Emery’s POV
The fallout arrives within days.
I hear Landon's footsteps before I see him—heavy, deliberate, the rhythm of a man carrying something too large to name. When he appears in our bedroom doorway, I know immediately that something has broken.
Tension carves itself into every line of his face. His jaw is locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. His tie hangs loose, like he started to remove it and forgot halfway through.
"What happened?" I set down the book I wasn't really reading and rose from the armchair.
He doesn't answer. Instead, he crosses to the window and stares out at the grounds, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The silence stretches until I can barely breathe through it.
"Landon." I move closer, stopping just behind him. "Tell me."
"Walsh pulled out." His voice is flat, stripped of emotion. "The expansion deal. Gone."
My stomach drops. Walsh was their largest investor—the cornerstone of everything Remington Holdings had planned for the next fiscal year. "What? Why?"
"Concerns about reputational risk." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "About the stability of leadership. About distractions within the family."
The words hit me like physical blows. Distractions. Stability. Reputational risk.
Me. They mean me.
"The tabloid story," I whisper.
"Did exactly what it was designed to do." He turns from the window and starts pacing, running his hands through his hair until it stands in wild disarray. "Walsh's people saw it. The board saw it. Everyone saw it, Emery. And now they're questioning whether I can lead when my personal life is a liability."
I watch him pace—back and forth, back and forth—and feel guilt coil tight in my stomach like a living thing. This is my fault. Every whisper, every planted story, every carefully orchestrated attack—they've all led to this moment.
I am the distraction. I am the instability they fear.
"Maybe I should leave," I say quietly.
He stops mid-stride. "What?"
"Take Elsie somewhere far from the Remington name." The words taste like poison, but I force them out anyway. "Just until the pressure eases. Until things stabilize. You could tell people we're visiting my family abroad, that I needed space—"
"No." His reaction is immediate, fierce, absolute.
"Landon, listen to me—"
"I said no." He crosses the room in two strides, his hands gripping my arms with an intensity that borders on desperate. "You are not leaving. Do you understand me? You are not running, and you are not sacrificing yourself to save my goddamn company."
"But if I'm the problem—"
"You are not the problem." His voice breaks on the words, raw and wounded. "You are never the problem. They are the problem. My mother, Marian, whoever planted that story—they are the ones destroying everything, not you."
"The board doesn't see it that way."
"The board can go to hell."
I stare up at him, seeing the fear beneath his anger, the love beneath his fear. His fingers dig into my arms like he's afraid I'll disappear if he loosens his grip.
"I can't lose you," he whispers. "I won't survive it. Not again. Not after everything we've fought to rebuild."
"You won't lose me."
"Then stay." His forehead drops to mine, his breath ragged against my skin. "Stay and fight with me. Don't let them win by driving you away."
"Landon—"
He kisses me before I can finish. It's hard, desperate, like he's trying to prove something to both of us. His hands slide from my arms to my waist, pulling me against him with an urgency that steals my breath.
This isn't passion. This is fear transformed into touch, terror transmuted into need.
I kiss him back with equal desperation, my fingers fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer, trying to anchor us both to something solid. His mouth moves to my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder, and I feel myself unraveling.
"I need you," he breathes against my skin. "Right now. I need to feel you."
We fall into bed with an urgency born of everything we can't control. His hands strip away my clothes like they're obstacles between us and survival. I pull at his shirt, his belt, desperate to feel skin against skin.
When he finally sinks into me, I cry out—not from pleasure, though that's there too, but from relief. From the overwhelming sense of being connected to another person when everything else is falling apart.
"Don't leave me," he groans, moving inside me. "Promise me."
"I promise," I gasp. "I'm not going anywhere."
He drives deeper, harder, like he's trying to fuse us together. I cling to him, nails raking down his back, legs wrapped around his waist. We're not making love. We're holding on. Grasping at each other like drowning people reaching for shore.
The release, when it comes, crashes through us both—shattering and rebuilding in the same breath. I feel him pulse inside me as my own body trembles with aftershocks.
Afterward, we lie tangled together in the wreckage of sheets, our breathing slowly returning to normal. He pulls me against his chest, his hand stroking down my spine in long, soothing motions.
"I will fix this," he whispers into my hair. "All of it. The board, the investors, my mother—I will handle everything."
I close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat beneath my ear. Strong. Steady. Determined.
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him so badly it aches.
But I know what I'm facing now. I've seen the trap closing around me, felt the walls narrowing with every planted story and whispered rumors. Portia and Marian aren't fighting battles anymore—they're waging war.
And the first casualties have already fallen.
"I love you," I tell him, because it's true, because he needs to hear it, because some things should be said before the fighting starts.
"I love you too." His arms tighten around me. "More than anything."
We hold each other in the darkness, two people clinging to what they've built while forces beyond their control work to tear it down.