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Don’t be chickenshit, Blake. When you mess up, say what you need to say and do it with surgical precision.

“Cassandra, I should have told you who I was this morning. I didn’t recognize you at first. But when I figured it out, I should have said something. I was just afraid of…” I realized I was afraid of this. Of fucking blowing it.

“We were never married, Lila and I. There was a wedding, but the paperwork wasn’t real.”

“So, it’s a lie?”

“Yes.”

Surgical precision.

“Why?”

Where everything had come out clean a moment ago, here I hesitated. I couldn’t out Lila. Besides, it wasn’t only for Lila that I kept this charade up.

In the end, I settled on the least complicated part of the truth.

“It’s for our business. We’re Mr. and Mrs. Shark. It gives us our competitive edge.” I realized that sounded like I had to lie to get business, but she was sharp. She saw the way my eyes had left hers.

She knew there was more to it.

Cassandra shook her head. “That’s bullshit. I saw you up there. You were on fire. You could do this work on your own, and she could too.”

But she was wrong about that.

“Why did you hire us? I know you called Goldman.”

I didn’t have confirmation of this, but Lila said after she talked to Cassandra that she’d said she was looking at all her options. Harrington and Goldman were the top options.

Cassandra pinched her lips.

“You liked that we were married. Lila and I are a team. A good team, and better than Goldman at what we do. But people go with us because they like the image we present. Devoted, loving, husband-and-wife. We make them feel good.”

My tone was bitter. I knew it. But I couldn’t stem the anger spiking through everything. This was the life I’d gotten myself into. It was my own damn fault.

Maybe I could branch out on my own. But it wouldn’t be the same. It would be like starting over. I’d have lost everything I’d worked for. Plus, I had no idea how to work without Lila. We were a well-oiled machine. And what would happen if that broke? If I had to start all over again—maybe not from the bottom, but definitely from several steps back? A whole flight of stairs back?

The thought made me sick.

What would my father say?

What would Lila’s parents say?

It worked both ways—if we were the lie holding the business up, the business was the lynchpin holding us together for her. If we broke up Harrington, we’d be breaking up our fake marriage, and everything would fall apart after that. All those years posing would land in pieces at our feet. I’d have to face the fact that I spent so much of my life hiding behind a facade. Lila would be disowned. While she wouldn’t face the kinds of repercussions she might have back when she was still living at home, her relationship with her parents was everything to her. They were close. She was their darling—they’d named their foundation after her. For her, that relationship was more important than her business.

It was her whole damn life.

“I won’t do it,” I said. I used a tone that told her I wasn’t going to back down on this one, because I couldn’t. I made a promise to Lila.

I’d made a promise to myself.

Cassandra examined me for a moment, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, Blake. I have no way of believing anything that comes out of your mouth. I don’t even know if what happened this morning was—” She flushed. “I’ll get my lawyer to sort out the contract. We’ll terminate, I’ll pay you what we owe you and we can—”

“You can’t afford what you’re paying us.”

She froze.

The words were harsh, but they landed right where I wanted them.