Chapter 154: Loopholes

Chapter 154: Chapter 154: Loopholes

Melrose had discovered one practical advantage to marriage.

Nolan traveled.

His husband had left three days earlier for a business negotiation in one of the smaller countries under Saha’s alliance, accompanied by aides, security, and the sort of administrative importance men like Nolan found flattering. He would return only in time for the royal wedding.

The absence improved everything.

Melrose sat alone in his office with a glass of wine at his elbow and a ring on his finger that still felt like an insult. The wedding band caught the light whenever he moved his hand across the tablet in front of him, a quiet and constant reminder that his punishment had not ended with public embarrassment. It had been made permanent, elegant, and legally binding.

He hated it.

He hated Nolan too, though not with enough intensity to waste energy on the man when better targets existed.

Nolan was tolerable in the way polished men often were. He understood schedules, knew how to behave in public, and had enough money and family weight to avoid becoming a source of humiliation. He had also learned quickly that Melrose disliked unnecessary intimacy.

None of that changed what mattered.

Melrose had been forced into this marriage.

And Nero, impossibly, remained untouched by any of it.

That was the greater offense.

His gaze moved to the wall opposite the desk, where photographs, copied schedules, archived society reports, and printed notes had spread across a wide board over the course of the last week. Nero occupied one side. Sebastian dominated the other. Between them, Melrose had pinned every connection, appearance, and public overlap he could verify from the past several years.

He had expected more.

He had expected ugliness.

What he found instead was infuriatingly clean.

Nero had pursued Sebastian for years, yes, but the proof available to an outsider suggested obsession polished into patience rather than anything truly ruinous. Seating arrangements that favored proximity. Diplomatic events attended without a strong political need. Appearances in the same cities with suspicious regularity. Family-adjacent connections exploited with shameless consistency.

Manipulation, certainly.

Darker than that, not obviously.

Melrose leaned back and studied the board again.

There had to be more.

Nero was an enigma. The only one in the world. People knew enough to fear that and not nearly enough to understand it. That uncertainty alone was useful.

His eyes settled on the timeline he had assembled for Sebastian’s decline.

Compatibility had worsened over time. Instability had increased. Nero entered the picture as the solution, and somehow everything moved in the direction Nero needed most.

Melrose tapped one finger slowly against the armrest.

The facts themselves did not prove anything.

That did not mean they were worthless.

A lie did not need proof when suspicion could be made to do the work.

His mind moved carefully through the possibility, testing it from different angles. Not a wild accusation. Not something public and vulgar enough to be dismissed immediately. He needed doubt placed in Sebastian’s hands like an act of concern.

Did Nero push you toward berserk?

The question alone was enough.

Nero was an enigma. Sebastian had deteriorated for years. Nero had wanted him obsessively. Sebastian already knew Nero manipulated circumstances. Everyone close enough to them knew that much. If Melrose placed one more possibility beside those truths, especially one tied to an ability nobody fully understood, Sebastian might do the rest himself.

Melrose smiled faintly.

That was the beauty of it.

He did not need to destroy the relationship personally. He only needed to contaminate it.

If he found evidence, all the better; if he did not, evidence could be fabricated.

People believed patterns when the pieces were arranged neatly enough. Dates could be made to look suggestive. Coincidences could be grouped until they resembled intent. An unnamed source, carefully invoked, could raise more doubt than an open accusation ever would.

And if Sebastian suffered, Nero would suffer too.

That mattered most.

Hurting Nero directly had always been difficult. Melrose knew that with painful clarity now. The prince had become untouchable in every way. Security, status, the enigma title, the family around him—everything formed a barrier that made any direct strike pointless.

Sebastian was different.

Melrose rose from his chair and crossed toward the board. He paused in front of the central photograph, one taken at a formal evening reception where Nero and Sebastian stood too close to be mistaken for anything but what they were becoming. Sebastian’s hand rested lightly against Nero’s back. Nero looked at him as if the room beyond him did not exist.

Disgusting.

Melrose touched the edge of the photograph with one fingertip.

He would find a way in.

Returning to the desk, he opened the digital invitation for the royal wedding events and enlarged the formal text until the wording filled the screen.

The ceremony itself remained impossible. His restrictions had been written with enough care to make the main wedding day untouchable. Distance from the Crown Prince of Saha had been made part of the punishment in both practical and symbolic terms, and Melrose had no intention of inviting further scrutiny by violating the most obvious boundary.

But the following day’s celebration was different.

He read the invitation again.

Lord Nolan and Lord Melrose Mynatt.

The invitation belonged to the couple.

The event was public enough, broad enough, and organised loosely enough that appearing at his husband’s side could be defended as compliance rather than intrusion. He would not be approaching Nero. He would not be provoking contact. He would simply be attending an event for which his household had already been named.

His smile returned.

Marriage, for once, might finally justify its own existence.

He almost laughed at that.

Nolan would attend because he cared about visibility and rank.

Melrose would attend because loopholes were often more valuable than power.

He set the tablet down and looked again at Sebastian’s photograph.

That, more than anything, remained the true irritation.

Sebastian had not been included in the punishment. His name had not appeared in the formal restrictions. No order had been issued preventing Melrose from thinking about him, speaking of him, or discovering what might fracture the life he was building with Nero.

A serious oversight.

Melrose’s expression softened into something colder.

If Sebastian could still be made to doubt, the rest would unravel eventually.

And if doubt refused to appear on its own, Melrose would give it a shape, a history, and a voice convincing enough to live.

He touched his wedding band once, already less offended by it than he had been an hour earlier.

Useful things deserved to be tolerated.

His gaze lifted to the board one last time.

Nero smiled from one side. Sebastian stood on the other.

Melrose looked between them and murmured, almost fondly, "You really should have written his name into the punishment."