Chapter 2 - WHAT MY HUSBAND DIDN’T KNOW
Roman offered me an annulment before midnight.
I did not expect that.
His attorney, Luca and Olivia were still in the suite when he placed the marriage contract on the coffee table.
“If you want out,” he said, “I’ll have papers prepared tomorrow.”
My throat tightened.
“You spent six months arranging this marriage.”
“I arranged a marriage with a willing participant.”
I almost laughed.
“You thought I was willing?”
“I thought you were loyal to Charles.”
“You never asked.”
“No.”
For the first time since meeting him, Roman looked uncomfortable with his own answer.
“I decided who you were before you entered the room.”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
Olivia stared between us.
I sat down.
“An annulment doesn’t solve my problem.”
“Charles?”
“Olivia.”
My sister immediately protested.
“I’m nineteen, Evie.”
“I know.”
“I’m not a child.”
“I know.”
But she did not know our father.
Not really.
Charles had screamed at her.
Controlled her cards.
Threatened tuition.
That was enough for Olivia to believe she understood him.
She had never been in the upstairs study after midnight.
She had never learned which floorboards outside his bedroom creaked.
She had never calculated whether apologizing immediately or waiting thirty seconds reduced the risk of making him angrier.
Because I had.
I kept those lessons for myself.
Roman watched me.
“What does he have over Olivia?”
“Money. School. Housing.”
“All solvable.”
“You think every problem is financial?”
“No.”
His eyes went to my covered wrist.
“Not anymore.”
That silenced me.
Roman sent a private physician to examine the marks only after asking permission.
That detail mattered.
Dr. Sophia Marin was perhaps fifty, quiet and direct.
She examined my shoulder, back and arms while Roman remained outside.
Some scars were old enough that even I had forgotten which incidents created them.
A thin white line across my shoulder came from a broken picture frame.
Two marks near my ribs came from falling against a cabinet after Charles shoved me.
The newest bruise was three days old.
Dr. Marin asked:
“Do you feel safe returning to your father’s house?”
“No.”
It was the first time a doctor had ever asked me that.
It was also the first time I answered honestly.
Roman’s attorney was named Elena Russo.
When I returned to the sitting room, she had spread copies of the wedding contract across the table.
“This agreement is strange,” she said.
“That is a polite description.”
She almost smiled.
“Your father transferred certain voting rights to Roman upon marriage.”
“I know.”
“But Charles has been stripping assets from the underlying companies for weeks.”
Roman turned.
“How much?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Elena tapped another clause.
“Worse, there are indemnity provisions attempting to push liability from Whitmore Transportation toward entities now partially controlled by you.”
Roman’s expression hardened.
“My father was using the marriage to dump his problems on you.”
“And on you,” Elena said.
I stared at her.
“What?”
She showed me the signature page.
One corporate guarantee bore my name.
“I didn’t sign that.”
Roman leaned closer.
“You’re sure?”
“I know my signature.”
The room went quiet.
Elena placed the page in a separate folder.
“Then we may have forgery.”
For six months Roman had believed the marriage was his revenge.
Charles had apparently believed it was his escape route.
The irony might have been funny if Nicholas DeLuca were not dead.
I looked at Roman.
“What happened to your brother?”
He went cold again.
Not cruel.
Closed.
“Nicholas entered one of your father’s warehouses looking for records Charles had promised to surrender.”
“Why?”
“Because Whitmore trucks had been moving cargo through companies that owed my family money.”
I said nothing.
Roman continued.
“Charles gave us a security schedule. Said the building would be empty.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“Something went wrong inside. Nicholas never came home.”
I did not ask for details.
His grief sat too close to the surface.
“You think Dad caused it.”
“I know he lied about the schedule.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Roman looked at me sharply.
“No.”
He seemed almost surprised I challenged him.
“It isn’t.”
“Did Nicholas know my father personally?”
“Enough.”
“What records was he collecting?”
Roman hesitated.
“Shipping ledgers.”
Something moved in my memory.
A black ledger.
Dad kept one inside the bottom drawer of his study.
Not business books.
Handwritten notes.
Codes.
Names.
Once, when I was sixteen, I opened the drawer looking for stamps.
Charles found me.
That was the night I learned the lock on my bedroom door worked from the hallway too.
“I’ve seen one.”
Roman leaned forward.
“What?”
“A black ledger.”
“Where?”
“My father’s study.”
“Could you find it again?”
“No.”
His expression tightened.
“Why not?”
“Because three months ago the drawer was empty.”
Roman stared at me.
“You checked?”
I looked away.
“I’ve been checking things for years.”
That was something else he had not expected.
Charles thought quiet meant obedient.
It never did.
I had photographs of documents.
Screenshots of strange transfers.
Dates when men arrived after midnight.
License plates.
Not because I knew what any of it meant.
Because evidence had become instinct.
If people spent years telling you something did not happen, eventually you start keeping proof that reality exists.
I opened my phone.
There was a hidden encrypted folder.
Roman watched as I scrolled.
My father shaking hands with a city official.
A bank notice.
A warehouse invoice.
A photograph of the black ledger sitting open on Charles’s desk.
Roman took my phone carefully.
He zoomed in.
“What date?”
“Five months ago.”
His entire body went still.
The page showed several warehouse numbers.
One was circled.
Roman whispered:
“That’s where Nicholas died.”
I looked at him.
“I took that photo three weeks before it happened.”
Roman’s eyes lifted to mine.
The hatred he once aimed at me had vanished completely.
In its place was something colder.
Purpose.
He turned toward Elena.
“Freeze every voting action the agreement gives me authority to stop.”
Elena nodded.
“Until when?”
Roman looked at the photograph.
“Until Charles explains why my brother’s warehouse was already circled in his private ledger before Nicholas ever went there.”
Then he looked at me.
“You said you’ve been collecting evidence for years.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
I swallowed.
“Enough that if my father ever found the folder, the wedding would be the least dangerous thing he did to me.”
Roman went silent.
May you like
And that was the moment our marriage stopped being his revenge.
It became an investigation.
