The CEO's Mistress is His Mother's Secret Heir

❀ADRIAN❀

The clock on my mother's desk read 11:47 PM. I had been staring at her portrait for the better part of an hour, watching the way the lamplight caught the gold frame, the slight smile she wore in the painting.

She never smiled like that in real life. Not at the end, anyway.

"Mr. Knight."

I didn't turn. Marcus knew better than to expect gestures at this hour.

"The files you requested." His footsteps were careful across the hardwood floor. He placed a stack of folders on the desk beside me, each one probably containing some poor woman's entire life reduced to bullet points and financial statements.

I picked up the first folder. Isabelle Reynold, 27. Yale graduate. Father owns half of Groove’s real estate. Pretty in that generic way rich girls are pretty, all straight teeth and salon hair.

"She's available," Marcus said. "Her family's been trying to arrange a meeting for months."

I flipped the folder closed and reached for the next one. Then the next. Socialites. Heiresses. A European princess, for god's sake. Each one more qualified than the last, more polished, more perfect.

More wrong.

"These won't work." I pushed the stack away.

Marcus cleared his throat. He did that when he was about to say something I wouldn't like. "Sir, with all due respect, we're three months out. The board is already positioning themselves to take control the moment you turn thirty without a ring on your finger."

"I'm aware of the timeline."

"Then you're also aware that your mother's will was very specific. Marriage before your thirtieth birthday, or Knight Empire goes to the board. Everything she built, everything she left you, gone."

I turned to look at him then. Marcus had been with my mother for fifteen years before she died, stayed on with me after. He was the closest thing I had to family, which wasn't saying much.

"You think I don't know what's at stake?"

He held my gaze. Brave man. "I think you're treating this like another union instead of what it actually is."

"Because that's exactly what it is." I stood, walked to the window. The city spread out below, lights blinking like stars someone had pulled down from the sky and scattered across concrete.

"Marriage is a contract. Two parties entering an agreement with clearly defined terms. I need a wife to satisfy a legal requirement. This isn't complicated."

"Your mother wouldn't have wanted this."

The words hit harder than they should have. I pressed my palm against the cold glass.

"My mother isn't here to want anything."

The room went quiet except for the ticking of that damned clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. Counting down to the moment I would either save everything or lose it all.

Rain had fallen the day we buried her. The kind of rain that soaked through expensive suits and didn't care about your grief or your money or the empire you were supposed to inherit.

I'd stood at her grave alone while two hundred people watched from under their umbrellas, all of them waiting to see if the ice king would crack.

I didn't.

I had gone back to the office that same afternoon, held a board meeting, signed off on three acquisitions. Someone asked if I needed time. I'd looked at them like they'd spoken a foreign language.

Time. What the hell was I supposed to do with time?

"The board meets again next week," Marcus said quietly. "Henderson's been making calls. Lining up votes."

"Let him."

"Adrian."

I turned from the window. He rarely used my first name.

"They're circling. You know this. They've been waiting for you to fail since the moment your mother's will was read. One mistake, one missed deadline, and they'll tear apart everything she spent her life building."

My jaw tightened. "They won't get the chance."

"Then you need to make a choice." He gestured to the folders on the desk. "One of these women, or someone else, but it has to be soon."

I walked back to the desk, picked up my mother's portrait. The frame was heavier than it looked. She'd commissioned this painting a year before she died, and insisted on wearing that particular dress, that particular expression. Like she'd known somehow that this was how I would remember her.

"I won't let them take what's yours," I whispered to the portrait.

Marcus was quiet for a moment. Then, in that careful way of his, he said, "What about the girl from the accident?"

I set the portrait down slowly. "What?"

"Two years ago. That minor collision on Fifth Avenue. You mentioned a girl who helped you. Cleaned the cut on your hand, wouldn't take any money." He paused. "You said she was forgettable."

I remembered. Vaguely. A girl with dark hair and careful hands, the way she'd pressed a napkin against my bleeding palm like it mattered. Like I mattered. I had offered her money, but she refused. I walked away before I could insist.

"Why would you bring her up?"

Marcus shrugged. "You said forgettable and controlled. Someone who wouldn't have expectations beyond what you're willing to give. Someone who needs the money badly enough not to ask questions." He met my eyes. "Isn't that exactly what you're looking for?"

Something shifted in my chest. Not quite memory, not quite recognition. Just the ghost of something I'd dismissed two years ago as irrelevant.

A girl with sad eyes who had looked at me like I was human instead of a bank account.

"Find her," I heard myself say.

Marcus nodded once and headed for the door.

I turned back to my mother's portrait, touching the frame one last time.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Three months until my thirtieth birthday.

Three months to save everything.

I'd marry a stranger if that's what it took.