42. CHAPTER 39
Orion
I remember leaving Marcus’ penthouse that night.
The sky over Paris had that bruised, black-blue tint that sits between night and morning.
The city was dead at that hour, except for neon signs signaling nightlife, and a handful of cars and late-night stragglers.
Inside the car, it was just the sound of my breathing and the weight of my own stupidity.
I love my wife.
I’d said it out loud. In there, of all places. Surrounded by men who thought love was a liability to be managed or a joke to be laughed at. I gripped the steering wheel until the leather groaned. I was in love with her, and she was miles away in our house, hating the very air I breathed.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to wake her up and pour my heart out. But I stopped myself.
Feelings weren't enough. Not for a woman like Léonie, and not for a man like me. Admitting love without action was just noise. I thought of Julian’s breakdown of how I needed to approach this, and I hated that he was right.
To prove my sincerity, I had to be the one who moved.
I had to meet her where she was—wherever that abyss happened to be.
I was completely wrecked for her, and if she owned me, I was going to show her the full extent of her property. All of it. No holding back this time.
I turned the wheel and headed toward Ironshore HQ.
It was just past four when I walked onto the top floor.
Security appeared ready to offer a morning greeting, then took one look at my face and thought better of it.
I didn't turn on the lights in my office as I entered.
I let the darkness sit in the corners while the city sprawled out beyond the glass.
I picked up the phone. “King,” I said when my general counsel answered. “I need you in the office in an hour. Bring Sonia. We’re re-drafting the alliance contract.”
“Monsieur Kade,” his voice rough with sleep. “With due respect, it’s four in the…”
“One hour,” I repeated and hung up.
I poured myself a drink and contemplated on what I was about to do.
How the fuck was I supposed to explain that the clause I’d fought tooth and nail for—the keystone of my consolidation plan—had just detonated in my face? That the look on her face when she threw those tests at me was a debt I couldn't repay with anything less than my own blood?
I tipped the glass over and let its content burn all the way down, then poured another drink and waited.
An hour later, they were both in front of me. I didn’t waste time. “I want the asset-transfer clause rewritten. Strike the succession placeholder. Transfer everything to a trust in my wife’s name. Nothing moves henceforth without her consent.”
Sonia went very still. Baron King removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“You’re putting primary control in her hands, Orion.
” He didn’t bother masking his frustration.
“If she decides she prefers… other counsel, or if she chooses to walk, you lose the leverage over the Fernández-Moreaux assets entirely.”
“I trust my wife more than I trust her father or brothers,” I said. “If it’s a choice between her power and mine, I choose hers.”
“The board will ask what you’re sacrificing in exchange,” Baron warned. “You can’t say you changed the clause because your wife was upset.”
I could, actually. I couldn’t give a fuck about the board if my wife was unhappy. But I knew the game.
“I’ll offer them a higher oversight share on the Singapore expansion and automatic review rights on any investments. I’ll sign personal performance agreements. Whatever they need to feel safe while I make myself vulnerable, they’ll get it.”
“That’s a steep price,” Sonia noted, her pen hovering.
“So was watching her look at me like I was filth,” I snapped. The words reverberated through the room. I lowered my voice. “And one more thing. The dissolution clause. If she decides to walk away… she walks clean. No penalty as stipulated in the original contract..”
Sonia’s brows rose. “You’d release her from all alliance obligations?”
I looked out at the sunrise. I’d rather lose billions of Euros than watch her stay with me because she felt trapped. Her father had practically sold her to me and I’d been the one to tighten the rope. No more.
“If she walks, she walks free,” I said. “Write it that way.” Even though I wished she didn’t walk at all.
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of cold coffee and heated boardrooms. I spoke to Chairman Sterling first. I knew the old man wouldn't care about my emotional epiphany, so I had to speak the only language he respected: Expansion.
I offered him a permanent seat on the Singapore council—a position that would give the Sterlings a foothold in the East that they’d been craving for a decade.
It was a massive concession, but I needed his silence more than I needed that seat.
For him to turn a blind eye when needed, and give a vote when called upon. Simple.
Even with my offer, the Chairman hesitated. He’s a bloodhound for a bad deal; he caught the scent of sentimentality and wanted to know why a Kade was demolishing the cornerstone of his own empire.
I saw the wolfish look on his face that questioned if I was my father’s son at this moment and I mirrored it, just to dare him to ask.
That was when the text from Marcus came through.
Marcus: Orbit holdings, Sterling's Munich shell co. 20% discrepancy between what he reported to auditors vs actual offshore accounts. He hasn't reported to the board yet. You should use it. You owe me big for this one BTW.
I looked up from my phone, a cold smile touching my lips. Marcus had spent his life being the disappointing son, which meant he’d spent his life learning exactly where his father buried the bodies, and apparently he kept receipts.
“Chairman Sterling,” I said, leaning back and steepling my fingers. “We can discuss Singapore. Or, we can discuss Orbit holdings and why there’s a twenty-percent discrepancy in the Munich reports you submitted to the auditors last month.”
The Chairman went very still. The air in the room curdled.
“Marcus,” he hissed, the name sounding like a curse.
A son's loyalty is a fickle thing, especially when he sees his father trying to block his friend's happiness. I wouldn't say that aloud.
I leaned toward him, and met his gaze. “Give me your vote on the amendment, and the Orbit files stay in this room. You get Singapore. I get my wife's freedom. Everyone wins.”
Happy wife, happy everything.
Ten minutes later, I had the Chairman's signature, and his word.
I didn't feel like a victor. I felt like a man selling off his kingdom brick by brick just to buy back a single night of peace. As I stepped out of the boardroom and into the marble-lined hallway leading to my office, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Marcus.
“Tell me the old man’s face turned a shade of purple when you hit him with Orbit holdings,” Marcus’s voice crackled through the line.
I could hear the distinct splash of liquid into a glass, and the low thrum of music mixed with giggles in the background.
He was probably already halfway through a bottle of something expensive, surrounded by people whose names he wouldn't remember tomorrow.
“He didn't look happy,” I admitted, placing my forehead on the cool glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the hallway. “The information you gave did the trick. He signed the amendment.”
I heard Marcus’s dark chuckle—a sound of pure, unadulterated mischief. “It’s one of the ones I was reserving for his funeral, Orion. You better know you just cost me a very large inheritance if he ever traces that leak back to me.”
“He won’t. I framed it as internal due diligence. He failed to report it to the board, I found out. Case closed.” I exhaled, the tension in my shoulders finally beginning to crack. “Thanks, Marcus. Truly.”
“Don’t get sentimental on me, Kade. It’s unlike you,” Marcus teased, his tone sharpening with his usual, dry wit. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it because watching my father lose a move to a man who’s whipped is the most entertainment I’ve had all year.”
I winced at the word, but didn't argue. I couldn't.
“Just make sure she doesn’t leave you,” Marcus added, his voice dropping an octave, becoming uncharacteristically serious for a split second.
“Because if I betrayed the Sterling legacy just for you to end up in a divorce court, I’m going to personally kill you.
I’ll make it look like an accident…a pathetic tragic fall from one of your own skyscrapers. ”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Now go home and grovel. I have a hottie waiting who doesn’t care about my emotional growth. Some of us still have reputations to maintain.”
The line went dead. My mouth curved to the side in an attempt to stifle a smile.
Go home and grovel.
Honestly, I was looking forward to it. Anything to get my wife back.
But first I had to speak with my mother.
Not for her approval but because King had informed me I needed her signature as a primary stakeholder of the Kade trust. As much as I didn’t want her further in my business, I had no choice.
My assistant informed me once she arrived in her office and I dropped everything I was working on and headed straight to the twenty-fourth floor of the Ironshore building.
I didn’t waste any time explaining or talking. I handed her the document and sat, waiting for her commentary. There was no way she would sign this without letting me know how much I had failed here. As always.
She looked at the amendment King had drafted as if it were a death warrant.
“You’re a fool, Orion,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “Giving up the scepter for a girl who doesn’t even want you. She hasn’t decided in the last six months if she truly wants to be Mrs. Kade. She doesn’t host, she doesn't socialize. She treats this name like a burden.”
“That’s because it is a burden, Mother,” I said, my back resting on the sofa. “One I’ve made unnecessarily heavy for her.”
“You’re gambling with everything we’ve built.”
“I’m gambling on the fact that building an empire on a woman’s humiliation is a poor foundation,” I countered. “If my father’s legacy collapses because I gave my wife her dignity back, then it deserves to fall.”
She turned, her brows farrowed. “I won’t sign it. As a primary stakeholder in the Kade Trust, I refuse to authorize a redistribution that leaves us vulnerable to a Fernández’s whim.”
I knew she’d say that. I’d come prepared.
“You’ll sign it,” I softened my tone, “because if you don’t, the doctors will find that my father is too exhausted for visitors during his lucid window on Thursday.”
She went perfectly still. “You wouldn’t dare keep me from those sessions.”
“Try me,” I challenged. “I am the sole executor of his medical and legal directives. If this amendment isn’t signed and filed by tomorrow morning, you’re not going near that room.
You won’t have access to King while he’s in there.
You won’t hear a single word my father has for you before the will is finalized. ”
It was a low blow. It was cruel. It was exactly how she had raised me to play.
“You would choose her over your own father’s peace?” she hissed.
“I am choosing the only person in this family who still has a soul,” I said, standing to my feet, hands in my pockets. “Sign the papers, Mother. Or spend Thursday afternoon in the garden working your imagination to hell.”
Her jaw tightened so hard I heard the click of her teeth. She knew I wasn't bluffing. In her world, leverage was the only truth, and I currently held the only piece that mattered to her.
She walked to the desk, grabbed a gold fountain pen, and scratched her name across the bottom of the document with enough force to nearly tear the vellum. She shoved the folder back at me, her face a mask of pure, aristocratic loathing.
“You’ve let her ruin you,” she whispered.
“No,” I said, tucking the folder under my arm. “I’ve let her save me. You just can’t tell the difference.”
I got back to my office, tried to focus on work but all I could still see was my wife’s face, her disappointment. One more day and I can prove to her that I’m worthy of her.
That night, I slept on my office couch, fighting the temptation to call her, to check her GPS tracker, to see if she was sleeping in her bed or our bed. Because it wasn’t just mine anymore. It’s ours.
I stopped myself every time.
I was trying to earn the right to look her in the eye again. Not through surveillance.
By day two, I had Demola Fernández and Blaise sitting across from my lawyers.
I watched as my father-in-law realised his bargaining chip had just become his boss.
I watched him try to bring up the heir requirement one more time, and I felt the darkness in me surge.
I told him that if he ever spoke of her as a vessel again, I would liquidate every Fernández debt I held and bury him under the remains.
Blaise looked at me with a shocked admiration.
We’ve come a long way from being business rivals, and grown to respect each other a lot more in the past months.
I’d also let him in on a lot of the merger business deals and had him overseeing the projects with Andreas Doukas.
That day, the look he had wasn’t just appreciation.
It was more of recognising what I was doing.
He knew I was burning the world down for her.
Once the ink was dry, I waited. I didn’t rush home, though I was dying to.
Nerves and satisfaction colliding in my chest in equal measure.
I wanted to let her know what I had done for her, to redeem myself or rather what was left of myself in her eyes.
But I waited, to let her have the space I’d stolen from her.
That was three weeks ago. Three weeks of being nothing but a phantom in my own home.
Three weeks of watching her eat breakfast without uttering a single word, missing her so much it felt like slow poison threading deep in my veins.
I was fighting for my life, and this time, I wasn’t the strategist or the heir to an empire.
I was just a man, waiting to see if his wife would ever call him by his name again.