Chapter 5 The Wrong Brother’s Fiancée

Damon’s POV

“She called,” Marcus said.

I looked up from the contract on my desk.

“Ivy Marchetti. Thirty-six hours after the meeting.” He placed the call log in front of me.

“She agreed. Said she had conditions and wants to meet at nine tomorrow.”

I glanced at the call log.

“Twelve hours early,” I said.

“Desperation,” Marcus replied.

“Prepare the contract.”

Marcus nodded and left the room.

I studied the call log for a moment longer, then set it aside and returned to the contract.

Desperation.

It made sense. The Marchetti company was collapsing. The deadline was closing in. A woman in her position calling early meant she had calculated every option and found none.

That was what the facts said.

I filed the meeting under routine and went back to work.

I thought about it three more times before midnight.

I listened to the call recording. There was something about the call that didn’t sit cleanly within that conclusion. The steadiness of her voice, it wasn’t the voice of someone cornered.

It was the voice of someone who had decided.

The next morning, I was in my office by seven.

The engagement documents had already been prepared. Everything was clean, and efficient.

Julian had been briefed.

“She’s actually agreeing?” he had asked over the phone.

“Within the deadline. Yes.”

A pause. “She didn’t seem like the type to just agree to something like this.”

“She doesn’t have a choice.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“If you say so.”

The call ended.

Later that day, Ivy and her father walked into the building and signed the marriage contract.

She barely said a word but her eyes carried deep resentment towards me.

The engagement was announced within days.

Everything moved quickly.

The Blackwood and Marchetti names together generated exactly the response I expected. Headlines shifted. Speculation softened. Julian’s scandal began to disappear under a new narrative.

The engagement party was held at a private estate just outside the city.

Three hundred guests. Industry figures, political connections, old money, new money.

All of them were there to witness the alignment of two names that mattered.

I stood near the back of the room, a glass in my hand, watching with satisfaction. My plan had been well executed.

Julian stood at the center of it all.

Relaxed. Smiling. More at ease than he had been in months.

Then Ivy arrived.

I hadn’t seen her since the meeting where she had signed the engagement contract.

She wore red. Her hair fell over one shoulder, her posture straight, controlled.

She moved through the room like she belonged there.

Like she had always belonged there.

Her expression was composed. Completely composed. I watched closely.

She reached Julian.

He smiled at her, easy and warm, leaning in to say something low. Her lips curved slightly in response.

The announcement was made shortly after.

Glasses were raised. Cameras flashed. Their names were spoken together with approval and expectation.

Julian took her hand.

I watched.

The party unfolded.

Music. Laughter. Conversations layered with implication.

And I watched.

Julian stayed close to her. A hand occasionally at her back, leaning in, speaking low. She responded every time, smooth, controlled, exactly what the arrangement required.

She was very good at this.

Better than I had anticipated.

Julian and Ivy approached me, Julian's hands resting on her back.

I barely noticed Julian.

My attention was fixed on her.

She was impossible to ignore in her red gown. Her blonde hair swept elegantly over one shoulder, exposing the graceful line of her neck.

And there…. at her throat.

A small antique oval locket.

Gold.

My breath caught.

I had seen it before, the memories flooded my mind.

Fifteen years ago. My mother’s funeral.

I was nineteen and hiding behind the chapel, hidden where no one could see me break. My father made it clear, grieving publicly was a weakness and weakness was unacceptable.

So I cried alone, quietly.

Then someone sat beside me.

A girl.

Golden hair pinned back neatly. Black dress. Small hands folded in her lap. She said nothing for a long moment, then she offered me a handkerchief.

White linen. Embroidered edges.

I remember her soft voice.

“Take it. Tears are not something to be ashamed of.”

I remembered looking at the locket hanging at her throat.

She touched it gently and smiled sadly.

“My mother says this carries memory, pieces of the people we love. The things they leave inside us.”

Then she said something that stayed with me all these years:

“Grief doesn’t make you weak. It simply means your love has nowhere else to go.”

Then someone called for her.

She walked away before I could ask her name.

I remembered watching sunlight catch the gold locket at her throat.

That same locket was here now… on Ivy Marchetti.

My pulse slammed hard against my ribs.

An older guest beside her smiled politely and gestured toward it.

“What a beautiful piece. Family heirloom?”

Ivy’s fingers rose instinctively to the pendant.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “My mother's, she always said it carries memory… little pieces of the people we love, so they never leave completely.”

My blood ran cold.

“I heard about your mother, I'm sorry for your loss.”

Ivy smiled sadly, then added, “Loss doesn’t make us weak. It just means love has nowhere else to go.”

The room disappeared.

Noise faded.

People blurred.

All I could see was… the girl who sat with my grief.

Her.

It was always her.

Ivy Marchetti

And Julian’s hand was resting possessively at the small of her back.

Because I had put it there.

I built this arrangement.

I engineered every detail.

And standing there, watching Julian touch what should never have been his.

I realized I had made the worst mistake of my life.

I had given the only woman I could never forget… to the wrong brother.