Chapter 6 - A Midnight Vow
""Marry you?"" Maddie let out a bitter, breathless laugh. ""I just climbed out of a swimming pool where my fiancé tried to drown my dignity, and your solution is to put another collar around my neck?""
""This isn't a collar, Maddie. It's armor,"" Christian replied evenly, not a hint of humor on his chiseled face. ""Bradley holds the city’s judges in his pocket. If you walk into that boardroom tomorrow as a single woman with an contested handwritten will, his lawyers will tie you up in probate litigation for a decade while he strips your father’s company to the bone.""
He walked over to the bar, poured two fingers of scotch, and handed the glass to her. Maddie took it, her hands steadying as the alcohol burned its way down her throat.
""And what do you get out of this, Christian?"" she demanded. ""You never did anything out of charity in your life.""
""I get Vance Shipping's deep-water docking rights in Rotterdam and Singapore,"" Christian said bluntly. ""The one thing your father refused to sell me. In exchange, I provide my legal army, my private security, and the Kane family name. Together, we hold a supermajority. Bradley won't just be fired; he'll be prosecuted for grand larceny and corporate treason.""
He picked up a sleek black pen and laid it beside the contract.
""We sign a postnuptial agreement guaranteeing total separation of private assets,"" Christian added softly. ""No marital obligations. No pretenses behind closed doors. A purely transactional partnership to annihilate a common enemy.""
Maddie looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were bruised; beneath her gold dress, her skin was pale and freezing. She thought of Bradley’s mocking laughter by the pool. She thought of Vanessa’s sneering face. She thought of her father falling from the sky over a stormy ocean while these parasites drank his vintage wine.
The docile socialite they thought they had drowned died in that pool.
""Get your private judge,"" Maddie said, looking Christian dead in the eye. ""And call the best tailor in the city. When I walk into that boardroom tomorrow, I want them to look at a ghost they cannot kill.""
At 3:15 AM, in the quiet glow of Christian Kane’s library, a retired federal judge performed the briefest ceremony of Maddie’s life. She signed her maiden name for the last time with steady, deliberate strokes.
When the papers were stamped and the judge had departed, Christian handed her a newly minted keycard.
""Your bedroom is down the hall on the left. Rest, Mrs. Kane. At ten o'clock, the funeral begins—and it won't be yours.""
Maddie took the keycard, turning toward the corridor. But just as she pushed open the bedroom door, her phone chimed. A video file from an unknown number landed in her inbox.
May you like
She pressed play. The video showed Bradley sitting in a dim, wood-paneled study, clinking crystal glasses with a woman whose face was turned away from the camera.
""Don't worry about Maddie,"" Bradley's recorded voice chuckled casually. ""Even if she survives the night, the poison we slipped her at the pool party will finish the job before noon.""
