Ever since the night out for Roxana’s birthday, I’d managed to avoid Claudia. It had been good for everyone—except Claudia, of course. She kept trying to worm her way back into my life, calling and texting me with questions about the fundraiser that should have been directed toward Emzee, but I just redirected them, refusing to respond to her in any capacity beyond my role as Emzee’s husband who was helping her put the fundraiser together. I’d learned my lesson.
Playing into Claudia’s hands in the past had done nothing but force my wife to flee into the arms of Andrew Apellido. The bruises on my face and the stitches above my eye had healed, but I wasn’t going down that road a second time. I might have won the first round fight, but I wouldn’t put myself in a position where I could lose Emzee again.
Unfortunately, the side effect of me avoiding Claudia was her using it as an excuse to avoid doing the work she had promised to do for See Yourself.
Mischief managed for the time being, I headed upstairs to check on Em. But she wasn’t in the guest room that Vivi had set up for her, and her dress bag was still draped over the bed. The bathroom was unoccupied, so I surmised that she’d gone to speak with my parents. There was no way Emzee would be fraternizing with Claudia, after all.
Maybe it was a good thing. And if Emzee hadn’t spoken to her about Claudia’s behavior already, maybe I could get my mother to remind Claudia that she was supposed to be handling any and all last-minute SNAFUs for the fundraiser tonight. I’d genuinely thought that my ex would be a consummate professional, but apparently I had been wrong.
As for me, it was my job to make sure Emzee was aware of the time, get her zipped into her dress, and kiss her good luck. I’d hand her phone back over, but with the caveat that she would be fielding no more phone calls.
I started for my parents’ bedroom at the far end of the hall, but as I approached the library, I slowed down, overhearing stern voices coming from within.
The fucking library. I’d hated that room as a kid. Stuffed with impressive books that my parents had never actually read, it was the place where I’d always gotten lectures about how I wasn’t living up to my “potential.” Even in high school, that’s where my parents would scold me about my future and every little thing I was doing wrong. More recently, they’d sat me down in there and tried to convince me to reconsider my breakup with Claudia.
“I have to say,” I heard my mother saying coldly, “I’m extremely disappointed in your recent conduct.”
Recent conduct? What was she talking about?
“You will recall, Mara, that we had a deal,” my father said.
A deal? What possible deal could Emzee have with my parents?I moved closer.
“Now, we have already warned you that you’d better not get pregnant,” my mother said. “But you two seem awfully close for a fake couple. So it seemed prudent to take this opportunity to remind you that this marriage ends cleanly.”
My fists clenched, my stomach turning. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“If you get yourself pregnant, we’ll have to say it isn’t his,” my father added.
My mother chimed in, “And trust us, darling, when we finish smearing you in the press, not even a DNA test will convince the world that our son is the father.”
I stood there in the hallway, shock seeping into my system.
I’d never told my parents that it was a fake marriage.
Suddenly, the pieces started coming together, and I realized why Emzee had pulled away from me. Why things had changed between us so drastically after the wedding. Why her behavior had been so hot and cold, why she continued to put up walls and deny her feelings for me when, day by day, our connection felt so real.
It wasn’t because of anything I’d done, or because she didn’t truly care for me. It was because my parents had gotten involved. They had hated the idea of me marrying anyone but Claudia, so they’d pulled out all the stops and gone after Emzee to make sure we didn’t stay together.
And the only way she would have gotten so tangled up in their web of deceit was if they had something on her. Something bad.
They’d been threatening her all along.
Emzee
Chapter 27
Numb with shock, I was frozen to the floor as Mrs. Malone’s words stabbed me in the gut. There was a cruel smirk on her face as she threatened me, saying that if I got pregnant, she’d tell the world I was a liar and that the baby wasn’t Ford’s.
Truthfully, starting a family wasn’t something I had dared to think about much—not when I knew a divorce was looming in my future, not when my relationship with Ford was constantly giving me whiplash, and especially not when I hadn’t grown up with the best parenting role model in my father. Plus, I still felt like a kid myself sometimes. I had no business trying to get pregnant. It certainly wasn’t something I had been planning.
But the way the Malones were looking at me and speaking to me made me feel like a gold digger. Like trash. Did they actually think I was plotting to have Ford’s baby?
If it weren’t for the fundraiser tonight, I would have just run from the room and turned my back on the senior Malones for good. Nothing was worth the harassment I’d endured at their hands. I could spend the next nine or so months hunkered down at Ford’s place, and simply make plans to be out of the house whenever they came over for their regular dinners with Ford.
I still couldn’t tell my husband about the devil’s bargain I’d made with his parents, or how they continued to blackmail me at every turn, but I could at least stay as far away from the Malones as possible. Set a firm boundary. After all, it was self-preservation. Even if Ford thought I was being unbearably rude, I’d stand my ground.
Then, without warning, he burst into the library.
