Damian's POV

The silence of my office felt like a balm after the night before. I was sitting in front of my monitor, reading a report from the legal department and making notes on what Stella needed to revise, when my phone vibrated beside the keyboard.

[Lizzy: Okay… maybe I should've warned you first, but it was for a good cause. They would've pushed a lot harder if you hadn't agreed to the dinner. Now you've bought yourself time. Just show up, look like you're trying, then dump Peterson. Easy.]

I sighed and dropped my pen onto the desk. Of course she did this. Elizabeth Winter was an expert at lighting fires, shoving me straight into them, and then walking away with a smile on her face.

It was only after dinner, while I was driving home, that she'd had the decency to explain that by giving my father that vague, agreeable answer, I had apparently accepted a dinner with a potential future wife.

Sophie Peterson was the daughter of a tech magnate. She was twenty-eight, beautifu