Chapter 6 - Mason Thought The Wedding Would Lock Claire In
Three weeks before the wedding, Claire told Mason the business issue had to be resolved before she married him.
She did not threaten him.
She stated a boundary.
“Full disclosure. Independent review. Your mother stays out of the process. Then we decide what happens next.”
Mason stared at her.
“You’re going to humiliate my family over accounting?”
“You used money for things it wasn’t approved for.”
“It gets paid back.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“To you, everything is a point.”
Claire almost laughed from disbelief.
Then Mason said something revealing.
“Do you understand what canceling this wedding would do?”
Claire looked at him.
“To whom?”
“Our families. The business. Everyone who’s already committed.”
There it was again.
Committed.
Vendors booked.
Guests flying in.
Robert’s money invested.
Press releases drafted for the joint tasting venue.
Mason believed momentum itself had become leverage.
Claire said quietly:
“You think because everybody has spent enough money, I can’t leave.”
Mason’s silence lasted too long.
She stepped backward.
He softened immediately.
“Claire, come on.”
“No.”
“You know I love you.”
“Then why does every version of loving you require me to ignore your mother?”
“She’s trying to save the company.”
“With my father’s money.”
Mason snapped.
“With money your father can afford!”
Claire froze.
That sentence changed the emotional equation.
It was not guilt.
It was entitlement.
Robert’s wealth had become Mason’s moral permission.
If Robert could absorb the loss, then the misuse somehow mattered less.
If Claire loved Mason, she should understand.
If the wedding continued, the problem could be cleaned up later.
Claire went home that night.
Not to Mason’s residence.
To her own apartment on the Miller property.
She slept alone.
And for the first time, she began imagining the wedding not as an event endangered by conflict—
May you like
but as the mechanism Mason and Victoria expected would end Claire’s resistance.
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