“You knew?” he asked me.
“No.”
He stared.
“I learned about this approximately thirty seconds before you did.”
For once, he believed me immediately.
His anger shifted toward my father.
“You engineered this.”
My father remained calm.
“I structured it.”
“You handed your daughter leverage over my company on our wedding day.”
“I handed my daughter something men around her have spent years assuming she should not have.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Choice.”
That silenced all of us.
I looked down at the signature page.
My name was there.
Adelaide Müller Strickland.
The ink was barely dry.
For years, people had spoken around me, about me, and for me.
Klaus had done it cruelly.
My parents had sometimes done it lovingly.
Peter had done it before he even met me.
Strange.
Dull.
A five-year inconvenience.
Now three men stood in a room waiting to see what I would do.
I closed the folder.
Peter’s voice sharpened.
“What are you doing?”
“Going back to my wedding reception.”
“You cannot walk out while my company is hanging on a clause nobody explained to me.”
I met his eyes.
“You signed it.”
His jaw flexed.
“I trusted my advisers.”
“And I was supposed to trust a husband who mocked me before the ceremony?”
That struck home.
George moved toward the door.
“I’m going to give you two a minute.”
Peter stopped him.
“No.
Stay.”
George raised an eyebrow.
“Why?”
“Because apparently you’re the only person in this building who told me to read the schedules.”
George’s expression hardened.
“I told you twice.”
Peter looked at him.
“You knew something was there?”
“I knew there were lender provisions.
I didn’t know Adelaide would control them.
You said the details were beneath you because the five-year lock was all that mattered.”
Peter glanced at me.
His own words had returned to him through the mouth of his best man.
For the first time, he looked embarrassed rather than threatened.
