Page 5 of By His Vow

Richard spins the paperwork toward me and points toward the lines in question.

“Why?” I whisper, my eyes filling with tears as I read the exact words he just said to us. “Why would he do this to me?”

“He had his reasons,” Richard muses.

“None of them will be good enough. There’s no way I’m marrying that…that—” I spin around and pin Kingston with a look, but the second I register the smug expression on his face, my world tilts on its axis again.

He knew.

He fucking knew.

They’d planned this.

Our fathers.

Him.

My blood runs cold at the thought of them mapping out my entire life without my knowledge.

How dare they?

What makes any of them think they have the right to control me like that?

I’m not a puppet. I’m a human.

A fucking adult who can make her own choices, her own decisions.

Ripping my eyes from his twinkling green ones, I turn to my brother.

“Did you know about this?” I snap.

I swear to God, if he knew and was hiding this from me then?—

“No,” he confesses. “I had no idea.”

My big brother might be like our father in many, many ways, but there is one major difference between them.

I can read Miles.

And right now, I know he’s telling the truth.

“There’s no way I’d have let him do this to you, Tate,” he says fiercely, surging toward me and wrapping me in his arms.

I fight, I really fucking do, but the tears are too persistent, and finally, I have no choice but to let one slip free.

I hate myself for it. For appearing weak. But my world is crumbling around me and I’ve no idea how else to deal with this right now.

“It’s going to be okay. You don’t have to do anything you don’t?—”

“It comes with conditions,” Richard interrupts.

I sigh, pressing my forehead against Miles’s chest as I pray for strength.

“Of course it does,” I mutter, more to myself than anyone else.

Once I’ve steeled myself for what’s to come, I stand tall and focus on Richard, keeping Kingston and Michael behind me.

They don’t deserve even a second of my time or energy right now. Ever, actually.