Chapter 295 Love Isn’t Charity

Chapter 295: Chapter 295 Love Isn’t Charity

Emilia’s POV

The next morning the headlines were still everywhere, splashed across every feed and screen in the city. But I got up, got dressed, and went to work anyway. Running would only prove them right, and I’ve never given anyone the satisfaction.

At Simons Imperial, I kept my head down and worked. I answered the correspondence stacked in my inbox, cleared the files that needed clearing, and let the routine carry me through the morning like it was any other day. If people whispered when I passed, I didn’t give them the courtesy of noticing.

By midafternoon I needed five minutes to breathe, so I headed for the break room.

The moment I pushed open the door I stopped short.

Half the department was crammed in there, clustered around a monitor someone had propped on the counter. Nobody was talking. Every head was tilted toward the screen, rapt.

I stepped closer, and my breath caught.

It was a press conference. Live. And it was Sebastian.

He sat behind a long table in a dark, immaculate suit, calm as still water, with Fynn positioned at his side. A wall of reporters pressed in front of them, microphones thrust forward, cameras flashing, voices climbing over one another as they hurled questions at him.

I froze where I stood, one hand braced on the doorframe.

I hadn’t braced for this. My pulse kicked hard against my ribs. There was only one reason he’d stand in front of that many cameras, and the thought of it turned my stomach to ice. He was going to tell them everything. The Lind family. The agreement. The whole buried, ugly truth of it.

Maybe it would win me sympathy. Maybe the same public tearing me apart today would soften once they knew the full story.

But I didn’t want their sympathy. I never had.

All I’d ever wanted was to lock that past away where no one could reach it, and throw away the key for good.

Sebastian’s POV

The room was packed wall to wall, a sea of cameras and outstretched microphones, and every single one of them was aimed at me. I let them settle before I spoke.

"Good afternoon. Take your seats, and wait your turn. Anyone who shouts over me gets shown the door."

The scramble quieted. Fynn shot me a look from the side that said behave, and I ignored it.

A woman in the second row raised her hand first. "Mr. Simons, Business Report. Are you here to address the reports about your wife’s prior engagement to another man?"

"I’m here to address the lies," I said. "But yes. And to be clear, I knew about that engagement from the very beginning."

That set off a ripple. Good.

"Then why marry her at all?" another one cut in. "Are you aware the man she was engaged to has an intellectual disability? Public sympathy is running heavily in his favor."

"I’m aware." I kept my voice level. "But love isn’t charity, and it isn’t a consolation prize you hand to whoever people feel sorriest for. I married my wife because I wanted her. She didn’t come chasing my money, the way your headlines keep insinuating. I pursued her. Her father’s company was drowning, and I made the offer. If anyone was forced into anything, it was her. And for the record, the family she was supposedly engaged to isn’t exactly scraping by either."

"So you’re admitting you used your position to take her from Leighton Lind."

"You can frame it however helps you sleep."

"Doesn’t that trouble you? Taking a woman from a disabled man?"

"Careful," Ryder murmured, low and warning at the back of my skull. "They want you angry." I knew that. I breathed through it.

"The engagement between my wife and Leighton Lind holds no weight under the law," I said. "She was pushed toward me at first, yes. What happened after was that we fell for each other. So tell me, in what world does that make me a thief?"

A man near the front leaned into his mic, smug. "But she signed the contract. Her name, her fingerprint. You knew there was a prior agreement and you married her anyway. Isn’t that just a powerful man steamrolling someone who couldn’t fight back?"

I let out a short laugh, sharp enough that a few of them flinched.

"Do you have the first idea how a contract works? A fingerprint on paper doesn’t make something binding. Do you know how old my wife was when that document was signed? She wasn’t even fourteen. A child. Now ask yourself, what kind of child signs a marriage contract of her own free will? None. She was made to."

Silence dropped over the room like a curtain. Then, softer, a voice from the back. "And what forced her, exactly? What circumstances?"

"That," I said, "is her private history. Forgive me, but it’s not yours to print."

I meant it as a full stop. They didn’t take it that way.

"Mr. Simons, with respect, from an ordinary person’s point of view, Leighton Lind will need someone to care for him his entire life. Given his condition, he may never find another woman willing to marry him. You, on the other hand, could have anyone. Why not step aside? Why not let the two of them be together?"

I felt my jaw tighten. I leaned toward Fynn and dropped my voice.

"Where did you find this bunch of stupid reporters? Do you want me to beat them up?"

"Please don’t," Fynn muttered back through a fixed, polite smile. "The cameras are still rolling. Whatever you do, do it slowly."

I straightened, pulled in a breath, and made myself smile.

"I’ve said it once already. Love has nothing to do with pity. You’d genuinely ruin one person’s life to soothe your conscience about another? Look at it plainly. When all this began, my wife loved neither of us. But a life with Leighton would have been a cage. A life with me makes her happy. That’s the whole equation. Think it through with an ounce of reason, and you’ll see I didn’t wrestle a woman away from a disabled man. I pulled her out of a future that would have destroyed her."

The smug one wasn’t done. "Are you certain that’s the truth, Mr. Simons? Or is this simply a convenient story to dress up your own arrogance? You keep telling us she’s happy. But is that how she actually feels, or is it just what you’ve decided for her?"

Something in me snapped clean through.

He’d been circling my patience since the first question, testing exactly how far he could push before I broke."Let him go," Ryder growled, done pretending at restraint. I didn’t.

My hand closed around the water bottle in front of me, and I hurled it straight at him.

It caught him hard across the shoulder, the cap flying loose and water splashing wide, and he yelped as the room erupted.

"Get out," I said, cold and flat.

Cameras spun toward the commotion, shutters firing in a frenzy. Fynn was on his feet in an instant, palms up, cutting between the lenses and the mess.

"That’s enough. No more photos. Put them down, all of you."