Chapter 6
Lena's POV
I left the Reynolds estate before Isabelle could ask more questions. The Bentley's engine hummed beneath me, steady and reassuring in a way nothing else felt that morning. Beyond the windshield, Silverton's skyline rose through November fog—glass towers reflecting clouds, the lake a flat gray line at the horizon.
Marcus arrested. Grant Investment in freefall. Stock down thirty percent in pre-market trading.
The facts arranged themselves in neat columns in my mind, the way they always did. Financial exposure. Legal liability. Shareholder panic. Board response protocols. I'd spent two years drafting contingency plans for corporate crises—other people's crises, other families' disasters.
Not your own father being led away in handcuffs.
My phone buzzed against the console. Unknown number. I let it go to voicemail. Two minutes later, it rang again. Same number.
She's calling from the landline. Which means her cell's been ringing off the hook. Press. Lawyers. Board members demanding answers.
Third call. I pulled onto the shoulder, engine idling, and picked up.
"Lena." My mother's voice came through sharp, controlled, vibrating with barely suppressed panic. "Where are you?"
"Driving to the office."
"You need to come home. Now. We have to discuss—"
"There's nothing to discuss." I watched a transport truck rumble past, felt the car shake slightly. "Marcus made his choices. The board will handle the fallout."
"Don't be naive." Her tone shifted, that particular edge she got when logic wasn't working and she needed to deploy authority instead. "This isn't just about Marcus. The entire company is at risk. Our reputation. Our position. Everything I built—"
"Is already compromised." The words came out flat, factual. "Has been for years. Marcus has been playing fast and loose with company funds since before I finished law school. You knew it. The board knew it. Everyone just looked the other way because confronting him meant admitting you'd let a—"
I stopped. Let the silence stretch.
"Let a what, Lena?" Her voice dropped, dangerous now.
Say it. Say what he really is. What you've always known he was.
"A liability," I finished. "Someone who married you for access, not loyalty."
"That's enough."
"Is it?" My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "Because from where I'm sitting, Marcus being arrested is the least surprising thing that's happened in the past decade. The only question is why it took this long."
Silence. Then: "I need you to call Rowen."
There it was. The real reason for the call, stripped of pretense, laid bare.
"No."
"Lena, listen to me—"
"No." I said it again, harder this time. "I'm not calling Rowen. I'm not asking the Reynolds family to intervene. This is a Grant family problem, and we'll handle it like Grant family problems have always been handled—badly, expensively, and with maximum damage to everyone involved."
"Don't be flippant." Her voice rose, control slipping. "Do you understand what's at stake here? The stock price. The investigations. If Marcus cooperates with federal prosecutors, if he starts talking about internal deals, about board decisions—"
"Then you should have removed him from the CFO position five years ago." My pulse was steady, my voice level. Clinical. "You should have bought him out when he first started making moves. You should have protected the company instead of protecting your marriage."
The sharp intake of breath on the other end told me I'd landed the hit.
"How dare you—"
"Why?" The question came out harder than I'd intended, all the years of watching her sacrifice everything—dignity, power, her daughter's future—on the altar of a marriage that had been dead for a decade. "Why are you still protecting him? He's been embezzling from the company. He's been cheating on you for God knows how long. He has a second family, Mother. Children. A whole other life. And you're still—what? Hoping he'll come back? Hoping you can fix this?"
"You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly." My voice was cold now, the same tone I used in depositions when opposing counsel tried to rattle me. "I understand that you've spent thirty years trying to turn a transaction into a love story. That you thought having me would somehow make him stay. That you've convinced yourself this marriage is salvageable if you just—what? Endure enough? Sacrifice enough?"
"Stop it."
"He used you." The words felt sharp in my mouth, years of observation crystallizing into brutal truth. "From the moment he married you, he saw you as a tool. Access to capital. A seat at the table. Power he couldn't get any other way. And you let him—"
"I said stop." Her voice cracked, fury and something else underneath—something that sounded almost like desperation. "You have no idea what I've done for this family. What I've sacrificed. What I've endured to keep everything intact."
"By turning your daughter into a bargaining chip?" The question hung in the air between us, cold and final. "By arranging a contract marriage to shore up business alliances? By treating me like I'm just another asset to be deployed when convenient?"
Silence.
Then, quietly, viciously: "Everything I've done, I've done for you. To give you options. To give you power. To make sure you'd never be trapped the way I—"
She stopped.
The way I was.
The unspoken words echoed louder than anything she'd actually said.
"I'm not you," I said softly. "And I'm not going to make your mistakes."
"Calling Rowen isn't a mistake. It's strategy. It's survival. Grant Investment needs capital. We need legal protection. We need—"
"The Reynolds family to clean up our mess?" I cut her off. "No. We don't. And even if we did, I wouldn't be the one to ask. My marriage to Rowen ends in three weeks, Mother. The contract expires. I'm not renewing it. That was always the plan."
"Plans change." Her voice turned hard again, the desperate edge buried under steel. "Your grandfather built this company from nothing. Your father—Marcus—has nearly destroyed it. You're the only Grant left who can salvage anything. And if that means extending your contract marriage, maintaining ties to the Reynolds family, doing what's necessary for the sake of—"
"No."
The word dropped like a stone.