.”
“Good.” She turned to keep walking. “And if anyone—”
“Lila!”
A woman in designer athletic wear jogged toward them, all confidence and energy. Her eyes lit up seeing Lila, then narrowed with confusion at Kai.
“Maya?” Lila looked genuinely surprised. “What are you doing here?”
Maya’s gaze swept between them. “I could ask you the same thing. You just came out of the registry office. Don’t tell me—” She looked at Kai like he was a stain on the sidewalk. “Did your family actually let you marry him?”
Kai felt Lila tense beside him. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
He stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’m Kai Walker. Lila’s husband. We just registered our marriage.”
The silence stretched like pulled taffy.
Maya stared at his outstretched hand like it was something filthy. “Your… husband?”
“Nice to meet you,” Kai said.
Maya’s eyes snapped to Lila. Without warning, she grabbed her arm and dragged her several feet away. Kai stood there, hand still extended, feeling like an idiot.
“Are you insane?” Maya’s hiss carried across the sidewalk. “You married him? How did your family even agree to this?”
Lila’s shoulders slumped. “My grandfather forced it.”
“Forced it?” Maya glanced back at Kai, her expression shifting to horror. “But doesn’t he know about Daniel? Daniel Cross has been pursuing you for months. His family is two levels above yours—marrying him would change everything. You could actually climb social classes.” She gestured helplessly at Kai. “Why would your grandfather throw that away for… for him?”
Lila said nothing. Her silence spoke volumes.
Maya took a breath, forcing herself to calm down. She couldn’t lose her temper in front of everyone—that would only make her look bad. No, she needed to be smart about this.
When she turned back to Kai, her smile was stretched thin. “I apologize. That was rude.” She finally shook his hand, her grip brief and cold. “Maya Carter. Lila’s friend.”
“Nice to meet you,” Kai repeated.
“Since we’ve run into each other, why don’t you both join me tonight? Some friends and I are meeting at Apex Club. You can meet Lila’s circle.”
Lila’s eyes widened. She leaned close to Maya, her voice urgent. “We can’t. Daniel will definitely be there. If he sees—”
Maya’s look cut her off mid-sentence. She turned back to Kai, smile brightening. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
Kai looked between them. Something felt off about this invitation—too eager, too pointed. But he nodded anyway. “Sure. What time?”
“Eight o’clock.” Maya’s smile sharpened. “See you then.”
She looped her arm through Lila’s and pulled her away. Lila glanced back once, her expression unreadable.
Kai stood alone on the sidewalk, holding a marriage certificate to a woman who hated him, with an invitation that felt like a trap.
Tonight was going to be interesting.
Apex Club glowed against the night sky, all dark glass and purple lighting. The entrance was chaos—valets running between Ferraris and Bentleys, couples in evening wear laughing their way inside.
Kai paid his taxi and stepped onto the sidewalk in dark jeans and a button-down. Around him, everyone looked like they’d stepped out of a magazine.
He felt distinctly out of place.
Maya’s car pulled up—a sleek black Mercedes. She stepped out with Lila, both dressed perfectly for the occasion. Maya’s eyes found Kai across the parking lot. For a split second, something flickered across her face—satisfaction, anticipation. Then she smoothed it away into polite indifference.
She looped her arm through Lila’s possessively. “Come on. Let’s not keep everyone waiting.”
Lila glanced back at Kai, hesitation clear on her face. “Maya, wait—shouldn’t we—”
“He’ll figure it out,” Maya said, her voice sweet but firm. She pulled Lila forward toward the entrance.
Lila tried to slow down. “But he doesn’t have a—”
“Lila.” Maya’s grip tightened on her arm. “Stay out of this. Trust me.”
Maya pulled a sleek black membership card from her purse and handed it to the doorman. He swiped it immediately, bowing deeply. “Good evening, Ms. Carter. Welcome back.”
The glass doors opened automatically. They swept inside and the doors closed behind them.
Kai stood alone on the sidewalk, watching the doors close. He frowned slightly. Why hadn’t she waited?
He walked toward the entrance.
A security guard stepped into his path. The man was built like a wall. When he looked at Kai, his eyes swept over the plain clothes with obvious judgment.
Another broke college kid trying to sneak into a place he didn’t belong. The guard had seen a hundred of them.
“Membership card.” Not a question. A statement.
Kai kept his voice level. “I’m meeting someone inside. Maya Carter. She just went in.”
The guard’s eyes flicked over Kai’s outfit again—the lack of designer labels, no expensive watch, clothes that screamed “discount store.” His expression hardened. “Are you Ms. Carter’s driver?”
The question hit like a slap. Kai felt his jaw tighten. “No.”
“Her bodyguard?”
“No.” Kai’s voice stayed controlled, but barely. “I’m her friend’s husband. She invited me here tonight.”
The guard’s lip curled slightly. Sure she did. This kid probably met her once and was now stalking her. “This is a members-only establishment. No card, no entry. Club policy. Now step aside, you’re blocking the entrance.”
Kai had never been looked down on like this before. He let out a slow breath, the kind that pushes anger down instead of letting it rise. No reason to waste breath on this one. The guard wasn’t worth the escalation.
Without a word, Kai reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Vincent answered on the first ring. “Kai? What’s wrong?”
“Quick question.” Kai’s voice was tight. “Do I need a membership card for Apex Club?"
There was a brief pause. Then Vincent laughed. "Apex? Kai, we own Apex. The entire chain—fifteen locations across the country. You're the primary owner in the system. Just walk in. The facial recognition will handle it."
"Facial recognition?”
“Yes kai, the doors have biometric facial recognition. You’re flagged as top-level access. They should open automatically when you approach.”
Kai hung up and pocketed his phone. His lips curved—just the smallest fraction. Not quite a smile. More like quiet satisfaction.
He walked forward.
“Sir, I already explained the policy—”
Kai didn’t stop. “Sir! STOP!” The guard’s hand shot out, reaching for Kai’s arm to physically restrain him. “You can’t just—”
The glass doors slid open with a soft mechanical hiss.
Kai walked through without breaking stride.
Behind him, the guard’s hand hung frozen in midair, grasping at nothing. His face went from angry to confused to bone-white in the span of three seconds. He stared at the open doors like they’d personally stabbed him in the back.
“What the hell—” He spun toward his colleague on the other side of the entrance. “Did you open that?!”
The second guard shook his head, equally baffled. “No! I didn’t touch anything!”
The first guard’s mind raced. The doors only opened automatically for VIP members with top-tier access. The kind reserved for people who owned buildings, not rented studio apartments. Board members. CEOs. The kind of wealth that could buy and sell him a thousand times over.
But that kid—he’d looked like a college student. Dressed like he shopped at thrift stores. How could he possibly—
Oh god. What if he actually was someone important? What if he was connected to someone powerful? What if his superior found out he’d tried to physically block—
His hands fumbled for the walkie-talkie at his belt, nearly dropping it in his panic.
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Chapter 48
The pillow barrier came down on a Tuesday.Neither of them announced it. Kai moved the pillows back to the headboard stack before Lila came out of the bathroom and when she emerged and saw the bed she looked at it for a moment and then got in on her side without comment. He turned off the lamp on his side. She turned off hers.The dark was the same dark as before. The distance was different.He was aware of her in the specific way you are aware of someone when the physical boundary that had been organizing that awareness is removed. The sound of her breathing. The particular way the mattress registered her weight and position. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling and thought about the legal deadline and the evidence package Patricia was compiling and whether any of it would be sufficient and then made himself stop thinking about it because that was not a useful way to spend the night.He fell asleep eventually.He woke at two-seventeen by the clock on the nightstand, sitting u
Chapter 47
The conference room was on the third floor of a building that housed family court mediation services, which meant the walls were painted the particular shade of institutional beige that communicated neutrality and produced the opposite effect. Kai sat at the table with their lawyer, Patricia Chen, and looked at the beige walls and thought about how Richard had managed to make this happen in a week.The answer was that Richard had probably been preparing it for longer than a week and had filed when the moment suited him. The gala coverage had forced his hand. A positive morning in the papers was a shrinking window and Richard understood windows.The opposing lawyer was a man named Forsythe who had the specific manner of someone who had been paid to be unpleasant and had made peace with that. He arranged his documents on the table with the deliberateness of someone who wanted you to see how many there were.The judge overseeing the preliminary hearing was a woman named Caldwell, mid-six
Chapter 46
The morning papers arrived at seven and Vincent sent the digital links twenty minutes before that. Kai read them at the desk in Marcus's study, which had been cleaned and lit properly now that the generators were running permanently, and which he had been spending more time in than the master bedroom.The coverage was better than he had expected and he understood why immediately. The venue story had leaked before the gala, which meant the journalists who attended had arrived expecting a visible failure and found something else instead. Failure redeemed made a better story than success maintained. He understood this. He had given them the narrative they needed and they had used it.The Thorne Heir's Dramatic Return, one headline read. Another called the ruins venue audacious. A third ran a photograph of the entrance arch with the string lights visible through it and a caption about legacy reclaimed. Gerald Vance was quoted in one piece saying he found the evening impressive. Mrs. Black
Chapter 45
The first cars arrived at seven-thirty.Kai watched them from the entrance arch, the headlights moving up the drive through the cleared grounds, and thought about the last time vehicles had come up this road. Ten years ago they would have been fire trucks. He let the thought arrive and pass and straightened his jacket.The transformation held. That was the thing he hadn't been certain of until this moment, standing in it with other people present. In the daylight it had looked like ambition applied to wreckage. In the evening, with the string lights running through the open roof frames and along the standing walls and across the garden where the crews had cleared a decade of growth, it looked like something else. The blackened stone caught the light differently than new stone would have. The empty window frames became architecture. The collapsed east wing, carefully bordered and left as it was, looked intentional, a monument rather than a ruin.He heard a woman near the entrance say i
Chapter 44
The decision came at eleven-thirty at night, which was probably relevant to how it got made.Kai was sitting in Eleanor's study with a list of venues Vincent had compiled, each one annotated with capacity, availability, and the specific way it fell short of the Aldridge. A hotel ballroom that could manage the numbers but carried the aesthetic of a corporate conference. A private club that was technically available but whose membership list overlapped significantly with the people most likely to interpret the change as retreat. A rooftop space that was too small and too casual and would reframe the entire event in a way that served Richard's narrative rather than dismantling it.He set the list down and thought about the property Eleanor had returned to him.Lila was at the other end of the desk when he said it. She looked up from the catering contract she had been trying to salvage."The Thorne estate," he said.She looked at him for a moment. "Kai.""It's my property. It's large enou
Chapter 43
The rehearsal dinner was Lila's idea, framed as a practical necessity. Twelve guests, people who would be at the gala and who carried enough social weight that getting them wrong on the night would have consequences. A dry run, she called it. An opportunity to practice before the actual event.Kai understood the logic. He did not enjoy the three days leading up to it.Lila had constructed a system. Index cards, which she presented without irony, each one carrying a name, a face pulled from a social directory, a brief history of the relevant relationships, and the specific things that should not be said. She went through them with him at the desk in Eleanor's study each evening, running the stack like flashcards, asking questions, correcting errors, starting again.He was not good at it.The problem wasn't retention. He could retain information. The problem was that the information felt constructed, a scaffolding of social facts assembled to simulate familiarity that didn't exist, and
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