The wooden floors of the villa creaked under my weight as I stepped back into the bedroom. The scent of vanilla and the salt air still hung in the room, but the warmth was gone. I felt like a stranger in my own life.
"Xavier?"
Alexandra's voice was small, muffled by the pillow. She sat up, her hair falling over her shoulders in dark waves. She squinted at me in the dim light, her eyes settling on my face—and then on the hand I had hidden behind my back.
"You were gone a long time," she whispered, her voice laced with a hint of the 'Ice Queen's' suspicion. "I woke up and the bed was cold. I thought... I thought maybe you had regrets."
"I could never regret you," I said, and it was the truest thing I had ever spoken. I sat on the edge of the bed, the heavy documents in my jacket pocket feeling like a lead weight against my chest.
She reached out, her fingers grazing my arm. "Then why do you look like you've seen a ghost? Your hand is shaking, Xavier. Talk to me. No more secrets, remember? That was our deal."
I looked at her—the woman who had fought a board of directors for me, the woman who had crashed a car to save me from the Principal. If I told her the truth, I would be telling her that her father, the man she idolized, was a criminal who ruined my family. I would be claiming half of her empire.
But if I didn't tell her, I was just another man lying to her for his own gain.
"I found something," I began, my voice cracking. I pulled the rusted ID tube from my pocket and set it on the nightstand. "Something about the land The Sector sits on. Something about my grandfather, Chief Obinna."
Alexandra picked up the tube, her brow furrowing. "Obinna? That was the name of the man my father bought the initial survey rights from. He always said he was a dear friend who passed away peacefully."
"He didn't pass away peacefully, Alexandra," I said, my heart breaking as the words left my lips. "He was forced out. And he didn't sell those rights. They were stolen."
I watched the color drain from her face as she looked from the tube back to me. The silence in the room was deafening.
"What are you saying?" she whispered.
"I'm saying that I'm not just your husband," I said, standing up. "I'm your partner. Literally. By blood, I own half of everything you have."