CHAPTER THREE

Evanthe - POV

“Nobody tells you what it feels like to lose four years.”

People talk about comas like they are a long sleep. Like you simply close your eyes on one version of your life and open them on another. Clean. Simple. A gap you fill in with paperwork and phone calls and physiotherapy sessions until everything lines up again.

What they don’t tell you is that the world kept moving while you were gone. Decisions were made. Papers were signed. A woman you have never met in your life sat beside your bed for four years and somewhere along the line became your legal wife. And everyone around you treats this like a reasonable thing that simply needed to be explained properly.

I was out of the hospital within three weeks.

My doctors wanted longer. My mother wanted longer. I overruled both of them because lying in that bed with machines and sympathetic faces was making me feel like a problem to be managed rather than a man with an empire to reclaim.

The moment my legs held my weight reliably, I started making calls. The moment my hands stopped shaking, I started signing documents. By the time I walked back into the Blackwood Estate I had already begun the process of understanding exactly how much damage four years of absence had done to my holdings.

The answer was significant.

The board had made moves I would not have sanctioned. Two subsidiaries had been sold off quietly. A development project I had spent eighteen months building from the ground up had been handed to a competitor at a price that was insulting. My uncle had managed things with the particular brand of careful mediocrity that protects nothing and offends no one and costs a great deal in the long run.

I had a lot of work to do. That suited me. Work I understood.

What I did not understand was her.

Evi ran the estate with a quiet efficiency that I could not find fault with no matter how hard I looked, and I looked.

The household staff moved without friction. The schedules were organized. The accounts were clean. She had managed everything from the groundskeeping budget to the medical supply orders with a precision that would have been impressive from someone twice her age.

She was twenty six years old and she ran my house better than I would have.

I did not tell her that.

What I did instead was watch her. Not obviously. I was not a man who made his observations visible. But I noticed things.

The way she spoke to the staff, direct without being cold. The way she moved through the estate like someone who had learned every room by feel. The way she always seemed to know when I was about to need something before I knew it myself. A file appearing on my desk. Coffee at the right temperature. A reminder about a call I had almost forgotten.

Frictionless. Invisible almost, in the way of someone who has perfected the art of being useful without being noticed.

It should have confirmed everything I already thought about her.

It didn’t.

I called my lawyer on a Tuesday evening three weeks after returning home. I needed the full picture of the marriage contract. Every clause. Every condition. Every legal thread that tied me to a woman I hadn’t chosen.

Marcus had been my family’s lawyer for twenty years and he had the particular talent of delivering bad news in a tone so neutral it took a moment to register.

He walked me through it carefully.

The heir clause was the binding point. Until a legitimate Blackwood heir was produced, the estate and the controlling shares of the company remained in a trust that limited my executive authority in ways I found completely unacceptable. Dissolving the marriage before the clause was satisfied would trigger a board review that I was not in a strong enough position to survive yet. My uncle’s quiet mismanagement had seen to that.

I needed the marriage to stay intact. For now.

“And the wife?” I asked.

A pause. “Mrs. Blackwood has been exemplary,” Marcus said carefully. “In four years she has given no grounds for complaint of any kind. The family has been appreciative.”

I noted the word he chose. “Appreciative.” Not she is trustworthy. Not she genuinely cared for your wellbeing. Appreciative. The word you use when you want to acknowledge something without committing to what it actually means.

“How much does she want?” I asked.

Another pause. Longer this time.

“She has never raised the subject of compensation beyond her original contracted salary,” Marcus said. “Not once in four years.”

I sat with that for a moment.

Then I told him to prepare the documentation I needed and ended the call.

That evening I found her in the library, the one room in the estate I hadn’t yet reclaimed as a workspace. She was reorganizing the shelves with the focused quiet of someone who finds the task genuinely satisfying rather than obligatory. She didn’t hear me come in.

I stood in the doorway and watched her for a moment longer than I intended to.

“We need to talk about the arrangement,” I said.

She turned without startling. Found me in the doorway with those steady eyes and waited.

“The marriage stays intact until the heir clause is satisfied,” I said. “After that we dissolve it cleanly and you’ll be compensated appropriately for your time. I’ll have Marcus draw up the updated terms.”

I watched her face for a reaction. Hurt. Anger. Negotiation. Anything I could work with.

She gave me nothing.

“Alright,” she said simply.

Just that. No pushback. No questions. No attempt to renegotiate.

She turned back to the shelves like the conversation was already filed away somewhere and no longer required her attention.

I stood in the doorway for a moment longer than was necessary.

Then I left.

She was either the most patient woman I had ever encountered or the most calculated. I hadn’t decided which yet.

What I had decided was that it didn’t matter.

This was a transaction. Nothing more.

I just needed to keep reminding myself of that.