“Sable.”
“Right. Sorry.” She straightened up. Took a breath. “Mr. Caelum. Thirty-eight years old. Self-made billionaire, more or less – his family had money, but he multiplied it by a factor of about a thousand. Owns businesses across multiple continents. Respected, feared, and occasionally hated, which is apparently the trifecta of successful men.”
I nodded. “What else?”
“He has a mother. Celeste. She’s… formidable. The kind of woman who probably organized her own birth. And he has two sisters and a brother, all of whom-“
“Sable.”
She stopped. She knew. I could see in her eyes that she knew what I was really asking, and had been trying to navigate around it the way you navigate around a hole in the road.
“He was married before,” she said quietly. “His wife’s name was Lydia. She died two years ago. Diabetes complications.”
The words landed inside me in a place I didn’t expect – not my anger, but somewhere softer, somewhere beneath it. Lydia. He’d had a wife named Lydia who died too young, and he’d been carrying that loss around like a stone in his pocket, and he hadn’t told me.
“And,” Sable continued, even quieter, “he has a child. Thirteen years old.”
I stood up. The motion was sudden enough that Sable flinched.
“He has a child,” I repeated, and the calm in my voice was the dangerous kind – the eye of a hurricane, the quiet before the avalanche. “He has a thirteen-year-old child, and a dead wife, and he didn’t think any of this was worth mentioning before he marched into my kitchen and demanded my hand?”
“Marlowe-“
“What else is he hiding? A second family? A criminal record? A collection of wives in freezers?”
“Marlowe, I think that’s-“
“Thank you, Sable. I need to go have a conversation.”
I was halfway to the door when a knock stopped me. I pulled it open to find a servant – young, nervous, holding a tray of snacks and an expression that suggested he’d drawn the short straw.
“Ma’am,” he said, “your snacks. And – Mr. Caelum asked me to give you this.”
He produced a small folded note from his pocket, the kind of note you pass in middle school, the kind that has no business existing in the household of a billionaire. I took it, told him to leave the tray in the room, and unfolded it as I walked.
Meet me on the balcony. – Caelum
Simple. Direct. As though we were teenagers arranging a rendezvous, not a coerced wife and her contractual husband navigating a minefield of secrets and slaps.
“Oh, I’ll meet you on the balcony,” I muttered, crumpling the note in my fist. “I’ll meet you on the balcony alright.”
The hallway felt longer than it should have. My heels clicked against the marble with a rhythm that matched my heartbeat: angry, angry, angry. Each step was a syllable in a sentence I hadn’t finished composing – a speech about honesty, about secrets, about the fundamental audacity of a man who hides an entire family and then has the nerve to pursue you with roses and dinner notes.
I reached the balcony doors and pushed them open.
The space beyond had been transformed. String lights hung overhead in warm, golden loops, casting the kind of light that makes everything look like a memory. A small table for two, dressed in white linen, stood at the center with candles flickering in glass holders. Music played from somewhere – something classical, something soft, something chosen by a man who had put thought into this. Real thought. The kind of thought that requires caring about the outcome.
And there, standing in front of it all, was Caelum. Black suit. Polished shoes. In his hand, a single red rose, held not casually but carefully, the way you hold something fragile you’re afraid of crushing.
He saw me. His face opened – hope, nervousness, the beginning of words he’d been rehearsing.
He stepped toward me. Knelt.
Held up the rose.
And I slapped him.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.