Chapter 3

In my office, overlooking the sprawling city, I sometimes let my mind drift back. Back to USC, before the contracts and the cold transactions.

Jocelyn and I were just kids then, deeply in love. She was brilliant, driven, and funny. I was a scholarship kid from a no-name town, studying finance and computer science, obsessed with building predictive algorithms. We met in a library and talked for six hours straight.

For a year, it was perfect. We were just Ethan and Jocelyn.

Then, one weekend, she took me to meet her family. I thought it was just a formality. I had no idea I was walking into the lion's den.

The Lind family mansion in Dallas wasn't just a house; it was a monument to old-money Texas power. Oil, real estate, and their crown jewel, a traditional investment firm that had dominated Wall Street for generations.

The moment they saw me, the contempt was palpable. Her two older brothers, William and James, were the worst. They circled me like sharks, their questions dripping with condescension.

"So, Ethan, what does your father do?" William asked, a cruel smirk on his face.

"He was a mechanic," I answered honestly.

"A mechanic," James repeated, drawing the word out as if it were a disease. "And you're on a scholarship? How... quaint."

Throughout the dinner, they relentlessly bullied me. They made jokes about my clothes, my background, my ambitions. Jocelyn tried to defend me, but they just laughed at her, treating her like a little girl playing with a new toy.

That weekend was the beginning of the end for us. The pressure from her family was immense. They saw me as a threat, a low-class gold-digger who would tarnish their precious name. They tried to buy me off, to threaten me, to dig up dirt that didn't exist.

After we graduated, the pressure became unbearable. I was ready to walk away, to save her from the choice between me and her family.

But Jocelyn, ever the producer, came up with a different plan.

"We can't be Ethan and Jocelyn," she told me one night, her face pale and determined. "They'll destroy that. But we can be something else. We can be a business."

She proposed a contractual marriage. She would pay me, handsomely, to be her husband and the father to our children. I would manage the household, raise our kids, and endure the public role she created for me. In return, I would have her name, her protection, and a steady stream of capital.

It was a flawed, hurtful plan, born of desperation. She thought she was shielding me, turning their insults into a job description, their contempt into a line item on a budget. She thought money could be a shield.

I accepted. Not for the money, but because I still loved her. And because I saw an opportunity. The capital she offered wasn't just a salary; it was seed money. The ridicule wasn't just a burden; it was a perfect cover.

While they were all laughing at the "kept man," I was using their own money to build the weapon that would one day set us both free.

Five years. Five years of playing a role, of watching the love in her eyes slowly fade, replaced by the cold, hard glint of a CEO managing her most difficult asset.

Five years of building Apex Innovations in the shadows. The erosion of our love was the price. And soon, I would find out if it was worth it.