Page 34 of The Russian's Revenge Bride

The video ended, and I stared at the blank screen, fury building in my chest like a wildfire.

“When was this?” I asked.

“Twenty minutes ago. It’s already trending on social media. #SaveEleanor is the number one hashtag in Chicago.”

I pushed back from my desk, needing to move before I put my fist through something expensive. “Son of a bitch.”

“It gets worse,” Cassandra said. “He’s got a team of lawyers claiming the marriage is invalid due to coercion. They’re filing for an emergency injunction to have it annulled.”

“Let them try. The paperwork is solid.”

“Legal won’t matter if public opinion turns against you. William’s playing the grieving father card perfectly. Eleanor looks like a victim, and you look like the monster who stole her.”

The office door opened, and Lev walked in, followed by Anya. Both of their faces told me they’d seen the news.

“Fucking genius move,” Lev said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Make the girl look like a brainwashed cult victim. Now half of Chicago thinks you’re some kind of predator.”

“The other half thinks it’s romantic,” Anya added. “Social media is split between people demanding Eleanor’s rescue and people defending your epic love story.”

“What does Eleanor think?” I asked.

Anya’s expression darkened. “She locked herself in her office. Won’t talk to anyone.”

I was already moving toward the door when Cassandra called after me.

“Maxim. We need a response. Something public, something that shows Eleanor chose this freely.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Eleanor’s office door was locked, but I had keys to every room in my house. I used them.

She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest. Her laptop was open beside her, showing the news coverage of her father’s press conference.

“Eleanor.”

She looked up at me, and I saw something in her eyes that made my chest tight. Not fear or anger, but a bone-deep exhaustion that came from being disappointed by someone you’d never quite stopped hoping might love you.

“He rewrote my entire life,” she said quietly. “Turned it into some fucking rescue story where I’m the helpless victim and you’re the big bad wolf.”

I sat down on the floor beside her, close enough to touch but not quite touching. “Your father is a master manipulator. This is what he does.”

“I know what he does. But knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.”

She gestured at the laptop screen, where her father’s face was frozen mid-speech. “Look at him. The concerned parent, the grieving father. Where was all that concern when I needed him growing up? Where was that love when I was begging him to notice me?”

I wanted to tell her that William Beaumont was incapable of real love, that he only knew how to use people. But she already knew that. What she was mourning wasn’t the loss of her father’s love, but the final death of hope that he might have some to give.

“He didn’t just attack my happiness,” she continued. “He attacked the one place where I was starting to feel like maybe I mattered to someone.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. She was talking about us, about whatever was building between us in the spaces between revenge and necessity.

“You do matter,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended.

She turned to look at me, searching my face for something. Truth, maybe. Or just confirmation that I wasn’t playing another game.

“Do I? Or am I just a useful weapon in your war against my father?”

The question hung in the air between us, heavy with implications I wasn’t ready to face. Because the honest answer was complicated. She’d started as a weapon, a means to an end. But somewhere along the way, she’d become something else entirely.