Gerald's Ultimatum

Gerald Merrick sat down hard in the wingback chair Odette had vacated, folder in his lap, staring at nothing.

"Eight hundred years," he said. "I told the governor's wife eight hundred years of Falconer history at the rehearsal dinner. I told the papers. I put it on an easel at my own daughter's wedding."

"Dad, it doesn't change who Weston is."

"It changes what I built this wedding on." Gerald's voice rose, raw in a way Vanessa had never heard from him. "Do you understand what people will say? That my daughter married a fraud. That the Merrick name attached itself to a fiction."

"That's not fair," Vanessa said. "None of this is Weston's fault."

"Fair has nothing to do with it. I have a company, Vanessa. Investors. A reputation I built from nothing, brick by brick, because my father had none of the history the Falconers claimed and I still made something of myself. And now my name sits next to a forged one on every wedding announcement in the city."

"So what are you saying?" Her voice went dangerously quiet. "That I should leave him? Tonight? Because of paperwork from three hundred years ago?"

"I'm saying," Gerald said, standing, "that if this becomes public before we control the story, it destroys both families. I want an annulment discussed. Quietly. Before morning. We call it a misunderstanding, we manage the narrative, and no one gets hurt worse than they have to."

Weston made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "You'd undo the marriage over my great-great-grandfather's debts."

"I'd protect my daughter."

"By deciding for her," Vanessa said, "exactly like you always do."

Gerald turned to her, something almost pleading breaking through the anger. "I built everything I have so you'd never have to worry about your name, your standing, what people whispered about you at parties. I am not going to watch you become a punchline because of ink some dead man forged three centuries ago."

"That's not your choice to make," Vanessa said. "It was never your choice."

She looked around the room — her mother's frightened face, Odette's grim resignation, Weston's hollow eyes, her father's fists clenched at his sides — and realized, with sudden clarity, that everyone in that room was deciding her marriage except her.

"I need air," she said, and walked out before anyone could stop her.