Page 160 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

Give a drowning man a breath of air at precisely the right moment, and he’ll keep fighting toward the surface even when the current is dragging him farther out.

I know all of that.

Apparently so do my husbands.

“And when Mom got sick…” My throat tightens so painfully that I have to stop for a moment. “You knew what that would do to him.”

Something that might be compassion flickers in Caleb’s dark eyes.

Lucian’s voice is quieter when he says, “We knew he would do almost anything to keep Elizabeth alive.”

Almost anything.

My stomach turns.

I push away from the desk and begin to pace because sitting still is impossible.

“You didn’t make Dad start gambling.”

“No.”

“And you didn’t force him to lie to me or use my work or put me on that table as collateral.”

“No.”

The answers should help.

They don’t.

Because my father’s guilt does not erase theirs.

“I need you to understand something.” I stop and face them. “I am not trying to make Dad innocent.”

Lucian’s eyes stay fixed on mine.

“He made his choices. He lied. He gambled money he didn’t have. He used my work without telling me. He took things from people that were not his to take.” My voice catches, but I force myself to continue. “And when he finally ran out of everything else, he wagered me. All that is on him.” I hate him for that.

Neither of them speaks.

“But you knew exactly what kind of man he was becoming under pressure, and instead of letting him hit the wall, you kept moving the wall.”

Caleb lowers his head for a fraction of a second.

Lucian doesn’t.

“You gave him money when enough money would keep him digging. You closed exits when he might have found another way out. You let him believe there was always one more option, one more loan, one more hand, one more chance to fix everything before anyone discovered what he’d done.”

The professional part of me recoils as the whole design becomes clear. Not because it was guaranteed to work. Human behavior never is. But it didn’t have to be guaranteed.

They only needed to keep increasing the probability.

“You built the maze around him.”

A quiet sob catches in my throat.

For eight years, I thought I was moving freely through the world while these two men manipulated the odds in their favor.

My parents did the same thing in smaller, messier ways.