morning in Miami. Not her name, not the chapel, not the ring. Just coconut and

white sheets like dark ribbons, and her skin glowed bronze in the morning light. She was o

lculated beauty of the women who circled my life like sharks smelling

round the penthouse and tried to piece together what had happened. Clothes everywhere. A champagne b

the ring on

ple. A we

the piece of paper lying there. Marriage Certificate. My name, signed in handwriting

iami skyline stretched out below me, and I pressed m

ll did you

trolled, ordered, scheduled down to the minute. Benjamin always joked that I was the only man he knew who could make spontaneity look like a spre

lk in on her in my own bed with a man whose face I still couldn't forget. She didn't even ha

t profitable year in its history, and made sure that no woman ever got close enough to touch me again. I had a system. I'd go out when Ben

n Lara

d called Franklin. He answered on the

ms? Everyt

arriage in Miami

lly, "Do you have a m

rtuna

me a p

n cleared his throat in that way he does when the news is

me a way out of it. Annu

ould be able to annul on the grounds

as still sleeping, and I let myself look at

. The way she'd dragged me to a pizza shop at one in the morning and told me I hadn't lived until I'd had their pepperoni slice. The way she'd looked

s and the socialites and the tabloid reporters at a safe distance. But Lara hadn't asked about my money, my job, or my name. She had asked me what made me laugh,

anything like th

ered clothes, booked the flight, called Franklin, and got us back to New York. She was quiet on the plane, and when she

. She read it, and the color drained from her face. She looked up

to her. I figured she had just put together who I was and w

e with a woman in a burgundy blouse and said, "Mr Williams, this

had opened up beneath her feet. And I was looking at her, and the on

people and chosen her, and knowing my father, he had his reasons. The

and impressive. She was smart, sharp, and completely unafraid of me, which was something I was not used to.

d to quit, my chest tighten

ting," I told he

all of them because they made sense. Pro

anklin

t meant the problem was not small. "I reviewed the Williams Famil

sh, Fr

lliams Group transfer to the eldest male heir upon his thirty-first

cold.

y, the shares revert to the board and are distributed among mino

hat a married man was a stable man, and a stable man was the only kind who should run a company. He had written this clause in

if I get this annulme

d time to find a workaround, but in the meantime, any

at Lara, who was standing by the

?" she asked. "W

al, nothing to worry about. But she was looking at me with that same direct, unflinching gaze sh

erved t

, because I had no idea how to say what I

I realized that for the first time in a very long

ge I couldn't escape, and a company

g impossible. Something that

idea if she