Betrayed By My Fiancé, I Married His Most Powerful Enemy

Chapter 32: Secrets And Strategy

By noon, Quinn had already called three times. The fourth came right after lunch.

"You busy?" she asked.

"Not particularly."

"Good. You’re going to want to hear this."

I settled into the couch, already smiling. "What happened now?"

"The whole company’s in panic mode." I could hear voices in the background before she lowered her voice. "Liam called an emergency meeting with every department head the second those recordings blew up. He even called Iris."

That got my attention. "Iris?"

"Yeah. I didn’t catch the whole thing, but people in the executive office did. Apparently she told him the biggest mistake wasn’t you."

"It was him."

I laughed softly. That sounded exactly like Iris. Practical, cold, always five moves ahead of everyone else in the room.

"She said he left too many loose ends and handed people the chance to expose him," Quinn went on, "and that he needs to stop dwelling on the scandal and remember he still owns the company. Now she’s telling him to apologize publicly."

I raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Not because she feels sorry for you," Quinn said quickly. "Because she thinks it’ll calm the public down."

That part didn’t surprise me at all. An apology from Liam was never about remorse. It was strategy, dressed up to look like something softer.

"There’s more," Quinn said. "Iris has connections with an international fashion magazine that’s looking for two Asian models. She wants you and Amara on the same shoot."

I almost laughed. "So she wants to borrow my popularity."

"Pretty much. She thinks your momentum right now will help push Amara ahead before the Top Ten Model Awards."

I leaned back against the sofa. Even now, after everything, they were still trying to use me as a stepping stone.

"What did Liam say?"

"Agreed almost immediately."

Of course he did. He still thought he could manage every piece of this himself.

Quinn hesitated, and something in the pause made me sit up straighter.

"Valerie. I almost wasn’t going to tell you this."

"Tell me."

"Iris brought up Harper."

The smile dropped off my face. "What about her?"

"She said Harper’s finally ready for the kidney transplant." Quinn’s voice went careful. "They’re assuming you’ll still go through with donating."

I didn’t say anything for a moment. My fingers had gone tight around the phone without my noticing. After everything that had happened, after everything Liam had done, he still believed he could hold me to that promise like none of it had changed anything.

"I don’t know what you’re planning," Quinn said quietly. "But I thought you deserved to know."

"Thank you."

"One last thing. Liam’s PR team just finished drafting a new statement."

"What does it say?"

"They’re admitting you were treated unfairly." A short pause. "And asking the public to forgive Xova and give the company another chance."

"So they’re trying to stop the bleeding."

"Exactly."

After we hung up, I sat by the window for a long while, watching the street below without really seeing it. Liam still thought this was a public relations problem he could manage his way out of.

He had no idea this wasn’t even close to the beginning of what I had planned.

At the same time Xova’s apology went out, they announced that Amara and I had both been invited by the international magazine Secret to appear together for a shoot.

The public reacted exactly the way I imagined Liam’s team had hoped they would, which was to say, they lost it. Two women on opposite sides of the same betrayal, rivals in every possible sense, and Liam wanted to put us on the same stage? The outrage spread fast, and the debates spread faster. Even with my popularity climbing again, people hadn’t forgotten that I’d once stood in as Amara’s substitute. And while Amara had coasted along fairly smoothly for a while, she’d never actually broken into the top tier. She’d always hovered just underneath it.

Fans on both sides argued online about who deserved the spot more, whether I was the stronger professional or whether Amara had the more commercial appeal. The attention kept shifting back and forth, which was exactly the kind of noise Liam wanted generated.

It worked out fine for me either way. All I’d ever wanted was to stay visible enough that Xova couldn’t quietly bury me while keeping Amara out of my way. By putting us on the same stage, Liam had handed me exactly what I needed without meaning to.

Quinn called to check in. "Valerie, are you taking this job? Liam’s acting like he arranged it out of goodwill. Turn it down now and you look petty. But if you genuinely don’t want to do it, we’ll find another way around it."

"I’ll take it," I said, no hesitation.

"Good. Sharing a stage with Amara actually works in your favor. The public gets to watch her perform right next to you and draw their own conclusions. Worst case, she ends up as your backdrop." There was quiet satisfaction in Quinn’s voice. "Tomorrow morning there’s a meeting at the company to go over details. I’ll pick up Nicole first, then swing by for you."

"Alright." I hung up and went back to what I’d been doing before the call, cooking in the kitchen.

Caspian had told me more than once I wasn’t allowed in there. I never took it seriously. Cooking for my husband was something I wanted to do, and I wasn’t about to let anyone talk me out of it, him included.

When he got home and found me at the stove, he came up quietly behind me, lifted me off my feet, and set me down on the counter, boxing me in with both arms.

"Do you know what happens when you don’t listen to me?" His voice had dropped low.

I looped my arms around his neck and let my legs swing. "Don’t tell me you’re going to eat me."

He looked at me, more fond than stern. "You’re not afraid of anything." Then he picked me up, carried me to the living room, and set me down on the sofa. "Today’s your comeback. Let me handle dinner."

I untied the apron and held it out. He took it and disappeared back into the kitchen, and I sat there watching him work. Caspian was tall and solidly built, and when he moved around in a dress shirt with the fabric pulling tight across his shoulders, it was genuinely hard to look away. He worked at the counter with the same quality he brought to everything, calm, efficient, precise, handling ingredients the way he seemed to handle most things in life, quickly and without a single wasted motion. He looked less like a person cooking dinner and more like something composed on purpose.

I finally pulled my eyes away and headed to the bedroom to change. A bouquet of red roses sat on the bed. I smiled and picked them up, bringing them close to breathe in the scent, and something small and rectangular slipped free from between the stems. I caught it and looked closer.

My face went warm all at once.

A Durex.

I stood there for a second, honestly unsure whether Caspian meant for me to find it, or whether I was supposed to pretend I hadn’t.