Page 9 of The Marriage Bid
His proposal to bury all of this? Marry his daughter, and all of this will not come out. I balked at the idea, but then he offered I marry her for a minimum of seven years. And all I had to do was attend an auction, barf, where his own daughter was on the auction block and bid for her hand. Marry his spoiled child. He even had an amount in mind—fifty million dollars. The money would go through Olga, and Olga, I presumed, would wash it so he didn’t have a suspiciously looking fifty million dollars popping in his bank account.
When I heard he had cancer a couple of years ago, I asked him if he could give me back the material. He had laughed in my face and told me if he were to croak, the material would be in the hands of someone close to him, and if I tried anything, that person would release it.
I told myself I would only touch her once, and I did. But it felt like it wasn’t enough. My body craved more even though I had her every which way a man could have a woman. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, I wondered if I hadn’t been combative and actually asked her for an encore in that boardroom, would she have said yes? Probably not, doofus. She was divorcing you, remember.
I tossed and turned, failing to find sleep until the early hours of the morning. I blamed it on jet lag, but my body knew better. I went to work hoping for a productive day, but the next morning was worse than the previous day.
“You threw out the Marble Row deal?” Sebastian burst into my office, his face flushed with anger. I had barely taken off my jacket when he came through like a storm. He might have shattered the door if it wasn’t so sturdy.
“Morning, brother.” I handed my assistant my jacket just as he handed me a tablet with my schedule. Matt immediately extricated himself from my office as soon as he had hung my jacket and coat, leaving me alone with Hurricane Sebastian. And one more glance at his face said we were a long way away from dissipation. I knew he was going to be mad. It was evident from the multiple texts he sent this morning. None of which I replied to.
“You better have a goddamn good reason you threw away the best and, dare I say, bargain-basement cheap interior designers in all of Manhattan.”
I sat down in my chair and shrugged. “Inexperience.” I couldn’t say the real reason. Not yet anyway.
“Inexperience.” He repeated my words with incredulity. “Now, suddenly you care how large our designer’s portfolio is? Aren’t you the guy who would rather hire an art student than a stuffy professional obsessed with beige? Or am I getting the Vanity Fair quote wrong?”
“I can’t believe you’re bringing up Vanity Fair again.Theythought I was the CEO.They.I didn’t say that.”
Sebastian’s nostrils flared. “You know very well that is not my issue.”
Fuck. I hoped that starting a fight would work. If it was related to him being seen as my younger brother rather than our equal partnership, it was easy to drag my brother into a fight.
“Why did you kill the deal?” Sebastian belatedly realized he had been shouting and went to shut the door. A few people were loitering closer to the office, pretending to need something from Matt or Seb’s assistant.
“Because of Saffron.”
“Oh my god, do you hate her that much? Enough to tank a good deal? What the fuck, Tyler?”
“So you knew she worked at Marble Row. She told me you two didn’t meet.”
“Yeah. People don’t need to meet to know each other.”
“Doesn’t matter. We can’t work with her.”
Sebastian raised his hands in surrender. “Well. Grow up, Tyler. I am sorry she thought you were hot and tried to force you into dating her, but that was a long time ago.”
“She did more than that,” I said under my breath.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
I might as well come out with it. “She forced me to marry her. Which eventually happened, by the way.”
“Uh…”
“Yeah. Her father blackmailed me into marrying her.”
“Now? I thought he was dead.”
“No,” I sighed. “Five years ago.”
I explained everything that happened to him. The documents Channing showed me. Ones that initially I thought were fake, only to learn they were in fact real. Our father’s bribery to the commissioner who approved our first New Yorkbuilding. I told him about the seedy auction. I left out the sex, and when I was done, Seb sank into the visitor’s chair and blew out air. “Why didn’t you tell me? When it happened. Why were you silent?”
“I didn’t want to bother you with it. You were going through a rough patch with Kendra, and I didn’t want you to get even more worried. Then, of course, we had that period when we almost lost the business. I just… I should have told you. I am sorry. And now…” I took the divorce papers from the office drawer and threw them on the desk. “She wants a divorce.”
“Okay?” Seb threw up his hands again. “Give it to her. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“I don’t trust her not to release the documents. It would be a huge scandal if it happens. They look really bad, Seb. Oh, and the commissioner committed suicide and made a mention of the bribe in the suicide note. It won’t be good.”
