“Now it’s my turn to be honest,” he said.
⸻
I tried to smile, some nervous instinct still hoping this might turn out to be nothing.
“Silas, don’t scare me.”
His expression shifted, and my skin went cold before he’d said another word.
⸻
“I have to,” he said quietly. “Because when you married me, you agreed to something far bigger than a name on paper.”
⸻
He opened the box slowly. Inside sat a stack of folded documents, considerably older than anything from his trial, the paper gone slightly yellow at the edges, along with a small velvet pouch tucked beside them.
⸻
“My grandfather founded the Ashford Family Foundation almost fifty years ago,” Silas said. “When he wrote his will, he included a clause specifically about inheritance — control of the foundation’s endowment, along with his personal estate, would only pass to me directly if I was legally married before I turned thirty.”
⸻
