Chapter 137 A Marriage Caught on Camera
"It’s the only way to stabilize the company," Tristan argued. "If we show any weakness now, the Whitmores will find another way to attack. We have to be the Johnstons."
"I am a Serrano," I said, my voice rising. Elias stirred in my arms, and I lowered my tone, but the ice remained. "And I am not your pawn, Tristan. You don't get to decide when I am hidden and when I am public."
"I’m not trying to decide for you!" he snapped, his own frustration breaking through the grief. "I’m trying to survive! Look at the news, Minerva! They are outside the doors! They want to see the 'Mistress' turn into the 'Wife'. If you don't give them that, they will keep digging. They will find the charity ward. They will find everything."
"Let them find it," I said.
I stood up, adjusting Elias against my shoulder. I picked up the marriage certificate and the bearer shares.
"I am going home," I told him. "Not to your penthouse. Not to the safe house. I am going to a hotel. I need time to think without your 'calculations' in my ear."
"Minerva, please," Tristan reached for my arm, but he stopped himself. He looked at the boy. "He needs his father."
"He needs a man who doesn't lie to his mother," I replied.
I walked toward the door. Salazar stepped aside, his expression unreadable. Diego followed me, already calling my security detail to clear a path through the garage.
As I reached the elevator, I turned back one last time.
Tristan was standing in the center of the boardroom, surrounded by the ghosts of his family's corruption and the flickering blue light of the television. He looked smaller than I had ever seen him. The crown of the Johnston Group was sitting on the table between us, and for the first time in his life, he didn't have the strength to pick it up.
"The marriage certificate is public, Tristan," I said. "But that doesn't mean we are married. It just means the world knows how much you cost me."
I stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut, cutting off the sight of him.
The descent felt like it took hours. When the doors opened in the garage, the flashbulbs were already there. Somehow, a few photographers had breached the perimeter.
The light was blinding. I tucked Elias’s head under my chin, shielding his eyes. I walked through the chaos, my face a mask of stone.
"Miss Serrano! Are you returning to the penthouse?"
"Is the marriage still valid?"
"Will you be taking over as Chairman?"
I didn't answer. I reached the car. Marcus opened the door, and I slid inside, pulling Elias into the seat beside me.
As we pulled out of the garage and onto the rain-slicked streets, my phone buzzed. It was a notification from a social media app.
It was a post from Celeste Whitmore.
It was a photo of her and Tristan from the gala where they announced the engagement. But she had cropped herself out. The caption read: The truth is a bitter pill. I was a puppet in a game I didn't understand. I hope the legal wife finds the peace I never had.
She was playing the victim.
I turned off the phone. I looked out the window at the city. The skyscrapers were tall and cold, monuments to the people who had tried to crush me.
I was the legal wife. I was the majority shareholder. I had won the war.
So why did it feel like I was the only one still bleeding?
I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the leather headrest. My hand rested on the marriage certificate.
I thought about the night we signed it. I thought about the way he had looked at me in that small, dusty office. He had promised to love me forever.
He just forgot to mention that "forever" came with a contract that made my existence a crime.
The car slowed down as we approached the hotel. I saw the line of reporters waiting at the entrance. There was no escape.
But as I looked at the certificate one last time, I noticed something on the back.
There was a faint, handwritten note in the margin. It wasn't in Tristan’s handwriting. It was in my mother’s.
My heart skipped a beat.
The note was a series of coordinates and a date. A date from three years ago. The day Tristan had first arrived in Port Sterling.
Beside the coordinates, she had written a single word in Tagalog.
Bantay. Guardian.
My mother hadn't just hidden the shares. She had been watching the man who came to find them.
And she had left me a warning that I was only seeing now, when the world already knew my name.