CHAPTER TWO: THE BILLIONAIRE NEEDS A WIFE STELLAN POV

Maren laughed—a short, sharp sound completely devoid of humor. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am.”

Her expression hardened instantly as she searched my face for any sign of a joke. Finding none, her gaze darted past my shoulder toward Claire, who remained anchored by the heavy timber office door like a silent marble guard.

Claire had worked for me for four years. In that time, she had watched me dismiss a senior executive halfway through a presentation, negotiate through a multi-million-dollar cybersecurity breach, and politely ask my own father to step out of a board meeting. I had never seen her look this curious.

“Give us the room,” I said, not taking my eyes off Maren.

“Legal is waiting in conference room four,” Claire reminded me, her hand resting lightly on the brass door handle.

“They can wait.”

“They’ve already been waiting twelve minutes, Stellan.”

“Then another five won’t harm them,” I said quietly.

Claire’s eyes moved briefly toward Maren, calculating the subtext in a fraction of a second, before she stepped out and pulled the door shut behind her with a soft, definitive click.

The second the latch caught, Maren turned back to me, her arms crossing tightly over her chest as if erecting a physical barrier between us. “Did you just ask your lead consultant to marry you while your entire legal team is sitting downstairs waiting to manage a board crisis?”

“Yes.”

“Five minutes ago, I handed you my resignation.”

“You attempted to resign,” I corrected.

“Stop saying that.”

“I will when you stop treating a decision made in emotional anger as a final corporate directive.”

Her eyes narrowed to dark, sharp slits. “I’m not angry.”

“That was considerably more convincing before you arrived without an appointment and tried to walk away from one of your largest accounts,” I said smoothly, leaning back against the edge of my mahogany desk and crossing my ankles.

“I came here to protect my firm’s integrity,” she countered, taking a single, deliberate step forward.

“So did I.”

“And what, exactly, does a fake marriage have to do with protecting my business?”

“It gives you immediate financial insulation if whoever is behind this attack attempts to reach the rest of your client roster,” I explained, keeping my voice level and controlled. “It also gives me a valid corporate mandate to put my personal security apparatus behind finding the perpetrator, without interfering in your firm unless you explicitly authorize it.”

She gave me a long, hard look, the tension in her jaw tightening. “Marriage isn’t a blanket permission slip for you to take over my problems.”

“No. A prenuptial and marital agreement would define the exact parameters of what I can and cannot touch.”

“That sounds like another way of saying contract.”

“It is.”

She reached down, her fingers coiling tightly around the leather strap of the handbag resting on the armchair beside her. “No. Whatever your uncle has pulled in the dark, marriage is not a valid crisis-management strategy.”

“In this specific case, it is the only one left.”

Her movement stopped instantly. Maren disliked incomplete information; she could walk away from a blatant insult without looking back, but an unanswered question always kept her grounded until she had parsed every variable.

“My grandmother placed eighteen percent of Thayer Rivington’s voting shares in an independent trust,” I said, laying down the structural foundation.

“I know marriage activates the trust control.”

“You know the basic surface condition,” I countered, shifting my posture slightly. “You don't know what those specific shares control, or what Alistair’s new deadline changes.”

“You told me you need eighteen percent.”

“That is what the trust commands. If I marry before the emergency board vote, I gain immediate authority to direct how those shares are cast.”

“And that single block gives you enough leverage to stop him?”

“It gives me a fighting chance.”

Slowly, her fingers unclasped from the strap, letting the bag rest back against the leather seat.

I picked up the formal board notice from the corner of my desk and glanced down at the date, though the red numbers were already burned into the back of my eyelids. Three weeks. Alistair had cut our expected timeline in half. He had spent the last six months quietly gathering support to liquidate our coastal hotel and residential portfolio, dangling short-term cash payouts attractive enough to make several independent directors forget what would happen once the immediate money was divided.

Where my uncle saw valuable real estate to strip and flip for quick returns, I saw businesses my grandmother had spent forty years building from nothing. I saw thousands of regional employees who would be handed severance notices within ninety days, and an international empire reduced to whichever assets produced the fastest quarterly return. Without Eleanor's trust shares, stopping him would depend entirely on fickle board members whose loyalty shifted with every revised offer.

Maren watched the shift in my posture, her gaze analytical. “How bad is it really?”

“If Alistair wins this vote, he can approve the coastal liquidation immediately and move straight into dismantling two other core operating divisions.”

“And you don’t have enough institutional votes on your own to block him.”

“Not without the trust.”

“Then marry someone,” she said, folding her arms once more.

“I’m trying to.”

“I mean someone who actually wants to marry you.”

“That would introduce entirely unnecessary emotional complications.”

Her expression suggested she was currently re-evaluating her assessment of my intelligence. “You are unbelievable.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

She paced three measured steps toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston skyline, then spun back around on her heel. “There must be dozens of women in your social circle who would agree before you even finished asking the question. Choose one of them.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust them.”

The stark answer quieted the room completely. The background hum of the city through the reinforced glass seemed to fade. I pressed forward before she could write my response off as dramatic executive exaggeration.

“I don’t need someone who has spent years angling for the Thayer name, an extravagant high-society wedding, or access to our liquidity. I need someone who understands what this business looks like when it is under fire.”

“And you think that person is me?”

“Yes.”

“You barely like me, Stellan.”

“I like you enough.”

“I’m deeply touched.”

“You’re discreet,” I said, pushing off the desk and closing half the distance between us. “You know the inner mechanics of this company. You’ve worked alongside senior management and handled highly sensitive corporate data for two years without ever trying to leverage it for personal gain.”

A flicker of something subtle passed across her features—a shadow of restraint so brief I almost missed it—before she turned her eyes toward the oak wall paneling.

“You also don't hesitate to push back when you think I’m wrong,” I added.

“I’ve never considered protecting your ego part of my consulting fee.”

“That happens to be one of your strongest qualifications.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, threatening to curve into a brief, reluctant smile before her discipline took over and her expression hardened again. “My father worked for this company, Stellan. He was publicly disgraced by it.”

“I know.”

“And you think making Gareth Bellamy’s daughter your wife will help you avoid a bloodbath on the board floor?”

“I’m already in the middle of a bloodbath. Alistair will manufacture weapons regardless of who stands beside me.”

“The board may not accept me,” she pointed out, her tone dropping into the cold, strategic tone she used when picking apart a flawed business pitch.

“The board doesn’t get a vote on my wife.”

“You still need the trustees to buy into this marriage being legitimate.”

“They are legally bound to verify whether the contractual conditions of cohabitation and legal union are met,” I countered flatly. “They don’t get to audit whether our feelings are sufficiently romantic for their personal tastes.”

Maren fell silent, her eyes searching mine. The initial shock of the proposal had fully cleared, replaced by the calculating precision she brought to her firm's highest-stakes cases.

Opening my top desk drawer, I pulled out a summarized draft of the trust framework and set the single-page document between us on the polished wood. She didn't reach for it right away.

“How long?” she asked softly.

“Twelve months.”

“So this isn’t the first time you’ve calculated buying a wife.”

“I’m not buying you, Maren.”

“You haven’t mentioned financial terms yet, which means there is a structured buyout attached to the clause.”

“There is standard compensation for your time, professional disruption, and reputation,” I conceded. “Four million dollars.”

She went entirely still. I had anticipated a visible reaction to the figure, but her jaw merely set into a tight, hard line.

“That is absurd.”

“It compensates you for a year of intense public scrutiny, constant press intrusion, mandatory corporate functions, and absolute disruption to your personal life.”

“You’re asking me to move into your residence, play the devoted wife, and help you win an internal family war.”

“You would legally be my wife for three hundred and sixty-five days.”

She stepped up to the desk and picked up the paper, her eyes scanning the text. Maren didn't read documents like standard executives; she started at line one and parsed every clause as though it had to earn her approval word by word.

“What are the daily operational requirements?” she asked, her eyes moving steadily down the page.

“Public appearances when contractually required. Corporate galas, family functions, board dinners. Fully separate assets and financial structures. Your consulting firm remains entirely independent, and my equity remains mine.”

“Living arrangements?”

“Primarily at my Back Bay residence, to satisfy the trustees’ explicit cohabitation clause.”

“Separate quarters?”

“If that is your preference.”

She looked up over the edge of the paper, her gaze locking onto mine with piercing clarity. “And there will be zero expectation of a physical relationship.”

“None whatsoever,” I said without a second of hesitation.

She returned the sheet to the desk with a quiet rustle. “You’ve engineered this far more thoroughly than you’re letting on.”

“I’ve studied the trust requirements for years. I didn’t consider bringing you into it until this morning.” That was the absolute truth. I had spent my life watching my parents turn affection into leverage, wealth into a weapon, and intimacy into a negotiation. I had zero desire to build a real marriage on those terms. A legal arrangement with Maren was grounded: she had her own career, her own income, and no interest in riding the Thayer name.

“Because I’m convenient,” she said quietly.

“Because I trust you.”

She froze at that, her breath catching slightly in her throat.

“Maren, I’m not asking you because you’re an easy option. I could find a dozen women willing to sign this by nightfall for far less money.”

“Then why me?”

“Because willingness isn’t what protects me. I need someone who can stand next to me while my family tries to tear down this company, without turning into another point of failure.”

The weight of the statement lingered in the quiet office. Maren turned toward the window, taking a long, controlled breath that expanded her shoulders before she turned back with razor-sharp clarity.

“Twelve months,” she said, her voice steady. “Four million dollars. My business stays completely independent. You don’t touch my client roster, and you don’t touch my finances.”

“Agreed.”

“I retain my own independent legal counsel—someone with zero ties to Thayer Rivington. Every single term gets codified in writing before I put my signature on a single page.”

“I would expect nothing less from you.”

“I need time to review the framework,” she added, reaching down to retrieve her handbag.

“You have until eight tomorrow morning. The board vote is in three weeks.”

“And I’m deciding whether to tie my name to the family that ruined my father.”

The quiet blow landed exactly as intended. She turned toward the exit, her heels clicking crisply against the hardwood floor. Downstairs, legal teams were waiting, and board support was shifting by the hour.

Her fingers wrapped around the heavy brass door handle. Then she paused, her shoulders tensing slightly under her jacket. When she turned back around, the brief hesitation in her posture had completely vanished, replaced by an intense, calculating focus that went far deeper than the contract terms on my desk.

“You mentioned your wife would be included in the governance audit,” she said, her tone unnaturally calm.

“Yes.”

“What kind of security authorization does that carry?”

“The trust provisions give my spouse oversight on specific corporate disclosures, so legal will clear her as an authorized participant in the review.”

“Meaning more than just signing standard compliance forms?”

“Considerably more, given the regulatory scope of this audit.”

Her hand tightened around her bag strap until her knuckles turned pale. “What specific files does an authorized participant have clearance to review?”

“That depends on the final parameters set by legal.”

“Current active corporate files only?” she pressed, taking a half-step back toward the desk.

I frowned, studying the sudden, sharp intensity in her stance. “Why do you ask?”

She hesitated for a split second, her throat moving as she swallowed hard.

“Would that access include historical corporate records?”