Chapter 6 - THE RED WAX SEAL
The air in the private suite had grown thick, almost unbreathable. Maria stared at the cream-colored envelope resting on the mahogany desk as if it were a venomous snake coiled and ready to strike.
"Open it," Sebastian murmured, stepping back to give her space.
Maria didn't move. Her hands remained clenched at her sides, the skin over her knuckles stretched white and taut. "No. No, wait. This doesn't make sense. If my mother knew this man—if she gave your family two hundred thousand dollars twenty-three years ago—why did we live like paupers? Why did she spend her entire life scrubbing floors and grading college papers until her fingers bled?"
"Because the money wasn't hers to keep, Maria," Sebastian said, his voice dropping into a low, steady rumble. "She didn't inherit it. She didn't earn it through ordinary means. The funds came from a trust established by my grandfather—a trust that my father, in his final months before the takeover, tried to redirect away from the family estate to protect it from creditors. Your mother was the legal executor of that trust for twelve hours. She could have kept every cent. She could have walked away and bought a house in the south of France."
"And she didn't," Maria whispered, the pieces beginning to grind together in her mind like gears without oil.
"She brought every dollar to my father's desk," Sebastian said. "She saved Blackwood Holdings. But in doing so, she made powerful enemies within our extended family—people who believed that charity was a weakness and that the money belonged to them by right of blood. To protect her, my father set up a secondary fund—an insurance policy, managed by Henderson, designed to ensure that if anything ever happened to her children... if medical emergencies or financial ruin ever threatened her bloodline... the debt would be repaid with compound interest, no questions asked."
Maria reached out, her fingertips hovering just above the red wax seal. The wax bore the imprint of a leaping stag—the ancient crest of the Blackwood family, the same watermark stamped into the stationery of the corporate empire that dominated half the skyline outside the window.
"My mother knew she was dying," Maria said, the realization hitting her with the force of a physical blow. "When she had cancer twelve years ago... she wasn't just scared for us. She knew someone was looking for her."
"They were," Sebastian confirmed quietly. "And my father spent ten years trying to locate her children after she vanished into the public housing system. By the time we found your records, your mother had already passed, and you and your brother had been moved through three different foster placements before settling on the east side."
Maria’s fingers finally made contact with the envelope. The paper was thick, heavy, smelling faintly of cedarwood and old parchment. With a sharp crack, the red wax seal broke under her thumb.
She pulled out a folded sheet of heavy stationery. Her mother’s sloping, elegant handwriting covered both sides of the page.
To my daughter, Maria, If you are reading this letter, it means the worst has happened, and Diego is in danger. Do not be afraid of the man who hands you this envelope. He bears the weight of a debt my family incurred before you were even a thought in my heart. Use whatever you need. Take whatever is offered. You have earned ten times over every luxury this world tries to deny you. Love, Mom.
A single tear spilled over Maria’s lower eyelid, tracking a hot, salt-laden path down her cheek before dropping onto the paper, darkening the ink at the bottom of the page.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, her jaw set as she looked up at Sebastian.
"So that's why you were at the auction," she said, her voice hard, trying to claw back some shred of dignity. "You weren't buying a companion. You were executing a clause in an old man's ledger. You came to buy me out like a piece of salvaged property."
Sebastian didn't flinch. He didn't look away. Instead, he stepped closer—so close she could see the tiny silver flecks in his gray eyes, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his chest through the layers of his suit.
"Maria," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper that sent a shiver straight down her spine. "Before you jump to conclusions about what I bought tonight... you need to understand why I bid five hundred thousand dollars instead of the twenty thousand it would have taken to clear your mother's account."
Maria’s breath caught. "What are you talking about?"
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Sebastian turned toward the locked door of the private suite, his jaw clenching as he listened to the faint, muffled murmur of the gala continuing outside in the grand ballroom.
"I didn't pay half a million dollars to spend an evening with you," he said, his eyes locking back onto hers with terrifying intensity. "I paid it because someone else in that auction was trying to buy you first."
