Vesper’s POV
Sunny was asleep before we even got her shoes off.
She’d woken up briefly when the car stopped.
Jaxon picked her up without being asked, carried her upstairs, and came back down ten minutes later.
I was in the kitchen when he walked in.
Neither of us said anything about the fact that he had held my hand the entire drive home and only let go when he needed both hands to park.
“Caleb’s still in his room,” I said.
“I know.”
”He came out for dinner, glared at you twice, and went back in.”
”I counted three times,” Jaxon said.
“Get some sleep,” he said.
“You fell asleep on the sofa last night.”
”I was working.”
”You were drooling on your keyboard.”
”I was resting my face.” I pointed at him.
“Goodnight, Jaxon.”
He paused at the bottom step without turning around.
“Goodnight, Vesper.”
Morning came with birds outside the window and my phone ringing on the nightstand.
Jaxon was already up — his side of the bed was cool.
I picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
”Vesper.” Nina’s voice was measured.
Careful.
“I need you to be awake for this.”
I sat up immediately.
“I’m awake.
Talk.”
”Elias’s legal team filed a submission to the custody evaluator yesterday evening.”
”What kind of submission?”
”A press package,” Nina said.
“Printed tabloid articles, archived headlines, screenshots from gossip sites.
All of it centered on Jaxon — going back roughly four years.”
I was already out of bed, phone pressed to my ear, moving toward the window.
“How bad?” I asked.
“It’s organized,” she said.
“It’s been packaged to tell a specific story about his character — that Sunny would be placed in the care of a man with a history of reckless behavior and no evidence of emotional stability.”
I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose.
“The re-evaluation.”
”The court is considering it, yes.
Vesper, I need to ask you something directly.
Is there anything in the last four years of his history that would hold up under serious scrutiny?”
”I’m handling it,” I said.
“Give me twenty-four hours.”
Nina exhaled.
“I’ll hold them off as long as I can.
He timed it.
Whatever you’re doing, he’s watching it closely enough to feel threatened by it.”
I stared out at the ocean.
“Good,” I said quietly.
“That means it’s working.”
I hung up and went downstairs.
Jaxon was at the kitchen counter with coffee, scrolling through his phone.
He looked up the second I walked in.
He read my face before I opened my mouth.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat down.
I told him everything Nina had said.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished.
Then he put his coffee down, picked up my phone from the table, and held it toward me.
“Open notes,” he said.
On the screen was a list.
His Instagram password.
His Twitter.
His team’s private press portal.
His management platform login.
I looked at the list.
Then at him.
“Jaxon—”
”Full access,” he said.
“Whatever you need to build the counter-narrative.
Post, delete, archive — I don’t care.
Use all of it.”
”This is everything,” I said.
“You don’t have to do this.”
”I know.” He folded his arms.
“The headlines Nina mentioned — the women, the hotel, all of it.
I know what it looks like from the outside.”
“It was a pattern,” he said.
“Just not the one they’re selling.
My mother has been trying to arrange my future since I was twenty-three.
She had a shortlist of women she considered appropriate.
Every time she got close, a new story appeared.”
I stared at him.
“You fed the tabloids deliberately.”
”I just didn’t hide it.
It kept my family out of my life.”
”For four years.”
”My mother doesn’t give up easily.”
I sat with that for a moment.
“So the headlines were real, but the investment wasn’t,” I said slowly.
“If we can frame the timeline — show that the coverage was strategic deflection rather than genuine behavioral instability — give the evaluator a pattern that reads differently in context—” I was reaching for my laptop.
“It won’t erase the headlines, but it reframes them.
That’s enough.”
”Vesper.”
I looked up.
He was watching me with that steady, unhurried look.
“The pressure is going to ease,” he said.
Calm and certain.
The tension is beginning to ease.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For the passwords.”
I held his gaze.
“Accept the thank you, Jaxon.”
”You’re welcome,” he said finally.
I pulled the laptop closer.
But the thought came back anyway.
He had just admitted that those high-society women meant absolutely nothing to him.
I stared at my screen, but a sudden, irrational burn bloomed in the center of my chest.
I wasn’t supposed to be jealous.
I was a professional managing a contract, and feelings were a completely separate, irrelevant category.
And worse, a question crept into mind: If Jaxon Laurent was brilliant enough to weaponize three different women just to deceive his own family…
what was stopping him from doing the exact same thing to me?
What if this entire marriage, his soft looks, and even that intense kiss in the kitchen were just another layer of his grand, strategic deflection?
I shook my head and deleted that thought.
I typed three words, deleted them, typed them again.