13. CHAPTER 11 #2
My mind drifted to the woman upstairs and what exactly she was doing at this moment. I shouldn’t be thinking of her. I wasn’t. It was more curiosity than anything else.
“If we walk away,” I heard Demola tell Laurent, “we walk away into nothing.”
His gaze stayed on the papers on the table.
“We have already stretched ourselves to make this alliance possible. The terms with our backers are tied to its existence. Dissolving it would mean dismantling everything we’ve built.”
He lifted his head, looked at each of his sons in turn. “You might be young enough to recover,” he told them. “I am not. This house will not be the one that died of pride.”
The math was simple and men like Demola knew the stakes.
Everything relies on the alliance. If he dares dissolve the union, he’ll trigger the clauses.
Funding pulls back from every end and all their assets freeze.
The Moreaux and Fernández name becomes a liability overnight.
They wouldn’t just fall, they’ll be erased.
The fact that he has to explain this to his sons who run the business with him proves my point, that none of them are capable enough to lead.
Laurent looked like he’d been slapped. Blaise’s jaw flexed, showing a flick of disdain for the first time. Debo stared at the table as if he could find an escape clause written in the wood.
“Our daughter ran,” Demola said. “We have no choice but to pay for it.”
There it was. The correct sentence, at last.
“Our daughter.” Not “My daughter.” Or “Léonie.”
She was nothing to him but a unit. A means to an end.
There wasn’t a single attempt made by him or his lawyers to counter the clauses. A good father would have burned this contract and walked out into the rain with his daughter on his arm, bankrupt but whole.
A foolish part of me that still existed thought I’d find a flicker of paternal instinct that I would have to crush. Something that reflected the love of a father for his daughter, but there was nothing.
Because good father’s didn’t exist in our world. Only thorough businessmen like Demola who’d rather mortgage his own blood to keep the roof from leaking.
A cold wave of triumph, tinged with a fierce, metallic contempt, twisted in my gut.
It was easier this way. You can always manage a man who puts a price on his own heart. He wasn't giving her to me for her own good; he was discarding a broken asset before the market realised she’d lost her value.
It was just business.
Baron King slid the signature pages across the desk with the finality of a judge closing a file.
“Where do we sign?” Demola asked, his voice sounded hoarse.
King pointed. “There. And there. And initial here, where the consolidation clause is highlighted.”
I watched them all sign.
Demola first. Then Debo. Then Blaise, his hands more steady than others. Laurent hesitated for half a heartbeat before he scrawled his name like a threat.
I signed last, unhurried, like I had nowhere else to be.
The alliance was done and control had shifted completely. A bloodless coup executed by a few signatures, secured by nothing more than a few legal clauses and the collateral of a ruined daughter who now held the deed to their lives, just by taking my last name.
Demola looked like it hurt to breathe. His deep exhale sounded painful.
His lawyers started to speak about copies, filings, the usual aftermath. King dealt with him, as Sonia gathered the documents.
I scanned the room and felt a conflicting surge of satisfaction and annoyance.
As much as I had won, a part of me revolted at the sight of these men. There was something deeply offensive about the way they discarded her, like amateur mechanics stripping a masterpiece for parts. I didn’t care for her, but I had a great distaste for waste.
To them, she was a stain they needed to get rid of. To me, she was the only variable in this entire house that had any real value.
The longer I stood in the presence of their cowardice, the more I felt a rising, predatory urge to pull her out of this wreckage. Not to save her, but to claim her. I wanted to place her in a vacuum where their unworthy hands could never touch her again.
“Before we conclude,” I said, “there’s one more thing.”
Every head turned to my direction.
“This is not a contractual issue,” I went on. “Call it… housekeeping.”
Blaise’s shoulders tensed, and Laurent's stare intensified.
“I am aware,” I said, “that certain measures were taken during Léonie’s extraction.”
The air in the room tautened.
“The sedative,” I clarified, my tone flattening into a lethal note.
“Administered without proper oversight. Excess dosage for her weight, which led to a period of distress that was entirely avoidable. These risk factors are listed quite clearly in the report your doctor signed, if anyone had bothered to read it.”
Demola’s mouth tightened. “She was hysterical. We did what was necessary to—”
“You did what was easy,” I cut in, without raising my voice. “There’s a difference.”
I slid a thinner file onto the table. The doctor’s summary. The dosage. Stratum’s analysis stamped discreetly at the bottom.
I wanted Demola to see it, and realise that while he was busy playing patriarch, I was already inside his house, auditing his failures.
“This,” I said, tapping the paper once, “is what your necessity looks like in writing. Excessive sedation on an already distressed subject. Headache. Dehydration. Vomiting. Risk of respiratory depression.”
And the list goes on.
Demola’s face shuttered. “Where did you get—”
“I don’t tolerate the mishandling of what I intend to protect. Whatever your methods have been up to now, they change.”
I shifted my gaze to Blaise. He held it.
Laurent looked away. From my correspondence with Severin’s man on the ground, I knew it was Laurent who ordered the sedation.
But Blaise would make sure whatever I said here would be carried out.
He was the only one with a fully developed frontal lobe among the Fernández brothers.
“The two guards involved in administering the sedative,” I continued, “will no longer be assigned to Léonie in any capacity. Not in this house, not at events, not at the wedding. They will be removed from household security detail entirely.”
I felt Debo’s eyes on me. I acted like he didn’t exist.
Demola’s features strained. “You don’t give orders to my—”
“I do,” I cut in, “when your men lay hands on my future wife in ways I haven’t sanctioned.”
They all went still. Shocked. Angry. None of their feelings concerned me.
“Consider it a gesture of good faith,” I added. “On your part.”
My eyes moved to Laurent. He looked like he wanted to throw the chair at my head.
“And as for your sons,” I said, “I expect no further chemical restraint to be used on Léonie going forward. If she is to be calmed, it will be through conversation or removal from the situation. Not a needle.”
Laurent’s mouth lifted in a sinister grin. “If she endangers herself again—”
“Then you call me,” The grin died. “You don’t drug what will be mine without my consent.”
What is…mine.
Both Debo and Demola swallowed whatever they were about to say next.
“Is that understood?”
My eyes stayed on Laurent, but the question was for all of them.
“Yes,” Blaise answered, proving himself to be the only one with sense.
Laurent held my gaze a heartbeat too long before he said, “Understood.”
The room fell dead silent after that. A boundary had been set. One of many, especially when it concerns her.
Baron King concluded the meeting on a thank you note and closed his portfolio with a satisfied click.
Demola pushed back from the table like a man lowering himself into a grave. Debo sat back, his fingers crossed, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Probably still trying to make sense of everything that had transpired today.
False pleasantries and brittle farewells followed.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Kade.”
“We look forward to the alliance prospering.”
All lies. They’d rather I dropped dead this minute.
“Thank you for your time, Orion,” Demola said stiffly. His eyes were bloodshot at this point.
I inclined my head. “Thank you for hosting.”
He didn’t miss the irony. It registered in the tic near his eye.
“Blaise,” he said, never taking his eyes off me, “see Mr. Kade and his counsel out.”
It sounded like courtesy, but the look on Demola’s face said otherwise. He’d ruin me if he had the chance. But he needed me, and everything I had to offer.
My lips formed a smile and I nodded as Blaise led us out.
The air outside the study was cooler, less crowded with the sour heat of defeat and embarrassment.
Blaise was speaking, some polite formality about escorting us out, but the words didn't register. I barely absorbed them, because something else cut through the air.
A voice. It was only a few words at first. So low I could barely catch what was being said.
But I knew it was hers.
It sounded the same from the Stratum recordings. Though those were never clean. There was always interference—wind, traffic, music, the humming of restaurant speakers, the flat distortion of indoor cameras not meant to capture nuance.
It was clearer here… unfiltered.
She spoke again—closer to laughter this time, the faint lift at the end of a sentence that suggested she was trying to keep up the conversation despite how she was feeling.
“…just a little tired,” she said, her voice drifting down the hall. “But I’m fine I promise.”
I kept walking for three more steps out of sheer discipline, then stopped.
Baron glanced at me. “Sir?”
I ignored him.
Against every sensible instinct… against rationality, and against my better judgement, my gaze went upward.
My eyes wondered the floors, searching in an attempt to find where her voice was floating from.
It felt like I was dragged by something that felt…
embarrassing. Primitive. The part of me that never did anything without purpose suddenly wanted one thing without being able to name why.
Blaise stepped closer, finally understanding what I was looking for.