Betrayed By My Fiancé, I Married His Most Powerful Enemy

Chapter 22: Sweet Miracle

I woke before him.

That never happened. Caspian was always up first, already dressed and thinking three steps ahead before I had even opened my eyes. But this morning he was still beside me, his arm loose around my waist, his breathing slow and even, and I lay there watching the Santa Fe light come through the curtains and thought about the thing I had been carrying all night.

I turned toward him.

He opened his eyes immediately. That was how he slept. Like someone who had learned a long time ago that being caught off guard was expensive.

"Hey," I said softly.

"Hey." His voice was rough with sleep in a way it never was during the day and I found it unreasonably endearing.

I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him properly. This man who had flown across the country because he missed me. Who had surprised me in a hotel bathroom. Who had held me all night without asking for anything. I had almost told him last night. I was going to tell him now.

"I need to tell you something," I said.

He shifted to face me fully, one hand coming up to brush hair away from my face. "Tell me."

"You know what I saw that night," I said. "In Liam’s library. I told you at the club, the orgy, all three of them." I held his gaze. "What I never told you is that I recorded it."

His hand stilled against my face.

"I had my phone out when I walked in," I said. "I do not even know why. Habit maybe. I hit record before I fully understood what I was seeing and by the time I did I just. Kept it going." I watched his eyes. "I have had a video of Liam, Amara and that male model since the very first night. Since before the club. Since before any of this."

Caspian was quiet for a moment. Not the distant boardroom quiet. The kind that meant he was thinking very carefully about what came next.

"Why did you not tell me sooner?" he asked. No accusation in it. Just genuine curiosity.

"Because I did not know what to do with it at first," I said honestly. "And then when everything started I kept it back because I wanted to use it at the exact right moment. When it would hurt the most." I paused. "And then last night I almost told you three times and I kept pulling back and I could not figure out why until this morning." I looked at him. "I think I was scared of what you would say."

"What did you think I would say?"

"I do not know. That I should have told you sooner. That I was being reckless holding onto it. That —"

"Valerie." He said my name quietly and it stopped everything else. He cupped my face in both hands and looked at me with those green eyes that never gave anything away to anyone else but somehow always gave everything away to me. "Thank you for telling me now."

I exhaled something I had not realized I was holding.

"Do not release it," he said.

I blinked. "What?"

"Not yet." He sat up slowly and I watched his face shift into something more careful. "There is something I have been carrying too. Something I should have told you before now and did not because I was not sure how much you needed to know." He looked at me steadily. "I think you need to know all of it."

I sat up beside him and waited.

"I have been investigating Liam for eight months," he said. "Before you walked into me at that club. Before any of this. Someone I trust brought me information about what Liam and his family have been running behind the agency." He paused and his voice stayed even and controlled but I could hear something underneath it, a heaviness he had been carrying quietly for a long time. "The male models at Xova were not models. They were recruited. Teenagers mostly. Young adults. Promised careers and contracts and opportunities. The contracts had clauses buried inside them that they did not understand. By the time they did it was already too late."

I felt the temperature in the room change.

"Liam and his family have been using the agency as a front," he said. "The training camps. The contracts. The public facing business. All of it was cover." He looked at me. "I am going to spare you the details. Just know that we have recovered fourteen boys so far. The investigation is still open. There are more."

I did not say anything for a long time.

Fourteen boys.

And my name had been on the public side of that company. My face. My career. The acceptable front of something genuinely monstrous that I had been too busy being in love with the wrong person to see.

"He used me," I said quietly. Not as a question.

"Yes."

"He used my name and my face to make that company look legitimate while he was running that behind it."

"Yes."

I pressed my fingers against my mouth and breathed. Caspian did not rush me. He did not try to fill the silence or soften what he had just said. He just sat beside me and let me feel the full weight of it because he understood that some things needed to land completely before you could move.

"That is why I cannot release the video," I said eventually.

"If that footage goes public now Liam’s lawyers move immediately. Evidence disappears. The boys still inside get moved. Eight months of work collapses." He reached over and took my hand. "I need him panicking but I need him panicking in the direction I choose. Not scattering in every direction trying to contain a scandal."

I looked at our hands together.

"He is already panicking," I said. "The brands. The Instagram live. Amara’s fans turning. He is making mistakes."

"I know," Caspian said. "That is exactly where I need him."

I thought about Liam calling me over and over from a number I had stopped answering. I thought about him sitting at that desk watching his comment section turn against him in real time. I thought about the version of him that had looked down at me for five years like I was a problem he was managing.

"When it comes down," I said. "Will it all come down at once?"

"Everything," he said. "The affair. What he did to your career. The agency. His family. All of it simultaneously from every direction with nowhere left to run." He looked at me. "One match."

"Everything burns," I said.

"Everything burns," he agreed.

I leaned my head against his shoulder and he pulled me close without a word and we sat there in the Santa Fe morning light with all of it between us and I felt something I had not felt since the night I walked out of that library.

Not alone.

For the first time in a very long time, genuinely and completely not alone.

"Caspian," I said after a while.

"Mm."

"I am glad you came last night."

He pressed his lips to the top of my head. "I told you," he said quietly. "There would be a miracle."