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He’d watched what his father had done to his mother’s self-esteem and self-worth, and he’d promised himself to never be that man.
Not getting married seemed like the easy part. He just hadn’t anticipated the loneliness that would come with that vow. Or how easy it had been to crack his resolve and buy a ring the moment he found a woman who didn’t look at him like he was a broken shell of a man.
And while it wasn’t a whirlwind, fairy-tale romance, Alice had seemed practical. Rational. He’d mistaken that for loyal.
“I have to go,” Victor said because he didn’t have an answer to Emil’s question. He didn’t want to be the man who broke Hannah’s heart. He wanted to be far away from anything Charlie or Alice had touched. He was pretty sure if he smelled her perfume right then, he’d break down.
He quickly hung up on Emil, took a fortifying breath, and turned toward the hotel. The six steps felt like six million. The automatic doors, sliding gently open and closed, felt like stepping through a portal into a new reality.
One where his marriage was over before it began.
Where he’d never be able to look his business partners in the face ever again.
Where decades and decades of cultivating a space that allowed him to feel free to be himself was now shattered into a billion,billionpieces.
He wasn’t sure he could live like that.
But, as he turned his head to see the cab still idling behind him, he realized with a little pulse of agony right where his heart beat he had no other choice.
* * *
Victor hadn’t read any of the correspondence Alice’s lawyers had sent him. He’d barely left the suite he was renting in the two weeks it took to unravel all the financial threads surrounding the wedding.
Alice hadn’t contacted him until the dressmaker called her about the cancellation, and that’s when she lost her mind. He never did pick up one of her calls, but her voice messages went from cool and collected to drunk and raging. He listened to them over a glass of scotch as he massaged the spasms out of his calves, and he realized halfway through the sixth one that she actually expected him to forgive her for the affair.
She hadn’t chased after him because she thought she could finish her night with Charlie and Victor would still go through with the wedding.
“…not like anyone else would be willing to marry you. You know that, right? Victor? You must know that. I’m not trying to be intentionally cruel—”She was, but it was a voicemail, so he couldn’t correct her.“—but it’s time to face reality. We were both getting something out of this. You were definitely walking away with more than I was.”
The implications almost made him laugh. Like this was Victorian England and he was the disabled son of some rich, important duke who had to buy his bride. Though, if that was the case, he’d be between the pages of a romance novel, and he’d end up falling for the governess who saw past his weak legs to his tender heart he kept hidden behind a ten-foot brick wall.
Or…something like that.
He’d never been a big reader, but his mom had loved those sorts of books. She used to quote the ridiculous, flowery metaphors for sex and genitals at the dinner table because it made his father laugh. It was one of the few memories he’d clung to over the years as some sort of proof that they were in love once.
Of course, long before he met Alice, that belief had been shattered. He used to think that they had it right until it all went wrong. The truth was, his mother had believed she could change men like Victor’s father—men from their world.
And it broke her.
Well, Victor had no intention of being broken. Not by Alice. Not by anyone. He was hurt. His pride was wounded, and he couldn’t lie—every time she spoke cold and clinical about his body with the implication that he should take whatever he could get, it stung. It was like she was ripping open the boxes in his head full of insecurities and poking them with sharp nails.
But she didn’t have the power over him she thought she did. By the time he was eleven, he’d heard every insult known to man, and it was difficult to feel insulted when his thirty-one-year-old ex-fiancée couldn’t get cleverer than his third-grade bully.
“Mr. Bennett?”
He blinked up at his lawyer and cleared his throat. “Apologies.”
Adrian Harrel had been his attorney for most of his life. He’d been a junior associate when Victor took over for his father, and there were some days when he thought of him as a friend. Right now, he was most definitely in business mode, and Victor couldn’t appreciate that more.
“Have you read over her list of demands?”
Victor couldn’t help a small laugh. He’d been balancing his feet on the coffee table, and he dropped them to the floor before another spasm hit. “I don’t understand how she can have any. We were engaged for less than a year. She hadn’t even finished moving all her shit into my home.”
Adrian sighed quietly and shrugged. “She’s going to have them regardless.”
“Does she have any kind of case?”
“Possibly any deposits that were forfeit when you called off the wedding. Since you made the call without her consent,” he added, like Victor couldn’t figure that out himself. “But my bigger concern is the matter of the company—”
