Chapter 64 Paige
PAIGE
It’s a beautiful day for everything to fall apart.
The sun is shining and the mountains are almost an emerald green around the turquoise lake. Over breakfast, Rafe suggested taking the boat out for a spin later. Can I drive it? He kissed my neck, lingering there, and told me yes.
But then, at one o’clock Italy time, my lawyer calls me. I suppose that was a kindness, in a way. To hear it from them.
My uncle or one of his investigators found a way into my email account. Apparently I didn’t log out everywhere. That’s the only thing I can think of—that a stray laptop from Mather & Wilde has ended up in his hands.
He found my emails with Rafe.
The wild email I sent him months ago that kickstarted this entire thing.
Rafe and I didn’t marry for love, and with the email, my uncle has legal proof that I violated the rules of my parents’ will. I shouldn’t have received the additional ten percent stake upon my courthouse wedding.
And that would change the math of everything.
My stomach is churning with a painful sort of fear.
This can’t fall apart. Everything I’ve done, the new direction the company is going, the newfound excitement in the team for new campaigns and ideas…
the way everyone can breathe now that Ben isn’t there suffocating them all with his vanity and ego.
All about to fall apart.
And all because of me. I’m the liability.
My phone is blowing up with texts. I’ve left it on the chaise in the living room and am pacing across the hardwood floor of Villa Egeria. Rafe isn’t home.
I’d tried calling him. I texted him too, and he answered right away.
Rafe
In a meeting. I’ll be home in fifteen.
He was in Milan today. So I pace, and wait, and try to resist the urge that wants to set my legs pumping and send me racing across the street. Go running, go swimming, go driving. Anything but stay right here.
The betrayal and the shame feel like ash on my tongue. I tried to drain a giant glass of cold water earlier to stave off the feeling, but I could barely swallow.
Ben hacked my private emails. Made them public.
And it’s all my fault. I was careless, reckless, ignorant. How could I not have logged out of my email account? Rafe and I have worked so hard, for so long, with the press. Sowing doubt, building a facade of a loving couple. And I’m the one who ruins it all.
He cares about his image, about his private affairs, about his perception and that of his family. I’ve completely tarnished that by not changing my goddamn email password.
I pace around the dining room table where I chose my engagement ring all those weeks ago.
A car drives into the courtyard. I stop and watch him park, then get out, his phone tucked against his ear. He walks into the house.
I hear him before I see him. He’s talking in English, so it has to be with someone other than his assistant or executive team.
“…on it. I want every lawyer to work on that angle.” He comes into view. He stops when he sees me there, standing in the middle of the living room. “Yes. Update me at every step. Thanks.”
He clicks off and slides his phone into his pocket.
We look at each other for a few seconds. I can feel my heartbeat in every one.
“There you are,” he says, like there’s anywhere else I’d be.
My nails are worn thin from chewing on them. I removed the red polish earlier and haven’t had the patience to apply a new coat. Sitting still for the length it took to dry felt like death.
“Yes. Here I am.”
He slides his hands into his pockets. “I’m handling the headlines. No credible outlet will run them again. Not when they’re part of an active lawsuit.”
My stomach feels like lead, and I can see the way this must look to him. We worked hard to project an image to his designers, too. To his entire team. For both of us. But right now? I’m the liability.
It’s looking like he married a bad bet.
“My uncle won’t stop. He knows that smearing me in the press bothers you… us both.” I shake my head. It’s hard to hear the words out loud. “And in this case, it’s not even false. I did send you that email.”
“And I replied,” he says.
It hits me like the pinprick of a needle. Sharp and swift. He did reply. Is he regretting that now?
“And what about the next time he pulls something like this?”
“There won’t be a next time. I’ll make sure of it,” Rafe says.
“Don’t worry.” He’s looking at me intently, so focused, but he’s far away, across the room.
I want to pace. Instead my feet are rooted to the floor.
“It’s not ideal,” he says, and the word cuts me like a knife, “but you’ll come out of this clean. I promise.”
Clean, he said. Like I’m dirty now. And he’s standing so far away. I wrap my arms around myself and nod sharply. “What can I do?”
“Publicly, I think silence is the best bet at this point.” He undoes his cufflinks and puts them one by one on the table. It’s so unlike him, to not do that up in our bedroom. His bedroom.
He sighs and starts folding up his sleeves.
“What about the lawsuit? He now has… well, proof. That we didn’t marry for love.”
The word feels wrong in this setting. To use it here, between us, when so many things have changed between us and others have stayed exactly the same.
“My legal team is handling it,” he says.
The tenseness on his face gives way to tiredness.
I’ve seen that look on him before, and I hate that I’m the reason he’s feeling that way.
I didn’t realize until now just how much I like it when I make him laugh, or when he holds me in bed and whispers in my ear or tells me I’m so beautiful it hurts to look at me.
Now I’m a problem to be fixed.
I’ve seen him fix so many problems before. It’s what he does. At his core. I know that now, having seen him in action. He’s not a destroyer of companies. He’s a fixer.
I dig my nails into the meaty part of my palm. “My lawyers can handle it. You shouldn’t have to. It’s my uncle.”
“Yes,” he says, “and you’re my wife.”
His wife, and his problem.
My uncle doesn’t just want the company back. He wants me destroyed, and Rafe is standing in front of me, telling me he’s doing damage control.
The swirl inside me is sharp. Nipping at my heels, pushing at my head. I stare at him and wonder if he can see how badly I need to run right now.
“How do we fight it? He has proof.”
“Breathe,” he tells me, but it sounds like an afterthought. “Our legal teams are working on the will. What does love of your life mean? It’s the will of a fanciful old couple and won’t hold up to legal scrutiny. Ben is betting it will. That’s a bet he’ll lose.”
“It’ll be a long, drawn-out process if we go down that road.”
Rafe nods once. His face is drawn in hard lines. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen him this angry. “Yes. But I have the patience and the time. Resource-wise, I can bleed Ben dry.”
I can’t reach him when he’s like this.
My arms tighten around myself. Before, I would have argued with him. What about what I want? But I just feel a crushing shame and sadness instead. Ben is well and truly gone to me. My last piece of family. I knew it. It shouldn’t hurt. And yet I find that it still does.
Rafe’s happiness from the last few days is gone.
Because of me and my carelessness. He values efficiency, and dedication, and skill. And now he’s having to go to war on my account.
“Paige,” he says, and takes a step forward. Not darling. Not Wilde. “I’ll handle it. He won’t cause problems anymore. Not after this.”
“It’s my uncle,” I say. “I should be involved in the planning.”
It’s not what I want to say. Do you hate me for this? I want to ask. I’m sorry. But the words won’t come out.
“You don’t need to be.”
“You’re doing damage control,” I tell him.
His eyes return to mine, and the hardness there makes me feel all alone in the world. “Yes. Of course I am. He’s not going to come in and wreck this. You know that, right? I won’t let him.”
“Yes. I know.”
“I have work to do,” he tells me, and walks toward the steps to his office. “Call me if you need anything.”
But he’s already gone, leaving me and my roiling mess of emotions behind.