Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 174

CHAPTER 139 PART 2

“A man like that doesn’t release you,” Marcus continued. “He tightens his grip. He pushes the marriage forward specifically because you tried to escape it. And when it’s done — when the contract is signed and the heirloom is transferred and the Lancaster Family has what they came for he makes sure every day afterward is a consequence.” He looked at her. “You haven’t freed yourself. You’ve handed him a reason.”

The color had changed in Elize’s face. The chin was still up, but the architecture behind it was different – the specific expression of someone who had been running on anger and defiance and had just encountered the wall that both of those things run into eventually.

“He wouldn’t-” she started.

“He called someone from his car before it left the parking structure,” Marcus said. “Tonight. To deal with me before morning.” He picked up his glass. “That’s who you’re engaged to. That’s the man you handed a personal grievance tonight on top of an already existing business transaction.” He set it down. “So no. You haven’t freed yourself. You’ve made it considerably worse.”

Elize Yarrow sat with her lamb getting cold and the bunny ears on her head and the full weight of the evening settling onto her with the specific gravity of consequences that had been earned in real time and were now presenting their invoice.

“What do I do?” she said. Quietly. Without the performance. Just the question.

Marcus opened his mouth.

The suite door opened.

Miguel Abbott’s personal assistant appeared in the doorway with the expression of someone delivering information they would have preferred not to deliver.

“Mr. Abbott.” He looked at his employer. “There are two men downstairs requesting access to this floor.” A pause. “Mr. Gerald Lancaster and Mr. Patrick Yarrow.”

The table went completely still.

Miguel looked at Marcus. Marcus looked at the door. Elize looked at the space between them with the expression of someone watching two people calculate something she needed to be part of and wasn’t.

“Atlas’s father,” Marcus said.

“And mine,” Elize said. Her voice had lost all remaining layers. “My father came himself.”

“The incident reached them faster than expected,” Miguel said. He was already standing, already composing his expression into something that could receive difficult guests without providing them information. “I’ll go down. I’ll tell them there’s been a misunderstanding. That the situation has been-”

“Send them up,” Marcus said.

Miguel stopped.

“Send them up,” Marcus said again. His dragon eyes had the quality of something that had just made a decision and was done revisiting it. “Both of them.”

“Marcus-“Miguel’s voice had the careful register of someone who understood that the next three minutes were going to determine several months of consequences. “If Gerald Lancaster comes up here and sees-”

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“Send them up,” Marcus said.

Miguel looked at him for one moment. Then he looked at Elize in the bunny outfit. Then he turned to his assistant

and nodded.

The assistant disappeared.

—

Marcus stood. He moved toward the suite’s secondary room doorway – the one Elize had emerged from and looked at Elize with the specific directness of someone executing a plan that had a narrow window.

“Stand there,” he said. “In the doorway.”

Elize stood. “Why?”

“Because when they come through that door, they need to see something that makes this entirely my fault and not yours.” He reached toward the shoulder strap of the bunny outfit. “The Yarrow family needs to be protected from the Lancaster response. The only way to do that is if this looks like something that was done to you, not something you—”

He pulled.

The strap gave. The shoulder of the outfit dropped.

“Stop-” Elize grabbed it. “What are you-”

“Don’t fix it,” Marcus said quietly. Urgently. “When they walk in, you need to look like someone who didn’t choose to be in this room. If Gerald Lancaster thinks you’re here willingly, the damage to both families is irreversible. If he thinks you were brought here without consent, it’s entirely on me.” He met her eyes. “I can absorb the consequence. Your family can’t.”

Elize looked at him. The dropped shoulder. The doorway. The sound of the elevator activating somewhere below.

She understood.

She let go of the strap.

The door to the suite opened.

Gerald Lancaster came in first, with the broad-shouldered authority of a man who had been moving through rooms at high speed since receiving a phone call forty minutes ago. Behind him, Patrick Yarrow – shorter, sharper, the specific anxiety of a father who has heard something about his daughter and has been doing terrible arithmetic in the car – came through the doorway and stopped.

They saw Miguel Abbott.

They saw the dining table.

They saw the harbor view,

And then they saw Elize Yarrow standing in the secondary room doorway in a bunny outfit with a dropped shoulder strap and the expression of someone who-

“Oh thank god you’re here,” Elize said. Loudly. Warmly. With the specific energy of someone who was extremely relieved and extremely comfortable and had been having a wonderful time. “Daddy, you should see the view from up here, it’s incredible. Marcus, darling, my father’s here-”

Marcus Steel stood very still.

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–

The plan – the specific, carefully constructed plan that required her to appear as a victim of circumstance — dissolved in the warm, enthusiastic sound of Elize Yarrow greeting her father like someone who had invited him to a party.

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