41. CHAPTER 38
Léonie
He went out again.
I wasn’t surprised.
It was the same pattern as always after an argument. He immediately puts up his walls, next thing doors are closing somewhere in the house, footsteps fading down the hall. A murmur with Stephen, the low rumble of the car engine, the gates open, and he’s gone.
For a stupid second I’d thought he would follow me and try to fix what he’d broken. I didn’t intend to forgive him. But some remorse—him at my door, knocking, calling out my name while I ignore him—would at least have shown some sincerity.
I laid in my bed that night staring at the ceiling, making out the patterns, trying not to picture where he’d gone instead.
With that woman, probably. Or whoever else his mother thought would benefit his ambition.
Pretty, pliant, untouched by clauses they didn’t know existed.
She could give him exactly what he wanted without questioning his intentions. He had no choice but to marry me to fulfil the truce. But with a mistress, he could always choose someone more to his liking. Obedient and mute. Just as his mother liked them.
Jealousy pricked at me as my thoughts spiraled.
It spread slow till it thickened like tar in my chest, heavy and hard to breathe through.
I hated that I felt it at all. Hated that I cared enough to imagine his hands and mouth on someone else when they’d just been on me.
When I’d just given him… God. Everything.
I didn’t see him the next day. Or the one after that. Two days and he hadn’t come home. I know because my mind had stupidly waited, in hope that he’d somehow prove me wrong.
I didn’t bother asking Mrs Lewis if he’d come home either. If this was how he wanted things, fine. I could play nonchalant too.
I went about my routine—studio, fittings, meetings with Céleste over video, evenings with his father reading about obscure French battles I’d never heard of—like my heart hadn’t been knocked sideways.
By the time I walked into the breakfast room on the third morning, I’d rehearsed the same script in my head a hundred times.
My plan was the same everyday. Act neutral. Be polite. Keep it together.
Mrs Lewis had laid out coffee, croissants, sliced fruit. Sunlight spilled across the long table, lighting up the silverware, and the vase of roses Isabella had changed yesterday. The seat at the head of the table was empty.
Perfect, I thought, exhaling. I can eat in peace.
I’d done it for two days already, and it was exhilarating to know that no one was there trying to read my face, monitor my mood, or ask me questions I wasn’t willing to answer.
I’d just taken my first sip of coffee when I heard footsteps.
The air announced his presence before I saw him. Then there was the subtle pull my body seemed to have memorised against my will.
“Morning,” he said.
My spine locked. I set the cup down as gently as I could and told myself I wouldn’t look up, but I did anyway.
He looked… different. Though he wore a shirt, as usual, today it was black, the sleeves rolled to his forearms, trousers that fit too well, chain around his neck, watch glinting at his wrist. But his face looked exhausted.
Dark circles beneath his eyes, and his jaw was tight, the muscles visibly strained from days of tension.
There was no easy arrogance in his posture. No lazy, bored king. Just a man who looked like he’d slept exactly as badly as I had.
“Mrs Lewis,” I said, ignoring him, “could I have some more strawberries? These are lovely.”
She glanced between us as though we were live explosives. “Of course, chère.”
He sat across from me, not at the head as he usually does, and that alone rattled me. Orion never ceded the head of a table. It was a small, stupid thing to notice, but I did.
“Léonie,” he called out to me faintly.
My name from his mouth did something awful to my pulse, but I kept my eyes on my plate, studying the piece of croissant there with unnecessary intensity.
“Did you sleep well?” he tried.
I didn’t answer. I took a bite of croissant, chewed, and swallowed. Act neutral. Be polite. Keep it together. I reminded myself, but I felt my hands tremble a little.
“Are you feeling alright?” he tried again. “If the tests were—”
The knife clattered against the plate harder than I’d intended to drop them. He recoiled slightly.
“Don’t,” I said flatly. “Don’t mention those to me ever again.”
The room fell into a thick silence, sucking up all the oxygen.
Poor Mrs Lewis fussed with the fruit bowl like her life depended on it. “I’ll just… check on the pastries in the oven,” she mumbled, backing out of the room the way one might back away from a fire.
The footsteps receded.
We were alone.
He sighed. “We need to talk.”
“No,” I said, taking another sip of coffee. “We really don’t.”
I put the tea cup down again, gently, and pushed my chair backwards in an attempt to escape whatever it was he wanted to say.
“Léa.” His voice dropped. “If you walk out, I’ll just follow you and talk to your back while you slam doors. And if you refused to open up said doors to me, I’ll break them down till you hear me. Save us both the spectacle.”
I glared at him then, pushed my chair forward, and finally met his eyes.
He looked wrecked. Honest. Tired. Like his usual control had slipped and he didn't know how to carry on without it.
“Fine,” I said crisply. “Say what you need to say so we can stop pretending there’s anything left to discuss.”
His expression faltered with the briefest flicker of surprise. Then adjusted his posture, bracing his forearms on the table, his fingers laced like he was about to deliver a speech to his staff.
“I’m sorry,” he said unexpectedly. I didn’t let the shock show on my face.
The words hung there, oddly naked without any flourish wrapped around them.
I cleared my throat. “For which part? The clause? The test kits? Or disappearing as though I was some…task you’d ticked off your bucketlist?”
His throat moved. “All of it.”
An empty laugh bubbled up my chest. I had no words. What could I say?
“The clause was put in place by my father and our lawyers. I admit I made some changes to it after you ran, to punish your father. But that was before I knew you hated storms and you loved to wear color, and that you read to my father when you thought no one is watching. Before I knew how you felt, before you trusted me with your first time.”
My face flamed. “Don’t use what I gave you against me.”
“I’m not.” His gaze didn’t waver. “I’m telling you the order by which it all happened. The clause came first. The marriage…our marriage. The feelings came later. It was messy, unplanned and mostly inconvenient if I’m being honest. But once they started, I couldn’t stop them.”
I hated that the word feelings even moved me at all.
“And in all that time,” I said, “you saw no reason to tell me that giving you a child would sign my entire family over to you like a parcel post?”
His jaw ticked twice. “I should have told you. That is on me. No board, no contract, no legacy terms excuses that.”
I stared at him, thrown by how clean that was. There wasn't any caveats. No “but you have to understand.” Just: I fucked up.
Suspicion furled around my ribs, stubbornly. “So why are you telling me now?”
“Because you know now,” he simply said. “And you heard it from the worst possible mouth.”
Laurent’s venomous words flashed in my head. Vessel. Little devil you birthed. He’s not capable of love.
My stomach knotted.
“Your brother was right about one thing,” Orion continued softly.
“The clause does hand control of the Fernández-Moreaux assets to me as a placeholder if there’s a child.
That was the point—to keep them out of your father’s hands, out of your brothers.
I can protect it for the next generation of Kades, Fernández and Moureauxs”
“Control is always the point with you,” I said. “You can clothe it in protection all you like; it still reeks like ownership.”
Frustration bled into his voice. “You’d rather it be Laurent? Or your father? Or Debo? Men who would drag your name through the mud if it bought them a fraction of what this alliance gives them?”
“I’d rather it be me,” I snapped. “My life. My body. My family. My choice.”
Immediately—for one charged, inappropriate second—I noticed his eyes darken. I knew exactly what that look meant.
He held my gaze intensely, but there was little argument left in there. I hated that my body still recognized hunger in his eyes, even when I wanted to stay angry.
He took a deep breath like he was reining himself in, then reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and slid a slim leather folder across the table.
It stopped in front of my plate.
“What’s this?” I asked, my voice wary, my eyes tracking the heavy vellum of the folder.
“Amendments,” he said. “Signed. Witnessed. Filed this morning at 6:00AM.”
I didn’t touch it. I didn’t want another contract. I wanted a soul, my husband’s true soul. “I don’t want your paperwork, Orion.”
“I’m not asking you to trust me,” he said, and the admission pricked painfully, and unexpected in my chest. He looked like he was bracing for a blow. “I’m asking you to read what I’ve done to make myself less of a bastard.”
Against my better judgment, I flipped it open.
My name stared back at me in neat, dark ink. The clauses that Laurent had weaponized—the ones that had made me feel like a womb for rent—had red lines through them. Struck. Amended. Voided.
The legal jargon was dense, but the power shift was unmistakable.
Legal language I only half understood, but the meaning was clear enough:
Any transfer of Fernández assets contingent on a child now required my direct consent, not just the existence of an heir.
Any such transfer would be to a trust with me as primary signatory, not to Orion personally.
If I chose to dissolve the marriage within a certain timeframe, I left with my own assets intact and a sizeable settlement, clause or no clause.
I swallowed, not sure how to react at first. “You did this when?”