Silence.

Konstantin had insisted the transfer be signed before his best man submitted the license — his own precaution, meant to make sure he had my shares before the law had our marriage.

He had built his own trap and walked me toward it, and when I stepped aside, he was the one standing in it.

“You planned this,” he breathed.

“No.

I prepared for the possibility that you were exactly the man my father warned me you were.”