Chapter 5

"Who really are you?"

Roman didn't answer immediately. He just watched me, his jaw a hard line, something flickering behind those charcoal eyes that looked almost like a warning.

"Someone you should stop asking questions about," he said finally. "At least not today, I'm tired." He looked away mm

Before I could push further, the car slowed outside a glass tower that scraped the sky, STERLING LOGISTICS carved into the stone above the entrance in letters I'd grown up under like a second surname. My stomach dropped. So I was really going to push through.

"We're really doing this," I muttered, more to myself than to him.

"We are," Roman said, already stepping out and rounding the car to open my door, every motion smooth and performative. He offered his hand. I stared at it for a beat too long before taking it, because the second our palms touched, a current ran straight up my arm and I hated how much I didn't hate it.

"Smile," he murmured against my ear as we walked toward the doors, flashbulbs already exploding from the small cluster of press that had gathered outside.

"You're the happiest woman in Manhattan this morning." One reporter shouted.

“How did you move from being a Miller to a Voss in one night?” Another said, almost poking me with the microphone.

“How happy are you with this marriage?” Another asked.

"I'm really not," I hissed through my teeth, smiling anyway, my cheeks already aching from a performance I hadn't agreed to rehearse.

The boardroom on the fortieth floor was exactly how I remembered it, cold and sterile, all glass and dark wood, built to intimidate anyone who wasn't born into money.

I used to sit outside this room as a little girl, swinging my legs on a leather bench while my father took business calls that were very important, obviously more than me. Nothing about this place had ever belonged to me. I wondered, bitterly, if it ever would.

My father sat at the head of the table as usual. The second Roman walked in with me on his arm, I watched every ounce of color drain from his face.

"Mr Voss," my father said tightly, rising halfway out of his chair before deciding against it. "I wasn't aware you'd be joining us."

"I'm not joining," Roman said, pulling out a chair for me before taking the one beside it. "I'm attending. As a majority shareholder's husband, I believe that's my right." He smirked.

A ripple went through the room, a dozen expensive pens going still mid-note. Marcus sat near the far end, looking like he hadn't slept, his tie slightly crooked, his eyes refusing to meet mine.

“Good.” I grimaced.

Let him rot in it. Let him sit there and feel every second of what it cost him to be a coward in front of people whose respect he'd spent his whole life chasing.

He's always been a stupid rich boy, but I thought at least we could live in peace but since he decided to be unfortunate, I don't mind crushing him under my heels.

The meeting opened with the usual nonsense, quarterly numbers, shipping delays, a merger clause that was supposed to have been finalized weeks ago with the Miller Group and I couldn't even understand half of it. Maybe I really am dumb.

My father droned through it and he looked really respectable whenever he talked about business. I almost admired it, the way he could stand at the edge of ruin and still sound like a man discussing the weather. Almost.

Then Roman spoke, and the temperature changed.

"Before we continue," Roman said, flipping open a thin black folder none of us had seen him carry in, "I think it's worth mentioning that Sterling Logistics is currently sixty million dollars over-leveraged against three offshore accounts that don't appear anywhere in this quarter's disclosures."

Everyone went completely silent as they stared at each other. Somewhere down the table, a junior executive's water glass clinked too loudly against the wood as he set it down with a shaking hand.

My father's knuckles went white against the table. "That is confidential financial information, and I don't know where you…"

"I know everything about this company now, Arthur," Roman said calmly. He didn't raise his voice. There was something almost surgical about the way he dismantled a man, precise, unhurried, like he was enjoying the shape of the incision before he made it.

"I'm your daughter's husband now. Everything she owns, I have access to. And everything you've hidden from your own board, I've already seen."

A man two seats down from my father, who was one of the oldest board members, cleared his throat. "Is this true, Arthur?"

My father didn't answer. His silence answered for him, and I watched twenty years of careful reputation crumble in under a minute, watching the other board members exchange glances that weren't loyal anymore, just calculating their losses.

I sat there unmoving, watching the man who'd called me a liability just days ago shrink in real time under the weight of his own secrets, and something ugly and satisfying curled low in my chest. I shouldn't have enjoyed it. I did anyway. Maybe that made me just as cruel as the man sitting beside me, but at that moment I didn't care.

"I'm not here to bury the company," Roman continued, closing the folder with a soft click. "I'm here to protect my wife's interests. Which means from this point forward, any major decision regarding Sterling assets requires her signature. Not just her father's."

"That's absurd," Marcus burst out, finding his nerve for the first time. "She has no business experience. She's not qualified to…"

"I'm qualified enough to see through you," I snapped before I could stop myself, my voice sharper than I meant it to be. "Which, apparently, took me longer than it should have."

A few of the board members actually laughed at that, but quickly cleared their throat and adjusted their facial expressions.

Roman didn't smile, but something in his eyes shifted when he looked at me, something close to surprise, like he hadn't expected me to have teeth.

"Careful, Marcus," Roman added, almost conversational, "I'd hate for the board to start wondering why the Miller Group's own books haven't been independently audited in three years. Accidents happen to companies that hide things. Ask Arthur."

Marcus's face went the color of old paper as he shrunk back. My father said nothing at all, and I understood, watching him, that Roman wasn't just winning this meeting. He was enjoying it.

The rest of the meeting blurred past in a haze of numbers and tension I barely followed, too aware of Roman's knee an inch from mine under the table, too aware of my father's eyes boring holes into the side of my skull every time I spoke.

By the time the final vote was called, half the board was already looking to Roman for approval before they so much as lifted a pen.

When it finally ended, chairs scraped back and the room dissolved into clusters of murmured conversation, the kind that always followed a public execution dressed up as a business meeting.

Roman stood, resting a hand at the small of my back, guiding me toward the door as if we were some harmonious couple.

I let him, mostly because my legs still felt unsteady from adrenaline, from the strange, dizzy thrill of watching my father lose for once in his life.

We were almost to the elevator when an older man stepped away from one of the clusters and intercepted us, moving with more urgency than his age should have allowed. I recognized him vaguely, a longtime board member, someone my father used to call a dinosaur behind his back.

"Mrs Voss," he said quietly, deliberately not looking at Roman. "A word, if I may."

Roman's hand tightened fractionally against my back. "She's not available."

But the old man, there was something in his expression I couldn't place at first, pity, maybe, or fear, the kind that made the fine hairs on my arms rise before he even spoke again.

"Do you know what he did to the Kavanaghs?" he said, barely above a whisper, close enough that only I could hear it. "Ask him. Ask him what happened to that family before you let yourself get too comfortable with this monster."

"Enough." Roman's voice came out like a blade and before I could even process the name, two of his security men who had been standing by the side steered the old man firmly away, murmuring something about an escort downstairs.

I watched the old man's face as they walked him off, not angry, not struggling, just resigned, like a man who'd already accepted whatever consequence was coming for having said too much.

I turned to Roman, my heart beating very loudly. "Who are the Kavanaghs?"

His face had gone utterly still,

"Nobody," he said, pressing the elevator button like it had personally wronged him. "Nobody you need to think about."

But his hand, the one still resting against my back, had gone rigid, fingers pressing just slightly too hard into my spine, and for the first time since I'd met him, I realized Roman Voss wasn't just dangerous.

He was hiding something that scared even him.