My Husband Bought Me To Hide His Fortune — Then I Found His Hidden Ledgers
Part 2
I held my breath, waiting for Craig to unleash his legendary temper upon me.
Instead, he completely ignored Tyler and took the forty pages of evidence directly from my trembling hands.
His icy blue eyes scanned the immaculate handwriting and the flawless mathematical deductions I had spent weeks compiling.
He saw the absolute, irrefutable evidence of his uncle Dan’s massive fraud laid bare before him.
A strange, electric energy seemed to vibrate through his imposing frame.
He had expected a silent, invisible ghost when he married me to satisfy the trust.
Instead, he had accidentally married a relentless strategist.
He asked Tyler in a dangerously soft voice if the ledgers were entirely true.
Tyler desperately tried to claim I didn’t understand the complexities of managing a vast estate.
Craig didn’t even bother to raise his voice.
He simply told Tyler he had exactly one hour to leave the Yorkshire property forever.
He promised to personally throw the corrupt manager into the Thames with an anvil chained to his ankle if he ever contacted Dan again.
Tyler scrambled out of the room like a frightened rat, leaving us entirely alone in the massive study.
The fire cracked heavily in the stone hearth, casting flickering golden shadows across Craig’s sharp jawline.
He stepped closer, deliberately closing the distance between us until he was mere inches away.
He was a foot taller than me, a towering presence of absolute authority.
But I firmly held my ground, refusing to let him intimidate me.
He murmured that I was absolutely not what he bargained for.
I fired back that he should have read the fine print before marrying a desperate woman.
For the first time since our bleak wedding day, I saw something other than coldness in his piercing eyes.
I saw an exhilarating thrill racing fiercely through his veins.
But before he could say another word, the heavy oak doors swung violently open.
Dan stood smugly in the doorway, flanked by Brenda, a malicious noblewoman he had originally wanted Craig to marry.
Dan offered a sickeningly patronizing smile, claiming he had come to inspect the failing grounds as a concerned trustee.
Brenda mocked my modest clothes, asking with venomous pity if I got lost often in such a giant manor.
Craig’s large hands curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides.
A sharp, dangerous breath hissed through his clenched teeth as he prepared to eviscerate them both.
But I stepped around the mahogany desk first, wearing a regal, utterly lethal smile on my face.
I told them I did not get lost at all, and had become quite familiar with every hidden rat attempting to feast on the estate’s foundations.
Dan’s patronizing smile vanished instantly into an incredibly dark sneer.
He took a threatening step toward me, hissing that I had absolutely no idea what I was meddling in.
Craig moved with the terrifying speed of a striking viper, placing his massive frame squarely between his uncle and me.
He reached back, finding the small of my back with his remarkably large, surprisingly warm hand.
The heat of his palm seared right through the thin silk of my dress.
Dan sneered, revealing a fatal clause in the trust regarding unconsummated marriages.
He threatened to expose our sham arrangement at the Christmas gala, ruining Craig completely before the entire board.
Would we be able to expose Dan’s fraud before he destroyed our marriage in front of the entire board?
