41. CHAPTER 38 #3
There was a pause, followed by the sound of his steps crossing the room, then a chair scraping closer.
He sat opposite me, on the other side of the bed, and listened as I read.
He didn’t interrupt, or even correct my French when I stumbled over an old town name.
Once, when his father’s fingers twitched, Orion’s hand moved automatically to cover them.
He looked at me across the bed with something raw and terrifyingly honest in his eyes. I looked away. I couldn’t handle him looking like a son who was grieving.
Small gifts showed up in my room and my studio space daily: a specific brand of pencils I’d once off-handedly mentioned a few months back when we talked about my sketches; a rare vintage fashion book that showed up on my studio couch; an ergonomic studio chair I didn’t ask for but my back loved.
The exact brand of salted caramels I’d once complained were impossible to find in France—boxes full of them stacked in my studio.
Just to name a few because the gifts never stopped coming, and though I could have returned them, I wasn’t going to. He owed me too much.
Isabella took pride in delivering every one of them. “You must really love these,” she beamed as she dropped off the boxes of salted caramels at the corner of my studio, and I managed a small painful smile.
There were no cards signed, nothing accompanying the gifts.
Just good ol’ attention to detail, like everything about Orion.
Inconveniently thoughtful, infuriatingly precise type of attention.
It was as if he’d taken the energy he used to run a global empire and focused it entirely on a map of my whims.
I pretended the gestures meant nothing. My heart, unfortunately, had other plans. Betrayer.
At night, I lay in bed clutching the silk robe he’d gifted me.
I’d worn it only once, just to see if it fit, then taken it off the moment it reminded me why I needed to keep my grudge alive.
I folded it carefully and set it in the drawer.
My gaze always drifted to the contract folder beside it.
I hadn’t opened that folder since Orion handed it to me.
It was over a week now. Ten days, to be exact.
It sat on my nightstand, a silent witness to my growing stubbornness.
I’d told Céleste and Isolde about it and they’d advised I hire a lawyer to go through the terms before I signed off. I still wasn’t sure why I was stalling.
The next day, Blaise called. His sounded exhausted.
He told me our father had been spiraling since the meeting with Orion regarding the amendment. I had no idea he called them in. I’d thought he had done it in secret.
“Léonie,” he said calmly, but the importance of what he was asking was clear in his tone. “I’m assuming you haven’t signed the papers yet.”
“I’m not interested in Orion’s new terms, Blaise.” I said off-handed. It was the only way I could stay uncaring.
“They aren't just terms, Léo,” he sighed, searching for the right words. “That document is his way of showing you what loving you looks like for him. It’s the expression of his love for you.”
The line went quiet. Love?
I could hear Blaise exhaling. “There’s no other way to explain it Léo. He called a meeting with the Equinox board and our father. I’ve seen Orion Kade move in business for years, but I’ve never seen him move like that. It wasn't about the merger. It was about you.”
I pushed my back against my bedroom wall. “What exactly happened in that room?”
“He told us he wanted to make an amendment to the contract, but he didn't give the company back to our family, because he knows our father would have sold your remaining shares to the highest bidder by noon if he had. Orion essentially stripped him of every bit of leverage he had left. He moved the majority of the Fernández-Moreaux voting shares into a private trust. Yours.”
I frowned, trying to catch up with the legal gymnastics. “Mine?”
Céleste and Isolde were right about me hiring a lawyer. I need to know how much damage my husband inflicted on himself in all this.
“Yours. Exclusively,” Blaise confirmed. “Orion stays the executive manager. He’ll be the one who will keep the scavengers from tearing the companies apart, but he’s made himself accountable to you.
You have the power to audit him, veto his decisions, even remove him if he crosses a line. He knowingly put himself under you.”
I felt a strange, cold prickle at the back of my neck. “And our father? He just sat there?”
“He tried to fight,” Blaise said, and for the first time, a note of grim respect entered his voice.
“Père started talking about the alliance and the trust the truce was built on. The same old script about why a Kade heir was the only way to lock the deal. Orion didn’t even let him finish.
He stood up, and I swear the temperature in the room dropped by twenty degrees. ”
Blaise lowered his voice, “He warned that if any of us refused to put respect on your name, he’ll liquidate every debt we currently hold, and bury us under the remains. He said all of it facing our father.”
I closed my eyes, picturing it. My father, who had spent my life treating me like an extension of his life assets, finally meeting a predator who valued me more than any transaction. I wasn’t sure it thrilled me or terrified me or both.
“He did that in front of everyone?” I whispered.
Is this even legal? Was he even allowed to do this?
“He did it with a smile that would have made a saint pray for mercy,” Blaise said.
“He isn’t giving the business back to the family because he doesn't trust anyone else but you to hold it.
And he obviously doesn't trust anyone but himself to protect you while you do. He sighed. “He’s built a fortress around you, Léo. Then he handed you the only set of keys.”
Once the conversation ended, I hung up, my back didn’t leave the wall. The reality I'd been clinging on to—the sudden truth of it all, felt less confining and more vast and terrifying.
I reached for the drawer, and pulled out the document, the signature line staring back at me.
Orion had essentially put his head in a noose and handed me the rope, trusting me not to pull it, or perhaps, simply accepting it if I did.
I walked to the window, and caught a glimpse of my husband in the courtyard below, leaning against his car, staring at nothing. He looked smaller than he had two weeks ago, but infinitely more dangerous.
He wasn’t currently the reason for my pain anymore. He was now the man who had rearranged the entire world to accommodate me.
My heart wasn’t sure how to respond to that.