CHAPTER THREE
Max
MY FATHER TOLD ME I was getting married over breakfast with the same efficiency he brought to every decision he considered settled.
He set his coffee down, folded the financial section of the newspaper, and looked across the table at me. “The alliance with Edison is moving forward. You’ll marry his daughter.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“His daughter. Payton.”
Across the table, my mother went still, her hand hovering beside the cream before she drew it back. My father continued drinking his coffee without acknowledging either reaction.
“You’ve already discussed this with Edison?”
“For months.”
“And at no point did it occur to you to mention my marriage was part of the negotiation?”
“It wasn’t relevant until the framework was settled.”
“My marriage wasn’t relevant?”
“Don’t be dramatic.” He used that response whenever someone objected to a decision he’d already made.
Winslow breakfasts were rarely intimate affairs. Even with only the three of us, the enormous dining room had the formality of a business meeting. My father occupied the chair at the head, a position he’d claimed so thoroughly I couldn’t remember anyone else sitting there.
“Explain the deal,” I said.
“You don’t need the details.”
“If I’m apparently one of the terms, I think I do.”
Mom lowered her gaze to her plate. Her silence irritated me almost as much as his certainty. She hated the way Conrad controlled everything and had admitted it to me privately more than once. Whenever she had a chance to challenge him directly, though, she retreated.
“Edison’s company has assets we want,” Conrad said. “We have infrastructure he needs. Combined distribution, property holdings, and supplier leverage would increase both groups’ position considerably.”
“So merge.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Then explain the complication.”
“Family alignment removes certain long-term risks.”
“You want me to marry a stranger because you don’t trust a contract?”
“I want you to understand the value of permanence.”
“Then sign a longer contract.”
“Conrad,” Mom said quietly. He barely glanced at her. “The decision is made.”
I had heard some version of those words throughout my life.
Conrad had selected my schools, directed my education, arranged my internships, decided which divisions of Winslow Retail Group I’d work in.
Every decision came under the banner of preparing me for the company I’d eventually inherit.
I’d spent years finding ways to claim parts of my life for myself, convincing myself he’d eventually accept that I’d become my own man.
Clearly, I’d overestimated him.
“You can’t force me to marry anyone.”
“No, I can’t.” His easy agreement made me suspicious immediately. “If you refuse, the alliance ends. Edison walks, and several projects tied to the agreement collapse. There will be consequences.”
“For the company?”
“For all of us.” He answered in detail: the distribution expansion I’d spent two years building, a real estate acquisition already in motion, planned store openings affecting thousands of future jobs, contracts relying on Edison’s logistics network.
As he spoke, I understood exactly what he’d done.
He’d spent months constructing an agreement that connected my marriage to projects he knew I cared about.
Refusing him now would mean abandoning work I’d spent years building and jeopardizing plans involving thousands of employees.
He’d arranged everything carefully enough to make my consent feel irrelevant.
I turned to my mother. Her expression held enough guilt to make me suspicious. “You knew?”
“I only found out recently.”
“How recently?”
“A week.”
I looked away, anger burning hotter. Conrad had given everyone else time to absorb the decision before informing the person expected to stand at the altar.
“Who is she?”
“Edison’s only daughter.”
“That tells me nothing. How old is she?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“What does she do?” He paused before answering, which caught my attention. My father always knew what people did. “She works with her mother. They run a bookstore.”
“Edison’s daughter runs a bookstore?”
“An independent bookstore,” he said, faint contempt in his voice.
“Why haven’t I heard of her?”
“Edison kept that part of his personal life private.”
I understood the implication. Edison had a daughter he’d kept out of sight for years, now suddenly useful to a corporate negotiation. “Has she agreed to this?”
“Yes.”
“She already agreed?”
“She did.”
Payton had agreed to marry me without meeting me, without knowing whether we could tolerate an hour together.
I knew almost nothing about her, yet irritation quickly filled the gaps.
She was Edison’s daughter, and she’d apparently accepted his deal willingly.
At the time that seemed like enough information to form an opinion.
“The first dinner is Friday,” Conrad said.
“You scheduled that too?”
“Max, perhaps you should meet her before you decide how you feel about all of this,” Mom said.
“You mean the woman who agreed to marry me before we’ve even met?”
“You don’t know why she agreed.”
“Neither do you.”
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”
I pushed my chair back and stood. “I hate you,” I told my father, before I could dismiss the impulse.
Mom inhaled sharply. Conrad held my gaze without flinching. “That will pass.”
“No. It won’t.”
I walked out before he could dismiss that too. At the time I believed Conrad’s interference was the part I’d resent most. Years later, the judgment I passed on Payton that morning bothered me far more. I had known almost nothing about her, and somehow decided that was enough.
I met Payton three days later at a restaurant Conrad had selected, a private dining room with a wine list thick enough to qualify as literature.
I found my father already seated with Edison, looking surprisingly comfortable together.
Conrad rarely relaxed around anyone he considered an equal.
Sitting across from Edison, he seemed to have found someone whose instincts he understood.
“Max,” Conrad said. “Sit.”
Edison studied me openly. In person, the polished public image was harder to maintain. There was an assessing quality to his stare that reminded me immediately of Conrad.
“Good to finally meet you.”
“Likewise,” I said, though I felt nothing of the sort.
“They’re late,” Conrad said, checking his watch.
“Payton and her mother,” Edison explained.
“Her mother is coming?”
“Kim.” His voice stayed flat, stripped of any familiarity that might suggest they’d once shared enough of a relationship to have a child together.
Then the door opened, and Edison’s daughter was nothing like the woman I’d imagined.
Payton entered beside her mother in a simple dark blue dress, little jewelry, nothing suggesting she’d dressed to impress either father.
Discomfort was plain on her face. She was also beautiful, a fact I registered immediately despite my determination to resent the situation.
Her blonde hair fell over one shoulder, and her attention settled on Edison with the warmth draining from her expression the instant it landed on him.
Kim seemed equally uncomfortable, small and guarded, the posture of someone who’d learned that expensive manners didn’t guarantee kindness.
“Payton,” Edison said, not acknowledging Kim.
“Hello,” Payton said, her voice controlled but cool.
We stood. She held out her hand. “Max.”
“Payton,” I said, taking it. Her grip was warm. I couldn’t tell whether she was genuinely calm or practiced at hiding her nerves.
“Just Kim,” her mother said with a smile when I hesitated over what to call her, and some of the tension eased.
Within the first few minutes of dinner I began questioning the picture I’d formed of her.
She thanked the server every time he approached, declined wine for sparkling water, and studied the first course before picking up her fork the way people did when quietly working out what a meal cost. The wealthy daughters I’d grown up around rarely gave restaurant prices that much thought.
Conrad and Edison dominated the conversation with business until my father turned to Payton. “Your father tells me you work in books.”
Her expression shifted almost imperceptibly at father. “My mother and I run an independent bookstore. I’ve worked there full-time since college.”
“How charming,” Conrad said.
“What kind of bookstore?” I asked.
She seemed surprised I’d joined the conversation. “General trade. Fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, local authors.”
“You enjoy it?”
“I love it,” she said, without hesitation.
“What’s it called?”
“The Turning Page.”
“I think I’ve heard of it. Probably through work, regional market reports.”
“Oh.” Something shifted, her shoulders drawing in slightly.
“The bookstore isn’t relevant to tonight,” Edison said.
“Max asked me a question.”
“We’re discussing the future.”
“Whose future?”
“Everyone’s.”
Her fingers tightened around the stem of her water glass.
The exchange confirmed what I’d been noticing since she entered.
She wasn’t comfortable with Edison. Every time he spoke for her, tension crept into her posture.
She certainly didn’t resemble a woman excited about the arrangement our fathers had made.
I saw all of that and still returned to the same fact. She had agreed to marry me. I let it outweigh everything I’d observed.
After the meal, our fathers stepped away to take a call, and Kim excused herself, leaving Payton and me alone for the first time.
“For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, moving her fork across the plate, “I didn’t ask for this either.”
There was enough strain in her voice that I should have paid attention. Instead the resentment I’d carried into the restaurant got there first.
“You’re still here,” I said.
Her expression closed immediately. “I am.”
I waited for an explanation. She gave me none.
I interpreted her silence in the worst possible way, assuming there had to be something in the arrangement she wanted badly enough.
I had no evidence for any of those conclusions.
I simply found them easier to believe than the possibility she’d been pressured into the same arrangement I resented.
Kim returned, ending the conversation. I let it end.
Payton had told me as clearly as she could that the marriage wasn’t something she wanted. I’d been given every reason to ask one simple question. Why did you agree? I never asked it.
Conrad told me she’d agreed before I ever met her, and I used that fact to justify almost everything that followed. I never stopped to find out what had led her to say yes.
The Turning Page had been struggling for years. Edison’s development had pulled customers away from the business Kim and Payton spent years building. Edison knew they were vulnerable when he entered his daughter’s life, and he used the store to get what he wanted from her.
I knew none of that when I married her. Conrad gave me the version that suited him, and I was angry enough to accept it without questioning it.
Payton had given me reasons to question my assumptions from the beginning, stiffening whenever Edison called himself her father, working full-time at an independent bookstore despite a biological father wealthy enough to provide anything.
The details didn’t fit the woman I’d decided she was.
I noticed the contradictions and left them unexplored.
Resentment was easier when I could direct some of it toward her.
I decided early to keep an emotional distance from Payton regardless of how our marriage developed.
Her beauty complicated that immediately, and getting to know her made it harder.
I ignored all of it. I intended to fulfill every practical obligation: fidelity, respect, financial security, my presence whenever our public lives required it.
I convinced myself that made me a decent husband.
During the first months, Payton kept trying to make a life with me.
She suggested dinners, movies, once a weekend away where neither family could interfere.
I told her I had work. She never suggested another trip.
Each moment seemed insignificant enough to dismiss at the time.
Looking back, their meaning was obvious.
She was trying to build a marriage with me, and I kept closing every door she opened.
I still gave her enough attention to convince myself I wasn’t being cruel.
I knew how she took her coffee, which foods she avoided, that she read more when anxious and called Kim every day.
I became good enough at reading her moods to know when something was bothering her before she said a word.
Somehow I could know my wife that well while refusing to examine what the knowledge meant.
I called it familiarity, or responsibility, whenever the question came too close.
Meanwhile Payton adapted to the boundaries I’d created.
Her invitations became less frequent. The weekend suggestions disappeared entirely.
Eventually she stopped reaching for my hand when we were alone.
In public she remained warm and composed.
At home she learned to live beside me without asking for anything I’d already taught her I wouldn’t give.
I mistook that change for acceptance.
I had spent so long viewing Payton through the resentment I felt toward Conrad that I failed to see what should have been obvious from the beginning. My father had manipulated both of us, and Edison had exploited his own daughter’s love for her mother to secure the deal.
Payton entered our marriage trying to save someone she loved.
I entered it determined to make sure she never became someone I loved.
Six years later, I would finally understand what that decision had cost her.