Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
Francisco
The weeks that follow are a blissful state of marriage. Better than I could have imagined.
Naturally they come to a terrible, crashing end.
Isabella comes into my office with high color in her cheeks and a frown on her gorgeous face. That’s enough to put me on alert. No one in this household should be making her feel this way. No one but me. “Are you busy?” she asks, her voice tight.
“Too busy for you? No.”
Isabella turns up the corner of her mouth. It’s not a reassured smile. “My dad needs my help.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “Your help?”
“Yes.” She looks at her hands in her lap. This is the least composed I’ve seen her since the day she fled to the ballroom. Isabella might lose control in the bedroom, but rarely elsewhere. “He’s gotten into some kind of deal that’s gone south.”
“The hotels?”
“No, it’s another investment. This private jet company he signed with his personal money.”
“He wants you to leave your home and your duties here to renege on a deal he signed?” My god. The man seemed nice enough when I dealt with him leading up to the wedding, but he’s an incompetent fool. What kind of man has his daughter run to cover his ass? “No. You won’t be doing that, Isabella. I forbid it.”
She blinks. “You forbid it?”
“I do.”
“Who gave you the right?” Isabella’s tone has gone sharp enough that I wonder if I’ll have to bend her over the desk. But there’s nothing playful in her eyes. There’s nothing to indicate she would submit. “You don’t tell me what to do during the day.”
“I absolutely will give you direction if you’re running back to your daddy every time he calls.”
“It’s only been the once.” Isabella’s eyes come up to meet mine, determined and dark. “He hasn’t called me about anything since we’ve been married.”
“In a month. We are still, for all intents and purposes, on our honeymoon. You’ll let your father handle whatever mess he’s made.”
No matter the impression I had of Isabella’s father during the wedding planning process, one thing remains true. He’s terrible at business. He let his daughter arrange a marriage to save him from ruin. How many times will she run back into the burning building of their hotel empire?
Harris Bradley was a great hotelier. Put him in charge of a boutique hotel; he’d make the guests happy. It’s the millions that caught up to him. The billions. He wasn’t made to manage that kind of fortune, which is why he squanders it. Isabella’s been saving him from himself, but she won’t be doing that anymore. He sold away his greatest asset when he gave me her hand in marriage.
Isabella glares at me across the desk. There is no lightness whatsoever in her expression, only a piercing betrayal. “This is insane.”
“He doesn’t have any discipline,” I tell her. “And with no discipline, that makes him unpredictable. It makes losses for his companies inevitable. That kind of man can run through any amount of money if he has the chance.”
“ Work all you want during the day , you said. Manage Bradley Hotels , you said. I won’t stop you .”
“This isn’t managing a hotel. This is managing your father. And if you leave for the meeting now, you won’t be here tonight to submit to me. That was part of the deal.”
“I’m going to the meeting.” Isabella sits up tall. Very tall. She looks regal in her wrap dress and flat shoes, perched at the edge of one of my office chairs. “And you can’t stop me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You said that your control would end at the bedroom door. This has nothing to do with our sex life.” She blushes when she says this. It’s endearing enough to make me forget she’s arguing with me. My cock is hard, damn it.
“I know my own terms.” I want Isabella under my control. I want her to submit to me like the pretty wife she is, rather than fighting me over her father’s business deals. I want her to understand that this is for her, not for me, and that I don’t want her precious time and breath wasted on his incompetence. “And the terms make me your husband. You’re not running to save him from himself, and that’s final.”
Her breathing quickens. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m absolutely serious. If you need me to bend you over this desk to convince you, then say the word. I’ll be happy to show you how very serious I am.”
“No,” she bursts out. “This is bullshit. And I’m going. The meeting is tomorrow.”
Isabella moves to stand, but I stand first. She’s shouting at me. She’s shouting, and while part of me recognizes that she has every right to do that, the other part of me is a small little boy cowering under a table while his parents throw million-dollar vases at each other across the foyer. I swore I wouldn’t have this kind of marriage when I grew up—drama and fighting. Control. I need to maintain control. “You’re not racing to your father’s rescue every time he calls. The man will clean up his own mess or he’ll have to live in it.”
Now my wife gets to her feet, pale with anger, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I am his daughter. He asked me for help. And I’m going. I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”
“Isabella.”
“I want an annulment.”
“No fucking way.” My heart clenches. What if I pushed her too far?
“I want the whole marriage wiped from history. You wanted control in bed? Fine. You want to tie me up and let your butler flog me in front of you? Fine. Have Lila watch while you punish me? Fine. But you don’t get to take my family away.” Tears shine in the corners of her eyes. “They’re mine. I worked all my life for them, and you’re not going to take that away because you have some stupid obsession with pretending to be a king.”
Searing emotion works its way through my chest. I’m not the one taking advantage of Isabella to make up for my own helplessness. I was clear with her about our agreement, and her father is being a dishonest, manipulative bastard. He shouldn’t be able to reach into my marriage and stir it up, for god’s sake.
My jaw aches. This is exactly the situation I’d hoped to avoid. Planned to avoid. I won’t let it continue. I won’t have a house full of strife and spectacle. “I’m not pretending to be anything, unlike your father. You, on the other hand?—”
She richly deserves to be bent over the desk for this. Isabella would like it, in the end. My belt across her ass would bring her thoughts into calmness.
But a bright line has sprung up between us. The line between the bedroom and the rest of the world. An annulment. She asked me for an annulment. I won’t cross that line now. “You are not the woman I married. I won’t entertain childish temper tantrums in my office.”
“And I won’t entertain controlling bastards trying to micromanage every minute of my life. I’m not your property, Francisco. You don’t own me.”
“Thank god for that.” There’s nothing I loathe more in the world than being at the mercy of emotion, and I’m very nearly there. How was she able to wound me like this? It shouldn’t be possible. Not in the life I’ve built and the person I’ve become. It feels like I need her, but I can’t need her. I can’t allow myself that weakness. I force steel into my voice. “You’re useless to me this way. I would be embarrassed to have you on my arm.”
“Then we’re in agreement.” Pain stretches Isabella’s voice, and regret crashes into me. “Draw up the papers so I can sign. I’ll pack my things, and we won’t have to see each other again.”
“That would certainly be for the best.” Another lie.
I want to see Isabella every day. I had intended to make her training process slower, to give her time to adjust to her new life. I haven’t been able to do it. Need for her wakes me up in the morning and keeps me up after she’s fallen asleep. This morning, I was going to propose a new living arrangement. I thought she might be open to sharing a bedroom, or at least a bed.
Isabella stares at me, her arms tight across her flat stomach now. No telling what she’s waiting for. I won’t be the one to break. I won’t be the one to show her that she’s hurt me. This has gone far enough. We’ve crested the peak of pointless emotion, and I don’t see any recovery for it in this conversation. That’s not how these arguments work. They fester and spread until taut silence takes over the entire house and everyone in it.
No escape, other than death or divorce.
Or, I suppose, an annulment.
Swallowing the hurt and the attendant sting takes more effort than I would have thought necessary. I’ve already let myself indulge in this exchange for too long. It ends now. I force my face back into calm detachment and force my heart back into a steady rhythm and keep myself firmly on the other side of the desk. I won’t go to her. I won’t touch her. Isabella will get what she’s requested from this meeting.
“Anything else?” I ask, my voice ice cold.
Isabella blinks, very nearly a flinch, at my tone. It’s the same tone I’d use for any member of staff who needed to leave. Her throat moves. I very much want to grip her there and feel the tension and desire in her pulse. My mastery of myself doesn’t allow it.
“No.” Her voice wavers. “There’s nothing else.”
I’m distancing myself from her, though we stand in the same room. It’s a series of gates coming down between the two of us. Thick, heavy gates, because behind them I’m a bloody heart who doesn’t truly have his own balance. That man—that reckless, irrational one—is willing to fold first. He would go around the desk and apologize, take her in his arms, and then take her to bed. No maid. No butler. No artificial distance between us… No one but the two of them.
That man would fall to his knees, tell her he’d fallen in love with her, beg her to stay.
I’m not that man.
“Then you can go. I’ll send for you when the papers are finished.” I sit at my desk and reach for a pen. The things I need to ask for will be simple enough. Isabella hovers at the edge of my vision, swallowing and swallowing. I fix her with a cold stare. “If there’s nothing else?—”
Hurt flashes through her eyes. “No. There’s nothing else between us.”
My wife turns her back on me and goes out of my office without a backward glance.