“I think someone in my own company wanted me physically diminished and publicly fragile.

Victor benefited most.

But suspicion is not evidence, and men like him survive on the distance between the two.”

The room seemed colder.

“Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

“Because I am one provable accusation short of civil war inside the company, and if I move too early, he buries everything and paints me as paranoid.”

Clare understood suddenly why he had needed a wife.

Not just for the will.

For optics.

Stability.

Human proof that he had not retreated from life.

A marriage made him look anchored.

Harder to dislodge.

Harder to reframe as broken.

She should have resented being used.

Instead what she felt was a deep, sharp pull of loyalty that frightened her more than attraction.

In the days that followed, the house shifted around them.

Serena came to lunch uninvited and pretended old concern.

Victor sent flowers after board meetings, as if intimidation could smell like peonies.

Reporters camped at the main gate.

Anonymous comments online speculated about Dominic’s health, his temper, his marriage, his sex life.

That last one made Clare sick in a way she could not fully explain.

One evening she found Dominic in the conservatory staring into the dark beyond the glass.

“They think I can’t see it,” he said.

“See what?”

“The look people get when they decide what has been taken from me means I am less of everything else too.

Less dangerous.

Less desirable.

Less whole.”

Clare moved closer.

“That’s their failure, not yours.”

His mouth tightened.

“It becomes yours when you’re married to me.”

She did not answer, because the truth sat too close to the surface.

It became hers the first time he looked at her like she was safe.

It became hers when she saw him working in the therapy pool until his body shook.

It became hers when Victor smiled.

Two nights before the board vote, the power went out in the east wing during a storm.

The backup systems kicked in everywhere except Dominic’s private lift.

Staff rushed.

Marcus called maintenance.

Clare went looking for Dominic and found him in the hall outside his bedroom, rain flashing silver through the windows, his chair angled beside a console table covered in old family photographs.

He had one frame in his hand.

A picture of himself before the crash.

Standing.

Smiling.

Younger.

Unmarked by what came next.

He did not notice her at first.

When he did, his face shuttered too late.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said.

He set the frame down carefully.

“You didn’t.”

Lightning flared.

In the brief blue-white light, he looked stripped raw.

“Dominic—”

“Don’t,” he said quietly.

She stopped.

His throat moved once.

“Do you know what the ugliest part is? Not the pain.

Not rehab.

Not losing half the people who claimed they loved me because they liked the version of me that could fill a room vertically.”

His hand tightened on the wheel rim.

“It’s watching people decide what my body means without ever asking me.”

Clare’s chest hurt.

She took one more step toward him.

“I haven’t decided anything.”

His eyes met hers then, dark and fierce and exhausted.

When he spoke, his voice was rough enough to sound almost unfamiliar.

“I’m