Page 19 of Daddy's Ring
"Nothing else matters." His voice drops lower, intense in a way that demands I hear him. "I love you. I love you and I need you alive and healing and here with me. That's all. That's everything."
I want to believe him. Want to let those words settle into the hollow places and make them less empty. But there's still something wrong—something he's not saying. I can feel it in the tension that hasn't left his shoulders, see it in the way his jaw keeps clenching.
"There's something else." I search his face, watching emotions flicker too fast to name. "Dec, I can tell. What aren't you telling me?"
"It's nothing." But he won't meet my eyes anymore. "It doesn't matter."
"If it didn't matter, you wouldn't be lying awake staring at the ceiling." I press my palm against his chest, feeling his heartbeat kick faster. "Please. I don't want secrets between us. Not now. Not after everything."
He's quiet for so long I think he might not answer. His hands slide from my face to my shoulders, then down my arms, like he needs the contact to ground himself. When he finally speaks, his voice is careful.
"My uncle came to talk to me when you were in the hospital. He wanted to talk about succession planning."
Something cold slides down my spine. "Okay."
"He's been grooming me to take over the business when he retires." Declan's still not looking at me. "You know that. But there are expectations that come with leadership. Requirements."
The cold spreads through my chest. "What kind of requirements?"
"Strategic alliances." His jaw works. "Family connections. The kind that get formalized through marriage."
Oh.
The single syllable echoes in my head, followed by a dozen implications I don't want to examine. Marriage. Requirements. Strategic alliances. None of those words include me—a broke college student with no connections, no family, nothing to offer except myself.
"He wants you to marry someone else." I don't frame it as a question because I already know the answer.
Declan's arms tighten around me. "He suggested it would be beneficial. For stability. For the business."
"Who?" My voice sounds distant even to my own ears.
"Doesn't matter." Now he does meet my eyes, and there's something fierce there, protective and possessive in equal measure. "Because I'm not doing it. I told him no."
"Dec—"
"I told him Stellan can have the title." He keeps talking, words coming faster like he needs to get them all out. "We'll run things together anyway. The business doesn't need me to be officially in charge. My brother's smart enough, strategic enough. He'll handle the politics and I'll handle—" He gestures vaguely. "Whatever needs handling. It changes nothing between us."
But it changes everything. I can hear it in what he's not saying—all the years of preparation, the grooming, the expectation that he'd step into his uncle's role. And now he's willing to give it up. For me. Because of me.
"You'd give up everything you've been working toward." My throat constricts. "Your entire future."
"My future is with you." He says it like it's simple, like there's no weight to that decision. "Everything else is just details."
I should feel relieved. Grateful. This man is choosing me over power, over legacy, over everything he's been building sincebefore we met. Instead, I feel like I'm drowning. Like the walls are closing in and I can't breathe properly.
Because this is what I was afraid of. This is exactly what I've spent three years trying to avoid—becoming someone's burden, someone's sacrifice, the reason they give up their dreams. I watched my mother waste away asking for nothing, accepting nothing, terrified of being dependent. And now I'm the person Declan's restructuring his entire life around.
I'm costing him everything.
"Zola." His hand finds my chin, tilting my face up. "I can see what you're thinking and you need to stop."
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
"You're thinking this is your fault somehow. That you're taking something from me." His thumb strokes along my jaw. "But you're not. This is my choice. My decision. Nobody's making me do anything."
"But your uncle?—"
"Can accept it or not. I don't care." There's steel in his voice now, the same edge I've heard him use with people who cross him. "I'm not marrying some stranger for business purposes. I'm not giving you up because it would be convenient for succession planning. That's not happening."
