"Tell me you have a name," I said, skipping the greeting.
"I have better than a name, Camille. I have a paper trail," Hayes's gravelly voice came through the speaker. He sounded slightly out of breath, a rare thing for a man who made a living in the shadows. "The watch in that screenshot isn't just expensive. It's a custom Vacheron Constantin. One of one. Commissioned in Geneva."
"Who bought it?"
"That's the thing," Hayes paused. "It was registered to a private buyer, but the insurance policy attached to the serial number is public record if you know which backdoor to kick in. The policy is held by the Caelum Group."
The floor beneath my feet felt like it was tilting. "Hayes..."
"The registered owner is Nathaniel Caelum, Camille. The man in the video is your husband."
I hung up the phone.
For a moment, I couldn't breathe. My mind, usually a fortress of logic and blueprints, scrambled to build a timeline that made sense.
I unlocked my door and practically ran down the sprawling, silent corridors of the Caelum estate. I didn't stop until I reached the heavy oak doors of the East Wing—Nathaniel’s medical suite.
I pushed past the private nurse in the antechamber, ignoring her startled protest, and walked into the freezing room.
Nathaniel lay exactly as he had yesterday. Still. Beautiful.
Broken.
I didn't look at his face. I went straight for the mahogany dresser in the corner of the room. When Mara had given me the tour of the estate, she had mentioned this was where they kept his personal effects from the night of the crash.
The things the paramedics had handed over in a plastic bag.
I pulled open the top drawer. Inside sat a black velvet evidence box.
My hands were shaking as I unlatched it.
Inside was a charred leather wallet, a set of bent car keys, and a heavy, silver watch.
The glass face was shattered from the impact of the crash, but the custom band and the intricate, diamond-cut bezel were unmistakable. It was the exact watch from the video.
The timeline clicked into place with the violent force of a falling beam.
The rehearsal dinner had been months ago. Nathaniel’s near-fatal accident on the coastal highway had happened exactly three days later.
The man who had caught me in the hallway. The man whose voice had asked, “Are you alright?” The man who had taken me into Suite 402 and given me the child currently growing in my womb... was the comatose man I had just married for convenience.
"What are you doing in here?"
The voice cracked like a whip.
I turned around. Mara stood in the doorway, her posture rigid, her icy blue eyes blazing with a fury I had never seen before. In her hand, she gripped a silver tablet.
The screen was lit up with the leaked security footage and the glaring headline calling me a runaway, cheating bride.
"I brought you into this family to save us from embarrassment, Camille," Mara said, her voice dangerously low as she stepped into the room. "I gave you proxy. I gave you power. And less than twenty-four hours later, you drag the Caelum name through the mud with a leaked sex scandal?"
She threw the tablet onto the foot of Nathaniel's bed.
"Ridge Ashford is already calling my board," Mara hissed. "He is using this video to argue for an annulment. Explain yourself. Right now. Or I will strip you of everything."
I didn't flinch. I didn't apologize.
I walked over to the bed, picked up the tablet, and turned it off. Then, I reached into my blazer pocket.
I walked right up to Mara. I took her hand, turned her palm upward, and placed the shattered silver Vacheron Constantin watch into it.
Mara frowned, looking down at her son's ruined watch.
"What is this?"
"Look closer at the video, Mara," I said softly.
I reached into my pocket one more time. I pulled out the plastic stick with the two glaring pink lines and placed it directly on top of the watch in her hand.
Mara went completely still.
She looked at the pregnancy test. Then at the watch. Then, slowly, her eyes drifted to the man lying in the bed.
I watched the exact moment the matriarch of the Caelum empire put the pieces together. The outrage in her eyes vanished, replaced by a shock so profound it seemed to knock the breath out of her.
Her hand, holding the test and the watch, began to tremble.
"The rehearsal dinner was three days before his crash," I said, my voice steady. "I was drugged. He found me. He saved me." I placed a hand over my flat stomach. "Ridge thinks he leaked a scandal to destroy me. He doesn't realize he just gave me the exact timeline I needed."
Mara looked up at me. The ice in her eyes hadn't just shattered; it had melted into something entirely new.
Something terrifyingly protective.
She looked at my stomach, a single tear escaping her iron-clad control, before she quickly wiped it away. When she looked back at my face, she wasn't a furious CEO anymore.
She was a grandmother looking at the future of her bloodline.
Mara closed her fist around the watch and the test. She stood up straighter, her presence suddenly filling the entire room.
"Ridge Ashford thinks he can use my son's child as a weapon against us," Mara said, her voice dropping to a lethal, absolute chill.
She turned toward the door, pulling her phone from her pocket.
"Mara?" I asked. "What are we doing?"
Mara paused in the doorway and looked back at me, a sharp, bloodthirsty smile curving her lips.
"They wanted a scandal, Camille," she said coldly. "We will give them an execution."
