Page 180 of Morally Black Betrothal

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I managed. “It’s over. She knows what I did, and she’s gone. Left yesterday morning.”

I didn’t mention that I’d been trying to track her down since, to no avail.

“What did you do?” Ronan asked.

“What I always do. Acted in the company’s best interests instead of my own.”

“He sold the mortgage on her family’s farm,” Liam said. “I assume that’s what you mean.”

I swallowed. “I had to.”

Ronan reeled. “You sold her farm to that shitweasel? Why the fuck would you do that?”

I stared down at the document. My vision blurred. “Because I had to.”

“I don’t believe that. Since when do youhaveto do anything you don’t want to do?”

“Since I met the woman of my dreams!” I shouted with a swing of my hand that sent a cup of pens flying across the office.

Liam and Ronan watched the pens scattered over the carpet with bemused expressions, then turned to me with patience I didn’t think I’d ever possess again.

“Well,” Ronan said a few minutes later. “The jig, as they say, is up.”

I glared. “What are you talking about?”

He tipped his head like a speculative crane. “You must really think we’re all idiots. Dad’s in the hospital for all of two seconds, suddenly there’s a vote for CEO going before our very conservative board members, and you show up with a pretty princess fiancée you met five minutes earlier?” He snorted. “You didn’t think you actually fooled anyone, did you? Dad was just so goddamn thrilled his plan to make one of us procreate worked, he wouldn’t have cared if you married a test tube incubator.”

“Except it didn’t work,” Liam pointed out wryly. “Because you fell in love with her instead, didn’t you?”

The paper under my hands crumpled. I wanted to smash something all over again. “That’s…correct.”

“Have you tried to explain things to her?”

“Explain what? That I sold her family’s legacy to save my ass? That the cost of having her niece back was a choice between losing my reputation or taking away everything else she caresabout, so I chose myself?” Bitterness sliced through my laughter like a scalpel. “The truth doesn’t make it any better.”

Liam shrugged as he crossed one ankle over his knee. “Maybe not, but the truth is always worth something. If she loves you, she might forgive more than you think.”

His eyes glinted as he said it. Not for the first time, I wondered what kinds of secrets lay behind that affable facade. Liam’s mother was one of the most cutthroat people I’d ever known. The apple couldn’t fall far from the tree, but I’d never seen anything but Liza’s competence rub off on her son.

“Just get it back,” Ronan put in. “Why the fuck not? What was her sad little farm worth on the appraisal? Ten million? Twenty?”

“Eight point two,” Liam provided. “But it has three loans against the property, so maybe fourteen altogether? Still a bargain, considering that Owen planned to sell the livestock and turn the whole thing into an airport. It was the centerpiece of the Ventnor development he was putting together with Ezra.”

I sat up. “Ezra was involved in that too?”

Liam nodded. “A backend investor, but yeah. It was his pet project too. Sounds like he convinced the dad to buy the mortgages and properties outright from you to cut Owen out.”

“Jesus, I have never been so glad to be a third child in my life,” Ronan remarked. “I’ll take being the chaos agent of the family over first-born daddy issues and second-born invisibility any fucking day.”

Liam chuckled. I glared.

“So offer Ezra double,” Ronan went on like we were discussing the weather. “Triple. Even at thirty mil, is, what, the cost of one of the yachts? And then you’ll win your pretty princess back in the process.”

“He won’t accept,” I said. “Huntington wanted either my shares in the company and a seat on the board or the farm. And she won’t take me back anyway.”

I rubbed my face. God, I was so stupid. And Ezra Huntington was much smarter than I realized.

What a worthless fool I was.