The clock was a relentless enemy inside the Lucas mansion. It wasn't the hours that mattered, but the years. William Lucas was thirty-four, and the family law, carved in stone and tradition, dictated that the male heir must be secured before his thirty-fifth birthday.
William loved his wife, Olivia, fiercely. They had four beautiful daughters, and the sound of their laughter filling the high ceilings of the old house was the only true warmth William knew. But that laughter was constantly silenced by the heavy silence of his father, Theodore.
Theodore didn't need to shout; his disapproval was a crushing weight.
"The board is asking questions, William," Theodore would say every week during their morning tea, his voice low and cold. "They need a Lucas boy to guarantee the line. You know the divorce clause is ironclad. It protects the company from weakness."
The "divorce clause" was a nightmarish shadow hanging over their marriage. If William failed to produce a son, Theodore was legally empowered to force a separation and demand William marry someone else—anyone—to secure the name.
Olivia saw the fear and despair consuming her husband. He stopped sleeping, spending his nights in the library, staring at the portraits of the previous Lucas patriarchs, all men, all successful.
One rainy evening, Olivia found William standing by the nursery, watching their daughters sleep.
"We could fight the clause, William," Olivia suggested gently, placing a hand on his back. "We could hire lawyers. It's an archaic rule. It won't stand up to modern law."
William shook his head, his gaze fixed on the sleeping children. "It's not the lawyers I'm afraid of, Olivia. It's him. If I fight the clause, Theodore will sell off the company, strand our daughters without a cent, and dismantle the legacy I'm supposed to protect. It's not just about a son; it's about the reputation. The name."
The jewelry house, the name Lucas, was his entire identity. He saw his four beautiful girls, but he knew Theodore—and the conservative financial world he lived in—saw four reasons for the company's eventual collapse.
The anxiety began to push William out of the house. He started missing his evening dinners, claiming "client meetings." In truth, he found solace in the anonymity of the city's darker corners, seeking a brief, numbing escape from the relentless pressure.
Olivia knew he was pulling away. She tried to hold him closer, but the tension was fraying their last threads of connection. She watched him descend into a quiet, desperate loneliness that she couldn't reach.
He wasn't looking for love or betrayal; he was looking for oblivion. He was looking for a place where the clock wasn't ticking toward his inevitable failure.
The night he walked into a dimly lit, exclusive bar on the edge of the financial district, he was two months away from his thirty-fifth birthday. He was tired, drunk, and utterly defeated.
He didn't notice the expensive scent of vanilla and cashmeran as a woman slid onto the velvet seat beside him. He certainly didn't notice the cold, calculating hunger in her eyes. He only saw a sympathetic ear, a place to confess his life's greatest failure.
The woman smiled, a perfect, predatory expression. Her name was Charlotte.