Chapter 26 Her Strategy #2
“Your wife requested me.”
“I am trying not to interpret that romantically.”
“You should not.”
“Renata said you disliked me professionally.”
“I dislike inherited opacity. You happen to wear it well.”
I almost smiled.
Naomi entered at two fifteen.
She wore charcoal trousers, a cream blouse, and the wedding ring. No Beaumont jewelry beyond it. Her hair was pulled back. She carried a binder marked PUBLIC FACTS and another marked NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
Celia looked at the second binder.
“Is that for me?”
“It is a reminder for everyone,” Naomi said.
She did not kiss me.
She did not need to perform reassurance before the camera.
“The museum kept the commission,” I said.
“Under review.”
“Your name?”
“Still attached.”
Relief moved through me with enough force to feel like weakness.
“Good.”
Naomi placed the binders on the table.
“We have a problem with your answer about why the contract existed.”
Renata sighed. “We finalized that answer.”
“It says Luca feared emotional exploitation because of his family history. True, but incomplete.”
Celia watched us.
“What is missing?” I asked.
Naomi met my eyes.
“You liked arrangements because women could consent to the beginning without requiring you to become honest about the ending.”
The atelier seemed to sharpen around us.
“That is not language counsel approved,” Renata said.
“It is language I approve,” I replied.
Naomi did not soften.
“You also need to say every woman consented to the terms, but you used the clarity of the terms to avoid considering emotional aftermath. Otherwise, you sound as though paperwork was the harm. It was not. The harm was treating compliance as proof no one had been diminished.”
Celia folded her arms.
“Do you agree with her?”
The camera was not yet running.
That made the question more dangerous.
“Yes.”
“Did you know before the blacklist?”
“I knew the women understood the arrangements. I chose not to ask whether understanding made them feel replaceable.”
Naomi’s expression changed by a fraction.
Not forgiveness. Recognition.
At five fifty-eight, I sat beneath the north windows.
The camera light turned red.
Celia began without introduction.
“Luca Beaumont, did you buy a wife?”
“No. I proposed a marriage that offered both of us defined benefits. Naomi Pierce negotiated independent counsel, financial protection, company autonomy, separate space, sexual freedom, and an unconditional exit. Calling her purchased turns a contract she controlled into evidence she had none.”
“You needed a wife to control a family trust.”
“Yes.”
“She needed money.”
“Her company needed financing options. She refused my first proposal, returned with her own terms, and later secured financing from a women-led fund. My guarantee is limited and creates no ownership. Those facts do not make the arrangement romantic. They make it mutual.”
“Did you love her when you signed?”
“No.”
The word struck harder aloud than it had on paper.
“Do you love her now?”
Naomi stood beyond the camera, still enough to become the center of my vision.
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“Emotion is often inconvenient because it arrives after the terms are written.”
“Are you asking the public to believe the marriage became real?”
“No. I am telling the truth about my marriage. The public may believe what it chooses. Pierce Events’ ownership does not depend on belief. The documents are available.”
Celia opened the original blacklist entry.
“The Playboy Clause described a pattern of negotiated relationships with automatic endings. Were those women paid?”
“Some received gifts, travel, housing, or financial terms. Every arrangement was reviewed by separate counsel where requested. No woman was required to sign an NDA to end a relationship.”
“That sounds like a defense.”
“It is context. The allegation remains substantially true. I used clarity about endings to avoid honesty about attachment. I honored the letter of agreements and treated that as permission not to examine the emotional cost.”
“Why should anyone believe you changed?”
“They should not believe it because I say so.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because my silence would leave Naomi carrying a scandal created partly for my benefit. I am here to state what I did, what she controlled, and what I will not allow my company to imply about her. Change is demonstrated elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“In choices that do not require a camera.”
Celia turned a page.
“Several former companions have declined interview requests. Did you pay them again?”
“No.”
“Did your attorneys contact them?”
“Mireille sent one notice explaining that the agreement had been stolen and offering security support if their private information appeared. The notice stated that no response was required and that accepting assistance created no confidentiality obligation.”
“You expect praise for that?”
“No.”
“One former companion says your arrangements made endings efficient but beginnings humiliating. She described receiving the same jewelry as another woman six months later.”
I knew which piece she meant. A white-gold bracelet from a collection that had sold extremely well and meant almost nothing to me. That had been the problem. I selected gifts according to taste profiles, calendars, and price bands, then called precision intimacy.
“She is right,” I said. “I treated personalization as a service standard. I did not understand that attention becomes insulting when the person providing it remains emotionally absent.”
“Have you apologized?”
“Privately, where contact was welcome. Two women requested no communication. I have honored that.”
“Are you canceling the templates?”
“Every active template was withdrawn before my marriage. The legal archive remains because destroying records would protect me rather than the women named in them. An independent privacy review is determining what should be retained, returned, or deleted with each woman’s consent.”
“Your company sells desire. Does this scandal affect the brand?”
“It should affect how the brand operates. Beaumont has relied on the idea that luxury means receiving what you want without seeing the labor, bargaining, or cost beneath it. That is useful for selling fragrance. It is dangerous as a philosophy for people.”
Celia glanced toward the inside-out coat.
“That is why we are filming here?”
“My wife chose the room. Ask her.”
“You do not know?”
“I understand what I think it means. I am practicing the difference between interpretation and authority.”
Beyond the camera, Naomi lowered her gaze to hide the beginning of a smile.
The interview continued.
Trust disclosures. Company governance. The stolen agreement. étienne’s possible involvement, which I refused to characterize beyond the independent finding. Former companions. The list. The family condition.
Then Celia asked the question from the packet.
“Did Naomi Pierce provide information to Verity Gray?”
Naomi did not move.
“I do not know,” I said. “She witnessed the pattern. If she told the truth about what she saw, that truth was hers to tell. I will not investigate my wife to make myself more comfortable with being accurately described.”
For the first time, Celia looked surprised.
“Would you want to know?”
“Yes. Wanting information does not create a right to obtain it through power.”
The answer hurt.
That was how I knew it belonged in the interview.
At six forty-three, the camera light went dark.
Renata checked her phone.
“The clip about the blacklist is moving fastest.”
“Of course it is.”
Celia closed her notes.
“You followed her strategy.”
“Yes.”
“Do you always?”
Naomi answered before I could.
“No. That is why tonight mattered.”
Celia left.
The atelier emptied until only Naomi and I remained beside the inside-out coat.
“Did I damage Pierce?” I asked.
“Not tonight.”
“Did I help?”
“Yes.”
The answer should have satisfied me.
It did not.
“Were you Verity’s source?”
Naomi looked at me for a long moment.
I could see the answer gathering.
Then she asked, “Do you need to know tonight?”
Every old instinct said yes. Information reduced risk. Facts restored shape. Secrets became manageable once named.
But her strategy had not required her to confess in exchange for my accountability.
Love did not make disclosure owed on my schedule.
“No,” I said.
Her shoulders lowered slightly.
“I will tell you,” she said. “Not because you earned it on camera. Because I do not want a real marriage with a private lie inside it.”
“When?”
“After the press conference tomorrow. When the answer cannot be mistaken for part of the plan.”
I nodded.
She touched the exposed seam of the black coat.
“What is the room asking them to believe?”
“That structure matters more when the surface is turned inside out.”
“Private truth?”
I looked at my wife.
“Following your strategy did not make me feel controlled. It made me understand how often I have called control cooperation simply because I wrote the terms beautifully.”
Naomi’s eyes held mine.
Then she reached for my bare hand.
Her fingers fitted between mine without ceremony.
The room had been built to expose seams. Loving her had begun to feel the same way: not the removal of structure, but the choice to let her see what held me together.
I tightened my hand once.
She answered once.
Neither gesture solved the secret waiting between us. It only said we intended to remain present when it arrived.
Tomorrow, she would stand before the cameras and reclaim her own story.
Tonight, I did not ask her to make mine easier. The restraint did not feel noble. It felt like standing beside a locked door while knowing I had once owned every key in the building and had no right to use any of them now.