Betrayed By My Fiancé, I Married His Most Powerful Enemy

Chapter 15: Holding Empty Weapons

"I am the president of Xova Entertainment!" Liam slapped the table and the composure he wore for staff and reporters cracked completely. He stared at me like I had grown a second head. "The final decision is mine, not yours. Why are you taking Amara’s deal?"

Not for long.

The thought came quietly and settled with complete certainty somewhere behind my eyes. I did not say it out loud. I did not need to. I just looked at him and let him finish.

"I am not taking it for myself," I said carefully, keeping my voice measured and reasonable. "Lumière Étoile requested the swap. I was trying to hold the contract for Xova rather than let them walk away entirely. And frankly Liam, the fact that you would rather lose the contract than let Amara lose the deal is making me wonder whether the rumors about the two of you are more than rumors."

"Of course not!" He backtracked immediately, his hands coming up. "I just thought, since we are nearly married, you could stay home. Let Amara have her career —"

"Then go explain that to Mr. Fontaine," I said. I let my expression fall into something wounded and tired, just enough to make him feel like he had the advantage. "Also I want to understand something. You say I took this deal from Amara." I paused and looked at him steadily. "Has she not taken enough from me already? I have let her have everything. My jobs. My credit. My name. And in return she accused me publicly and tried to humiliate me in a hospital bed on a live stream." I let the silence sit. "When exactly is it enough, Liam?"

"Valerie, you retreated from public life yourself," Amara cut in sharply from her wheelchair, her voice smooth and practiced. "Those roles were not taken from you. They were given up. And with your current standing in this industry, claiming you gave anything to me would make people laugh."

I turned to look at her. Really looked at her. And I smiled.

It was not a warm smile.

"Fine," I said. "If you can convince Mr. Fontaine to reverse his decision, I will step aside without another word."

Liam stood there trapped between two women he could not afford to lose and one client he absolutely could not afford to offend. I watched him calculate and come up empty every single time. Lumière Étoile had specifically requested me and there was no version of this conversation where he could lie his way around that fact. He did what he always did when he had genuinely run out of options.

He gave in.

"The spokesperson will be Valerie," he said flatly. "End of discussion."

"President Liam!" Amara’s voice broke.

"It is decided." He dismissed both of us with a sharp wave. "Nicole, you can go."

I left the room. Amara wheeled out behind me into the corridor, her face a barely contained storm. The moment the office door closed behind us she turned to her assistant with a voice like something being cut. "Start generating content. Photos of me pushing through my recovery. Looking strong, looking heroic. Tell my fan base that Valerie stole this deal from me. If I cannot have it, she will not enjoy it either."

Her assistant nodded and was already on his phone before she finished the sentence.

I walked back down the corridor and caught Nicole’s eye. I winked. "Do not worry," I told her quietly.

"Worried? Me?" She straightened her jacket, squared her shoulders and walked toward Liam’s office with the energy of someone who had been waiting three years for exactly this moment.

Liam did not waste time. He threw the termination contract across the desk the moment she sat down. "Pack up and get out. Breach of contract. You will be compensating us for damages."

Nicole laughed. Genuinely and fully laughed, picked up the contract and took her time reading it. "President Liam, your memory seems to be letting you down. When I signed with Xova my salary and Valerie’s appearance fees were all specified in the contract. None of it was ever honored. Valerie’s work went to Amara for years without compensation. My salary never matched what was agreed upon. So who breached the contract first?" She set it back down on the desk with deliberate gentleness. "And the article I published, everything in it was documented fact. Where exactly is the breach?"

Liam’s jaw tightened. "You —"

"If you want to take this to court I am completely comfortable with that outcome." Nicole folded her hands in her lap. "How much trust do you think Xova will have left in this industry after everything comes out in a courtroom?" She let that sit for a moment. "Or we can resolve this cleanly. I sign my resignation, you waive the compensation claim, we walk away owing each other nothing."

He glared at her for a long time. He could not argue against Amara’s involvement and he could not afford another scandal. He signed the papers. "Get out. I do not want to see your face again."

"One last thing," Nicole said, standing and tucking the cancelled contract under her arm. "There is no wall thick enough to keep everything hidden forever. The way you have treated Valerie all these years, you will pay for it tenfold." She walked out without looking back.

Liam grabbed the edge of his desk. He was already imagining all the ways this was slipping further from his control and he had not even seen the half of it yet.

...

Nicole did not leave the building. She stayed right where she was. When Liam came out of his office and found us together in the corridor his expression tightened immediately. "Why are you still here?"

"I just hired Nicole," I said pleasantly.

"Your manager contracts are under company jurisdiction —"

"I did not hire her as my manager." I kept my voice completely even. "I hired her as my personal assistant. That is entirely within my rights as a contracted artist." I smiled at him with every tooth. "She has been looking after me for years. I have gotten very used to having her around."

Liam grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side, dropping his voice. "What is wrong with you? Why are you constantly going against me? This is not who you are."

I looked down at his hand on my arm. Then back up at his face.

"Nicole does more for me in a single day than you have done in five years," I said. "She would never stand in front of me and tell me to hand over something I earned because it is more convenient for someone else." I held his gaze without blinking. "You are going to need to get used to this version of me, Liam. She is not going anywhere."

Something shifted in his expression. The calculation behind his eyes working fast. "Valerie. You have always supported my career. You have always been in my corner. Why are you suddenly like this?" He paused and let the weight of what he was about to say build deliberately. "If you keep this up, I think we should call off the wedding."

There it was. The threat he had been keeping in his back pocket, the one that had worked every single time for five years. He watched me carefully, waiting for the flinch. The apology. The retreat. The version of me that would soften and backtrack and tell him she did not mean it.

I let the silence stretch.

Long enough for him to start relaxing into his certainty.

Then I said, "You do not want to get married? Then we will not. Let’s talk again when you are less busy."

Liam stared at me.

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

For the first time in five years the man had absolutely nothing to say and I watched him standing there holding a threat that had simply stopped working and I felt something warm and deeply satisfying move through my entire chest.

Not for long, Liam.

Not for long.