Clare Jennings POV:
The silence after his words was so absolute it felt like the pressure in my ears had dropped. Before I could find my voice, my phone buzzed on the couch, the vibration a jarring intrusion. It was David, my agent, calling this time.
Chase watched me with a look of growing impatience, as if my personal crisis was an annoying delay to his dinner plans. I took a deep, shaky breath and awkwardly used my elbow to nudge the green icon on the screen.
“David,” I managed, putting the phone on speaker.
“Clare, thank God.” His voice was tight with a forced, professional sympathy. “Listen, about the De Beers campaign…”
My stomach plunged. I already knew what was coming.
“The client… they’ve decided to go with the backup model. It’s a three-million-dollar contract, Clare. They can’t afford to wait.”
The room tilted. Three million dollars. It wasn’t just money. It was the culmination of a decade of work. It was my independence. My value.
“I understand, David,” I heard myself say, my voice eerily calm. “Thank you for letting me know.”
I ended the call and looked up at Chase. The last fragile light of hope inside me flickered and died.
“The contract is gone,” I said, stating the fact as if it had happened to someone else.
Chase blinked, processing. His first reaction wasn't comfort. It was a frown of mild confusion. “Which contract?”
“The De Beers diamond campaign,” I said, forcing the words out. “The three-million-dollar one.” I said the number again, wanting it to land, wanting him to understand the magnitude of my loss.
His frown deepened. He was silent for a moment, and I could almost see the gears turning in his head, calculating. I waited, praying for a single kind word. *It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.*
Instead, he let out a short, dismissive sigh.
“You’re going to fall apart over one contract?” His tone was laced with contempt. “Clare, don’t be so dramatic.”
The world stopped. “Dramatic?” I stared at him, incredulous. “Chase, that was everything to me. My entire career was leading up to that.”
He waved a hand dismissively, as if swatting away a fly. “*I’m* everything to you, not some job. You’re about to be my wife. Why do you even care about that kind of money?”
His words were a slap in the face, a casual erasure of my identity, my ambition, my worth. He wasn't offering to support me; he was offering to own me.
A bitter, ugly laugh escaped my lips. “So my hands are ruined, my career is over, and it doesn’t matter, as long as I can still marry you?”
He completely missed the sarcasm. To him, it was a perfectly logical statement. “What else is there? Karis is so torn up over your little ‘accident’ she can barely eat, and you’re in here picking a fight with me over money?”
He brought her up again. Always Karis. Her feelings were real, important. Mine were a childish tantrum.
“You need to see the bigger picture, Clare,” he said, his voice taking on a commanding edge.
“The bigger picture?” I shot back, my voice trembling with a rage I didn't know I possessed. “Am I even in your bigger picture, Chase? Or am I just a part of the frame?”
He was taken aback by my defiance. He paced in front of the window, running a hand through his perfect hair, agitated that this conversation wasn’t going according to his script.
He stopped and looked at me, his expression shifting as if he’d just solved a complex business problem.
“Alright, stop this,” he said, his tone softening into one of magnanimous, condescending authority. “I have a solution.”
I waited, my body rigid.
A self-satisfied smirk touched his lips. “As compensation, you can start at my company tomorrow.”
My blood ran cold.
“The PR department needs a new… brand ambassador,” he said, catching himself before he said the word I knew was on his mind: *mascot*. “You’d be perfect. Name your salary. It’s yours.”
He thought he was being generous. He was offering me a golden cage, a decorative position to keep me quiet and dependent. He was taking my life’s work, my passion, and reducing it to a line item on his corporate budget.
I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth and realized I was biting the inside of my lip, hard.
“Salary is no object,” he added, as if that was the only thing that could possibly matter.
