Chapter 13 A wife
ALEXANDER POV
“Mr. Miller, with all due respect, the board has concerns.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the ceiling for exactly one second. Then I looked back at the screen.
Richard Calloway. Sixty two years old. Third generation money which meant he had never actually built anything himself and compensated for it by making other people’s lives difficult in boardrooms. He was sitting across the conference table on my screen with three other men who had the collective energy of people who had rehearsed this conversation and still weren’t confident about it.
Smart of them.
“The concerns being,” I said pleasantly.
“Stability,” Richard said. He folded his hands on the table like that gave the word more weight. “The Morrison account is one of the largest acquisitions this firm has seen in twenty years. Our investors need assurance that the man leading this merger is—” he paused, searching for the word he had clearly been coached to use ”—grounded.”
“Grounded,” I repeated.
“You’ve been a widower for four years Mr. Miller. You relocated twice in that time. You have a young son and no partner. Our investors—”
“Are looking for a wife,” I said.
Richard blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t apologize Richard, it’s beneath you.” I picked up my pen and turned it over in my fingers slowly. “You don’t care about my grief. You don’t care about my son. What you care about is whether I can be controlled and the answer to that has always been no but I find it amusing that you’ve decided a wife is the mechanism through which you’d attempt it.”
Silence on the other end of the call.
“Mr. Miller—”
“The Morrison deal closes on my terms or it doesn’t close,” I said. “You have seventy two hours to decide which outcome works better for you. I’d use them wisely.”
I ended the call.
The room was dark except for the city glow bleeding through the windows. I hadn’t turned on the lights. I rarely do. Light makes things visible. I prefer shadows.
I poured two fingers of Macallan. No ice. Ice waters down truth.
A wife.
My thumb brushed the platinum band on my left ring finger—still there, still tight, still Ana's.
I hadn’t taken it off in four years.
I wouldn’t take it off until every single person who put her in the ground was bleeding out at my feet.
The last woman I had called my wife was buried in a cemetery twelve blocks from this building.
The only person I ever allowed to matter. The only one who ever made me walk away from something bigger than myself.
I left the brotherhood for her.
I walked away from the table, from the blood debts, from the empire I helped carve out of bodies and fear. And the second my back was turned, they put a bomb on her plane.
They accused me of killing her.
Me.
The man who would have torn the world apart to keep her breathing.
They’re still breathing because I’m patient.
When I decide their time ends, they’ll beg for the quick death I won’t give them. They’ll scream until their throats bleed, until their eyes pop, until every bone is broken in ways that make surgeons flinch. I’ll enjoy every second of it. The brotherhood taught me how to kill. They also taught me how to love the act itself, the moment the begging stops being words and becomes wet, choking gurgles. I perfected it.
But Rory…
Rory was still breathing because every time I looked at her I saw Ana's face wearing someone else’s skin.
I had spent the entire day watching her with Liam—sitting on the floor, talking, signing softly sometimes, laughing when he knocked over blocks. Every time she smiled I saw Ana's ghost flinch behind her eyes.
I could kill her tonight.
One call. One quiet team dispatched. One body in the river before dawn. I’ve done it cleaner. I’ve done it messier. I’ve enjoyed both.
The only thing keeping her alive is that face.
And the sick, rotting miracle I keep waiting for: that one day Anastasia will claw her way out of that soft, trembling body and look at me again.
So, till then I'll keep her until I figured out whether Anastasia had somehow found a way back to me through this woman or whether the universe was simply cruel enough to put her face on a stranger and call it a coincidence.
I didn’t believe in coincidences.
I picked up my glass.
The door swung opened.
“Daddy.”
“Liam.”
He climbed into the chair across from my desk and sat with his legs dangling, looking at me with those eyes that had always seen too much. He had that expression...organized, prepared, ready to present.
I waited.
“Rory has a problem,” he said.
“Does she?”
“Her ex fiancé came to her apartment last night,” he said. “The one who married her best friend. He was horrible to her. He told her no man wants her and he laughed about it.” The edge in his voice was so specific and so familiar that for a moment I was looking at myself through a much smaller face. “She told him she has a millionaire boyfriend to shut him up. And she promised to bring him to a birthday party next week.”
“Mm.”
“But she doesn’t have one,” Liam said. “A millionaire boyfriend.” He paused. “Yet.”
I looked at my son.
He looked back at me with the patience of someone who had not yet reached the main point and knew I knew it.
“You’re a billionaire,” he said.
“I am,” I agreed.
“Rory needs a billionaire.”
“She needs a boyfriend,” I corrected. “Those are different things.”
“Not really,” Liam said. “A billionaire is better than a boyfriend. A billionaire boyfriend is the best thing. There is nothing better than a billionaire daddy. Nothing in the whole world.” He said it with the complete conviction of someone who had considered all possible alternatives and dismissed them entirely. “You should go with her.”
“No,” I said.
“Daddy—”
“No.”
Liam looked at me for a long moment. Then he tried a different angle the way he always did when the direct approach failed.
“She saved me,” he said quietly. "I could die if she hadn't showed up daddy. She deserves someone showing up for her, even if it's just a party."
“Go to bed Liam,” I said.
“But—”
“Bed.”
He climbed down from the chair. Walked to the door. Stopped with his hand on the frame and looked back at me with one last card.
“That man is going to be there,” he said. “The one who laughed at her. And she’s going to walk in alone.”
“Goodnight Liam,” I said.
He left.
I turned back to the Morrison file and opened it.
Aurora Hales and her party were not my problem.