Betrayed By My Fiancé, I Married His Most Powerful Enemy

Chapter 16: Fake Love

Liam grabbed my shoulder before I could walk away. His eyes were burning with something I had never quite seen in them before, something that was almost panic masked under anger. "Do you not love me anymore? Why are you acting this way? So distant and..and.."

"What about you?" I stepped back out of his grip carefully, gently. I had made a promise to Caspian. No physical contact. "Do you love me?"

He opened his mouth. Nothing came. He had never in five years needed to say those words to me because I had never asked. I had been too grateful just to have him. Now that I was asking, the answer he did not have sat in the air between us and he could not pretend it was not there.

He collected himself. "We are about to be married. Why would you question us? Think about Xova’s future. Think about the awards. I am just frustrated that you cannot be more understanding about Amara’s situation right now."

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Then again. Then three times in quick succession. I pulled it out and looked at the screen and felt the air leave my body.

My Instagram notifications had stopped loading individually. There were too many of them.

I opened my messages. Then immediately closed them. Then opened them again because some part of me needed to see it properly, needed to understand exactly what I was looking at.

"You disgusting thief. I hope you choke."

"Valerie Sinclair you will regret this. We know where you live."

"You stole from a pregnant woman. You are going to pay for this."

"Kill yourself. Nobody wants you in this industry."

"We are going to make your life hell. Every single day."

There were hundreds of them. More arriving every second. My Twitter mentions had collapsed entirely under the weight of it. Someone had tagged every major industry account. Someone had posted my management contact information publicly. I had to turn off my message requests entirely just to make the notifications stop coming in waves that made my hands shake.

I looked up at Liam.

He was still standing there waiting for me to respond to him. Waiting for me to circle back to his feelings, his frustration, his need for me to be more understanding.

Something broke open in me.

"Do you see this?" My voice came out strange. Lower than I expected. I turned the phone toward him. "Do you see what you and your lover’s fans are sending me? What Amara’s fans are sending me? They are telling me to kill myself, Liam. They are sending me death threats. On Instagram. On Twitter. To my personal accounts." I watched his face. "And you are standing here asking me to be more understanding."

He glanced at the screen. Something moved across his face. Not enough of something.

"I will talk to Amara about reining in her fan base —"

"How much more?" The words came out before I could stop them. "How much more do I have to give you? How much more do I have to sacrifice before it is enough for you and Amara? I covered her jobs for five years. I gave up my name. I gave up my contracts. I gave up my opportunities. I stood in front of a hundred and sixty thousand people and took the blame for something that was not my fault because you asked me to." My voice cracked on the last word and I did not fix it. "And now I am getting death threats in my inbox. People telling me I deserve to die. People telling me to end my life. And you want to know why I am acting this way?"

He said nothing.

"What do you want from me, Liam?" I asked it quietly. Genuinely. Because I needed to know if there was an answer. "What is left that you have not already taken? Do you want me to disappear completely? Do you want me to stop existing so that Amara can have everything without even having to look at me? Because sometimes I wonder." My voice dropped to almost nothing. "I actually wonder if that is what it would take. For the two of you to finally be satisfied."

I looked at him, letting a few tears drop.

The silence in the corridor was absolute.

Liam’s mouth opened. Closed.

"Valerie, I never meant —"

"I know," I said. And I did. That was the worst part. He had never meant any of it. He had simply never thought about it hard enough to mean anything at all. I slowly increased the distance between us. " You don’t always mean it. In your mind you are a super hero trying to save Amara the supermodel but are you my super hero? I feel like the least important character in this whole story trying to do everything to please you and yet I am not being seen or acknowledged. I am tired Liam. You will need to get used to how I am now," I said quietly. Then I left, through the door, down the corridor, out of the building, without looking back.

"Let me take you home to rest," Nicole said beside me, her voice quieter than usual. She had heard enough of it through the corridor wall to understand what had just happened. "Tomorrow we are signing the contract and heading out on location."

I was already thinking about home. The moment I pictured Caspian’s face something lit up in my chest like a room and I held onto that feeling the entire ride back.

"Nicole, cancel your current lease and move into my old apartment. Keep it lived in. Change the locks. If Liam asks why he cannot use his key anymore, tell him you have moved in to take care of me and it is no longer appropriate for him to have access."

"Thank you Valerie" she said dabbing the tears off her eyes " I truly appreciate this."

...

Caspian was not home when I arrived so I went straight to the kitchen, told the staff to rest and started cooking. I needed something to do with my hands that was not thinking about my inbox.

He came home past midnight and found me barefoot at the stove. He did not say anything. He just crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me from behind and pressed his lips to my ear and I felt every single thing I had been carrying since that corridor simply fall off me.

"President Morrow, I am cooking, be careful."

He reached over my shoulder and turned off the stove. Then he lifted my chin and kissed me directly and warmly and completely. "Right now," he said against my mouth, "I just want to eat you."

I laughed and pulled back and relit the stove. He chuckled and reached out to help without being asked. We worked side by side quietly, him cooking my favorite dish, me cooking his, until the table between us was full and warm.

"Tomorrow I need to go for the outdoor shoot," I told him. "it is in another state and I probably will not be back that night."

"You sign the contract in the morning and go straight to location?"

"Yes." I looked at him across the table. "Caspian, I am trying to make a name for myself. My own name. I need you to understand that."

He set down his fork and looked at me with those steady green eyes. "I am right here," he said quietly. "However you need me, however long it takes. I am not going anywhere." He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. "And for what it is worth, I am already proud of you."