Chapter 2

Alexander

"Sir, there's an unscheduled international video conference at seven thirty."

My assistant's voice came through the phone while I was still half-buried in sleep. The night before, I had wrapped up nearly twenty hours of transcontinental travel; after landing in New York, I'd stayed at the airport handling several urgent documents, not returning to my private penthouse in Manhattan until deep into the night. I've always been a light sleeper, yet this time I'd slept unusually soundly.

"Understood," I said, eyes closing again. "Send the files to my inbox. I'll be ready to leave in half an hour."

I hung up and lay still for a few seconds before I was fully awake.

Turning onto my side, I looked at my wife, her back to me. She was curled beneath the covers, her breathing even—clearly still asleep. I didn't wake her. Moving quietly, I got up, went into the dressing room to change into a suit, and left the apartment.

In the car on the way to the office, I would normally have been in a foul mood all day after so little sleep. But today, watching the streets slide past the window, I felt no fatigue at all. If anything, my mood was good.

The night before had been the first genuinely intimate moment between Victoria and me in the three years of our marriage.

Ours had been, from the start, a union arranged by two families for mutual benefit. After the wedding, Victoria had been intensely averse to marital intimacy, for reasons both physical and psychological. I had gone along with every medical consultation and treatment, but I had never once forced her. So when she messaged me the previous day—saying the doctor believed there was still a slim chance of natural conception, and that she wanted to try again—I was genuinely surprised.

What surprised me even more was the woman I'd encountered last night in the dim bedroom. Normally composed and reserved, so guarded that she instinctively kept her distance even from an embrace, she had seemed like an entirely different person.

At first she'd been so tense she could barely respond; every touch made her body visibly stiffen. But just as I sensed her resistance and prepared to stop, she didn't push me away. Instead she wrapped her arms around my neck with surprising eagerness, meeting me in the dim light—clumsy, yet fervent beyond anything I'd expected.

That unrestrained passion, so utterly at odds with her everyday manner, struck me in a way nothing had before.

The car stopped outside my building. I pulled my gaze back and forced down the images that had no business surfacing during working hours. We'd been married a while, yet we had never truly known each other. Perhaps the private side of Victoria was simply different from her public one—hardly something to wonder at.

At the office, I went straight into the morning meeting.

Tactical analyses scrolled across the enormous screen while my assistant delivered the quarterly projections from the podium, clear and methodical. But as she reached the status of a certain project, my thoughts briefly wandered off track.

I remembered that before leaving the apartment that morning, I had specifically instructed the housekeeper not to disturb Victoria in the bedroom. Before heading out, I'd even messaged my private physician, asking him to prepare and send over something to ease any physical discomfort.

In the past, I had never believed a business marriage required me to maintain it through such small gestures of care. But Victoria's behavior last night had made me realize that perhaps she had never been averse to me at all—perhaps the years of pressure from being unable to conceive, and the grueling treatments, had simply left her unable to relax. If last night meant she was finally willing to lower her guard and move closer to this marriage, then I, as her husband, had no reason to remain as cold and distant as I had been.

At noon, Victoria came to the Whitmore Group headquarters of her own accord.

We had lunch together in the private executive dining room. She wore a pale, impeccably tailored skirt suit, her makeup exquisite, her manner elegant—even the way she adjusted her napkin as she sat down was flawless, as if honed by years of training. She was exactly the woman I had known these past three years.

I had assumed that, after last night, there would be at least some new understanding between us, some subtle shift that only a married couple could recognize.

Yet Victoria was remarkably natural. Cutting into the steak on her plate, she asked casually, "How did you sleep last night? Your assistant said you had another urgent meeting this morning."

"Fine," I said, watching her, my tone flat. "The schedule's been tight."

"Take care of yourself." She smiled gently and, from there, steered the conversation smoothly toward the family gathering next week and the schedule for several charity galas.

Watching her, I felt an odd sense of dissonance I couldn't quite name. The woman in that dim room last night and this composed, unruffled Victoria before me were almost impossible to reconcile.

But the strangeness lasted only a few seconds. I quickly found an explanation for it: Victoria placed enormous value on breeding and propriety, and she would naturally never discuss anything so private as marital matters in a daytime office setting.

After cutting her last bite of food, Victoria dabbed at the corner of her mouth and returned to the subject of last night—the matter of conceiving.

"The doctor sent me his latest assessment this morning," she said, meeting my eyes with a hint of seriousness. "He says that, given my current condition, to improve the odds we need to make use of this ovulation window and try several times in succession—not rely on last night alone."

The hand holding my knife paused. I frowned slightly.

I found it deeply distasteful to turn intimacy into a scheduled task dictated by a doctor's timetable, and I had even less desire to place that unspoken pressure on her.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I looked straight into her eyes. "I don't want you treating it as a burden."

Victoria was briefly taken aback, but she quickly recovered her signature smile.

"I've waited too long for this child, Alexander." Her voice dropped low, her hands tightening faintly on her knees. "As long as there's even the slightest chance, I want to try. The Whitmores need an heir. And so do I."

Seeing the weight of that expectation in her eyes, I thought of the pressure the family had placed on her over the years. In the end, I didn't refuse.

"Don't push yourself too hard," I said slowly. "If your body can't take it, you can stop at any time. Don't worry about the family."

Victoria visibly relaxed, the tension easing out of her.

Then, as if on a sudden whim, she remarked, "By the way—because I've been on hormone medication lately, I've been getting migraines, and I'm especially sensitive to bright light. So... for these next few attempts, I'd rather keep the room dim, and I'd prefer not to talk much during. You won't mind, will you, Alexander?"

Her tone was soft. "I just don't want you to think I'm deliberately keeping you at a distance."

The moment those words left her mouth, the faint sense of dissonance I'd felt earlier dissolved completely.

Why the bedroom last night had held only the dying embers of the fireplace and a very dim floor lamp; why Victoria had barely spoken a full sentence to me; why she had kept instinctively turning her face away so I couldn't see it clearly—all of it now had a reasonable explanation.

"Do whatever feels comfortable for you," I said evenly, looking at her. "There's no need to put yourself through anything painful just to have a child."

"Thank you, Alexander." She smiled, her expression settling back into its usual composure.

The sky darkened, and Manhattan's night skyline spread out beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I finally finished the last international video conference of the day, rubbed my aching brow, gathered the documents on my desk, and prepared to call my driver for the trip home.

The phone screen on my desk suddenly lit up with a new message.

It was from Victoria.

The doctor just confirmed tomorrow evening is still within the optimal window. If you're done with work, try to come back to the estate early tomorrow.

I stared at the line of text, my hands going still for a few seconds.

Unbidden, the image rose in my mind—the figure gasping softly beneath me last night—along with Victoria's expression at noon, smiling as she said, I've waited too long for this child.

In the end, I pressed the keys and replied with a single word:

All right.