Chapter 220 Callum #2
And I knew—I fucking knew—that now she’d be thinking about it all night. Wondering what nine meant, where my head had gone, what I had planned for her. That curiosity would eat at her until she got her hands on me.
I winked at her and turned back to the rest of the table.
Game on.
We were saved from an awkward follow-up conversation when our dinner plates were swept away by the household staff, dessert replacing it. A rich red velvet cake and thick buttercream frosting, topped with silence thick enough to cut with a steak knife.
I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.
Augustin set his spoon down with surgical precision and cleared his throat.
“So.” A very dangerous beginning. Not promising for us. “When two people marry,” he continued carefully, “especially at your… level of public prominence,” his gaze flicked to me, “it is customary to have certain legal protections. I assume the two of you discussed a prenuptial agreement?”
Finally, Auri seemed to lose some of her confidence. She swallowed, and her shoulders tightened—almost imperceptibly.
She’d been right. This was the inevitable grenade.
I didn’t have a chance to speak because Auri inhaled sharply through her nose, her eyes sharpening. I bit back a smile, because I knew what this was. It was a warning sign of a Dubois about to start a war, when the match was lit.
“Papa,” she said, voice deceptively polite, “do you ask étienne and Emilie about their contractual agreements? Or is it only me?”
étienne blinked. Emilie popped a bite of cake in her mouth and whispered, “Oh, merde.”
Augustin bristled. “This is not a question of favoritism—”
“It never is,” Auri snapped, sweetness nowhere to be found.
“It is a question of protecting generational wealth, both yours and ours.”
Under the table, Auri’s hand clenched mine so hard I almost winced.
I brushed my thumb across the back of her knuckles, silently telling her, You’re not fighting this alone.
“It’s alright, mo chridhe. Let me.” I turned to her father. “There is no prenup.”
Both of her parents gasped.
étienne muttered “Christ,” under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“And that,” I continued evenly, “was our decision. Carefully made. Discussed before we got married. Not impulsively.”
Auri squeezed my hand so tightly my bones clicked.
“You expect us to accept that?” her mother asked breathlessly.
“No,” I said, leaning forward. “I expect you to trust that your daughter is intelligent enough to know exactly what she wants. And that I’m not here to take anything from her. We made a plan that protects both of us. Not one that assumes one of us needs protection from the other.”
The silence wasn’t anger now—it was recalculation.
“I didn’t work as hard as I have to not share my wealth with my loved ones,” I admitted. “It had to go both ways.”
Auri interjected, turning her left arm face up, revealing the delicate butterfly tattoo on the inside of her arm, tucked close to her heart.
Her miscarriage mark. Our mark.
“This,” she said quietly, “is why we didn’t sign anything. Because marriage to us is not a transaction, but commitment. We have survived things together that most couples never face. Loss. Pain. Recovery. The kind of grief that binds you or breaks you.”
Her voice wavered but did not break.
“And he stayed,” she whispered. “Through all of it. Not because he had to. Because he chose to.”
My throat constricted.
I slid my hand to her thigh under the table, thumb brushing gentle circles. She didn’t look at me, but she leaned into my touch until our shoulders touched.
“We did not rush,” she finished, pulling her arm back. “We endured. And we chose an unconditional marriage with clear eyes. Not a contract that states who’s worth more. We are equals.”
Geneviève covered her mouth, shoulders trembling. Augustin heaved a long, shuddering breath—one I recognized too well. The breath of a father realizing his daughter has lived a pain he couldn’t protect her from.
“I see,” he murmured. “I did not know. It does not change my concerns, but it changes my understanding.”
Auri nodded once, accepting that as enough.
It dawned on me then. My wife was a brilliant woman, sharp and assessing.
Knew contract law and negotiation and business dealings.
But she’d also been raised to believe that that also applied to relationships.
That it was transactional and conditional.
Performative, and if she didn’t live up to a certain standard, she suffered consequences.
Less sponsorship funding toward her racing career, more work on the vineyard, more control over her life to keep her in line so her brother could shine.
“You can have your concerns, Papa. And I respect them, but that does not change my—our—decisions.”
And that right there was the moment that Aurélie Camille Fraser stood on her own two feet and faced her first bullies.
The first people who’d made her feel less than, who’d belittled her and guilted her into shrinking herself in order to succeed.
That if she worked hard enough—suffered enough—eventually she could reach her goals.
They had made her question her worth, tanked her self-esteem, and made her doubt herself her entire life.
“Very well,” Augustin conceded. “You are aware of what you are losing as well.”
Losing?
Auri smirked wryly. Oh. “Oui, Papa. My shares in the trust drop to twenty-percent, and the remaining thirteen point three percent gets split between my siblings for marrying without a prenup.”
I blinked. Not in shock at the number—though, yeah, it was a lot. It was that she said it like it was nothing. No bitterness, just simply stating a fact. As though she’d already made peace with it a long time ago.
She was giving up a piece of her legacy. Her inheritance. The land she loved so much—for me.
And she didn’t even look my way when she said it. She knew I’d never ask for that sacrifice. Knew I’d fight like hell to protect her from having to make it. But she’d done it anyway, unapologetically, because the life we were building meant more than the one she’d come from.
Augustin’s eyes narrowed, calculating. “And?”
Auri didn’t flinch. She leaned forward slightly, her tone shifting from warm to clinical, like flipping a switch.
“It means I’ll still receive quarterly distributions, but with a cap.
And the properties in Bordeaux won’t pass directly to me anymore unless a new clause is renegotiated.
My position on the advisory board remains intact, but my vote won’t carry executive weight unless backed by another trustee. ”
She said it like she was reciting lap data.
Clean, calm, unbothered. One hand moved slowly as she spoke, two fingers tapping the table to punctuate her points, the same way I’d seen her do in FIA meetings, debriefs, and press conferences.
Her shoulders were relaxed and her voice steady. There wasn’t a single crack.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
This was the woman who used to whisper apologies when she asked for space. The woman who used to flinch when she dared to set boundaries.
And now here she was, negotiating her future with the man who’d once held every string.
Across the table, Geneviève leaned in, just slightly, her voice low enough that only I could hear it—soft, but deliberate.
“She gets that from him,” she said with a quiet smile. “The steel underneath.”
I looked at her, surprised.
Her eyes were on Aurélie—warm, glassy, full of something I hadn’t seen until now. Not judgment or calculation. Pride.
For the first time since we’d arrived, I understood what it meant to be let in.
Emilie sniffled loudly. “I can’t believe you two are the main characters of the whole planet.”
Auri let out a small laugh, and I felt it like sunlight on skin—brief but radiant. She leaned back in her chair, and finally looked at me. The look in her eyes said we did it. Not perfectly, not painlessly, but we made it through.
I squeezed her thigh beneath the table. The conversation shifted around us—lighter, more curious. étienne rattled off numbers about the soil’s acidity levels. Emilie offered to show me the wine cellar like it was a haunted house tour.
But the room felt different now. Like it had accepted us.
And I couldn’t wait to reward my wife later..
We’d only stepped away under the guise of needing a quick moment alone.
That was the agreed-upon excuse. Auri’s mum had just asked for another glass of wine, and her dad was still dissecting a photo of our vineyard ceremony like he was reviewing crime scene footage.
The tension had eased slightly—they hadn’t thrown us out for eloping.
But no one was pretending this wasn’t a shock.
They’d wanted to see more pictures. We were not prepared. Every wedding photo was followed by three they could never see. Her on her knees. Me with the camera. Our rings, her dress, my cock. All in one shot.
We barely managed to throw together a quick album to show them.
But what they didn’t know was that the second that bathroom door latched shut, she shoved me against it.
Hands on my chest, mouth on my jaw, fingers bunching my shirt like she wanted to tear it off. I caught her, instantly, hands gripping her waist as her mouth crashed into mine—hot, open, desperate. Not just kissing me. Consuming me.
I groaned low in my throat, letting her devour me, leaning into the heavy wooden door as I clutched her tighter.
She tugged my lower lip between her teeth. “Cal,” she whispered, so fiercely I nearly came undone. “Mon Dieu, how did you not lose your mind in there?”
“Oh, I lost it,” I rasped, voice rough against her neck. “Still losing it.” I kissed her jaw, then her throat, biting softly just below her ear. Couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
She shivered. “If you keep doing that, I swear—”
“I’m counting on it.”
Her laugh was sharp, breathless, coated in heat. She shoved her leg between mine, dragging her thigh up where I was already hard, and fuck.