I needed a wife.”

Chapter 11 — The Trust

He explained the shape of the trap he was caught in, and the shape of the door I had unknowingly become.

Under the terms of his late wife’s original trust, he told me, if he were to die while still unmarried, a controlling share of Pendelton Enterprises would pass automatically to Julian and Victoria, and with it everything he had spent his life building.

But if he were legally married at the moment of his passing, then his surviving spouse would inherit the controlling voting rights instead, and sole charge of the charitable foundation he cared about far more than the company.