Chapter 40
title: "Chapter 12" wordCount: 2544
I stared at Daniel's phone like it was a live grenade.
"Don't answer it," I said.
He was already swiping to accept.
"This is Daniel Park." His voice had gone flat, corporate. The voice he used with investors, with people who held power over him. My stomach twisted.
I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, just Daniel's face draining of color, his free hand gripping the edge of the counter hard enough that his knuckles went white. Mrs. Kim had stopped laughing. Everyone had stopped laughing.
"I understand," Daniel said. "Yes. Tomorrow at nine. We'll be there."
He ended the call. Set the phone down with the careful precision of someone defusing a bomb.
"They want to see us," he said. "Both of us. Tomorrow morning. They said it's regarding 'irregularities in our application.'"
The word irregularities hit me like a fist to the solar plexus. I couldn't breathe. The kitchen tilted sideways, and I grabbed the counter to keep from falling.
"Okay so—" My voice came out strangled. "Okay so that doesn't necessarily mean—"
"They know." Daniel's eyes met mine. "Richard called them. He actually did it."
Sarah made a small sound of distress. Marcus swore under his breath. Mr. Patel's hand found his wife's shoulder.
Mrs. Kim stepped forward. "We will testify. All of us. We will tell them what we saw, what Richard tried to do—"
"It won't matter." Daniel's voice was hollow. "If they investigate, they'll find everything. The timeline. The contract. The fact that we barely knew each other before the wedding."
My grandmother's jade bracelet felt too tight around my wrist. I wanted to take it off, to throw it across the room, to do something with my hands besides stand here uselessly while my entire life collapsed.
"Let's just—" I stopped. Pivoted. "We need a lawyer. Right? We need someone who specializes in immigration fraud cases."
"Immigration fraud." Daniel repeated the words like he was tasting them, finding them bitter. "That's what we are now."
"That's what we've always been," I said, and hated how my voice shook. "We just got caught."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Mrs. Kim looked between us, her expression shifting from fierce protectiveness to something more complicated. Understanding, maybe. Or disappointment.
"Everyone should go home," Daniel said quietly. "Thank you for—for standing up to Richard. But this is our problem now."
"Daniel—" Marcus started.
"Please."
They left slowly, reluctantly, Mrs. Kim squeezing my hand on her way out, Mr. Patel promising to make calls to lawyers he knew. Sarah hugged me so hard I felt my ribs compress, whispering that it would be okay, that we'd figure it out, lies we both needed to hear.
Then it was just Daniel and me in the kitchen that still smelled like kimchi and fear.
"I'm going to fix this," Daniel said.
We were sitting at the prep table, the same one where we'd signed our contract six months ago. The irony wasn't lost on me.
"How?" I asked. "How exactly are you going to fix immigration fraud?"
"I'll call Richard. Tell him I'll sign over the shares. All of them. He gets CoreStone, he gets the garden, he gets everything he wants. In exchange, he withdraws whatever he told immigration."
My nails dug crescents into my palms. "You can't do that."
"I can handle it."
"No." I stood up so fast my chair scraped against the floor. "No, you don't get to martyr yourself for me. That company is your life. The garden is—it's the only thing you have left of your parents."
"And you'll be deported." Daniel's voice cracked on the last word. "Do you understand what that means? You'll lose everything. Your business, your apartment, your entire life here. You'll have to go back to—"
"Don't." I couldn't hear him say it. Couldn't hear him describe the future I'd been running from for years. "Just don't."
He stood too, came around the table. Stopped a foot away from me, close enough that I could see the exhaustion in his eyes, the way his jaw was clenched so tight I worried about his teeth.
"I got you into this," he said. "I'm getting you out."
"We got into this together."
"No. I asked you. I'm the one who needed the marriage to keep Richard from taking the company. You were just trying to stay in the country. This is my fault."
The words hung between us, sharp and wrong. I wanted to argue, to tell him he was being ridiculous, but my throat had closed up and I couldn't force sound past it.
Daniel's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and his expression went carefully blank.
"It's Richard," he said. "He wants to meet. Tonight. Says he has a proposal."
"Of course he does." Bitterness coated my tongue. "He's probably already drafted the paperwork."
"I'm going."
"Then I'm coming with you."
"Nora—"
"I'm coming with you," I repeated, and this time it wasn't a request.
Richard had chosen a restaurant in Midtown, the kind of place with white tablecloths and waiters who looked at you like they were calculating your net worth. Daniel and I sat across from him in a private dining room, untouched glasses of water sweating onto the expensive linen.
"I'm glad you came to your senses," Richard said, cutting into his steak with surgical precision. He'd ordered food. We hadn't. "This could have been so much messier."
"What do you want?" Daniel asked.
"I want what I've always wanted. CoreStone. Your shares, transferred to me by end of business Friday. In exchange, I'll make a few phone calls, clear up the misunderstanding with immigration."
"Misunderstanding." I couldn't keep the acid out of my voice. "You mean the fraud you reported."
Richard smiled at me, the kind of smile that made my skin crawl. "I reported concerns about a potentially fraudulent marriage. Whether those concerns are valid is up to the authorities to determine. But if Daniel cooperates, I'm sure we can provide evidence that the marriage is, in fact, legitimate."
"You're blackmailing us," I said.
"I'm offering a solution." He took a sip of wine. "Daniel signs over his shares, I provide testimony that I've observed you two as a loving couple for months. I have photos, after all. Dates, affectionate moments. I'm sure immigration would be very interested in seeing them."
The photos. The ones his investigator had taken, the ones that showed us meeting before the wedding, planning, staging our relationship. But Richard was offering to spin them differently, to use them as proof instead of evidence.
"And the garden?" Daniel's voice was tight.
"The garden is prime real estate. You know that. CoreStone needs to expand, and that land is perfect for our new headquarters. I'm sure the community will understand. Progress requires sacrifice."
"Those people depend on that garden. Mrs. Kim, the Patels, dozens of families—"
"Will find other gardens. Other communities." Richard set down his fork. "This is business, Daniel. You've always been too sentimental about these things. It's why you were never going to succeed as CEO."
I watched Daniel's face, watched him absorb the insult without flinching. He'd heard it before, probably hundreds of times. His uncle's voice in his head, telling him he wasn't enough, wasn't ruthless enough, wasn't willing to sacrifice the right things.
"I need time to think," Daniel said.
"You have until Friday. After that, I file a formal complaint with immigration, and I leak the story to the press. 'Tech CEO's Green Card Marriage Scam.' It has a nice ring to it, wouldn't you agree?"
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs, willing them to stop.
"We're done here," I said, standing.
Daniel stood too, but Richard held up a hand.
"One more thing. The immigration interview tomorrow. I'd suggest you prepare carefully. They'll ask about how you met, when you fell in love, intimate details about your relationship. You'll need to be convincing. Consistent. One wrong answer, one hesitation, and they'll know you're lying."
He smiled again, and I understood with perfect clarity that he wanted us to fail. Even if Daniel signed over the shares, Richard wanted to watch us squirm, wanted to see us exposed and humiliated.
"We'll be fine," Daniel said, but his voice lacked conviction.
We left the restaurant and stood on the sidewalk in the cold November air. Traffic rushed past, people hurried by with their heads down, and I felt untethered, like I might float away if Daniel wasn't standing next to me.
"I'm signing over the shares," he said.
"No."
"Nora—"
"I said no." I turned to face him. "You don't get to sacrifice everything for me. I won't let you."
"Then what do you suggest?" His voice rose, frustration finally breaking through. "We go to the interview tomorrow and lie? Hope they don't catch us? Hope Richard doesn't follow through on his threat?"
"I don't know!" The words came out too loud, too raw. "I don't know, okay? But giving Richard everything he wants, letting him destroy the garden, letting him win—that's not the answer."
"It's the only answer that keeps you in the country."
"Maybe I don't want to stay if it costs you everything."
The words hung between us, and I saw something shift in Daniel's expression. Surprise, maybe. Or something deeper, something that made my chest ache.
"You don't mean that," he said quietly.
"Don't tell me what I mean."
A taxi honked. Someone shouted in Korean from across the street. The city moved around us, indifferent to our crisis.
"We should go home," Daniel said finally. "Prepare for tomorrow. Get our story straight."
"Right. Our story." I laughed, and it came out bitter. "The story of how we fell in love. That should be easy."
We spent three hours at Daniel's apartment going over our application, memorizing dates and details, building a narrative that would satisfy immigration officials. When did you know you loved him? What's his favorite food? What side of the bed does he sleep on? Questions designed to catch liars, to expose fraud, to separate real marriages from arrangements like ours.
"Okay so," I said, reading from the list of potential questions Marcus had sent us. "What's the most romantic thing I've ever done for you?"
Daniel was quiet for a long moment. We were sitting on his couch, papers spread across the coffee table, empty coffee mugs leaving rings on documents we'd printed and highlighted and annotated.
"The lunch boxes," he said finally.
I looked up. "What?"
"The lunch boxes you make me. Every morning. Even when you're exhausted, even when you have a million other things to do. You make me lunch." He wasn't looking at me, was staring at his hands instead. "No one's done that for me since my mom died."
Something in my chest cracked open. I wanted to tell him it wasn't romantic, it was just practical, just part of our arrangement. But the words wouldn't come.
"What about you?" I asked. "What's the most romantic thing you've done for me?"
"I don't know if it counts as romantic." He finally met my eyes. "But I memorized your grandmother's recipes. The ones you told me about, the ones you can't make anymore because you don't remember the exact measurements. I found similar recipes online, tested them, adjusted them until I thought they might be close. I was going to surprise you. Make them for you one day when you were missing her."
My throat closed up. I couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, couldn't process what he was telling me.
"That's—" I stopped. Started again. "You didn't have to do that."
"I wanted to."
The silence that followed was different from before. Heavier. Charged with something I didn't want to name.
"We should practice the physical stuff," I said, desperate to break the moment. "They'll expect us to be comfortable with each other. Touching, casual affection."
Daniel nodded slowly. "Okay."
I moved closer to him on the couch. Our knees touched. I could feel the heat of him through my jeans, could smell his cologne mixed with coffee and stress.
"Put your arm around me," I said.
He did. His arm settled across my shoulders, careful and tentative, like he was afraid I might break.
"You need to relax," I said. "We're supposed to be married. This should be natural."
"Right. Natural." But his body was rigid, his breathing shallow.
I turned to look at him, and realized how close our faces were. Close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, could count his eyelashes if I wanted to.
"Daniel," I said softly.
"Yeah?"
"I need you to know something. Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever they decide—I don't regret this. Any of it."
His arm tightened around me. "Nora—"
His phone rang.
We both jumped. Daniel grabbed it, looked at the screen, and his face went white.
"It's immigration again," he said. "At eleven PM?"
He answered. Listened. His expression shifted from confusion to shock to something that looked like horror.
"I understand," he said. "Yes. Thank you for letting us know."
He ended the call. Set the phone down. Stared at it like it might explode.
"What?" I asked. "What did they say?"
"They're moving up our interview. Tomorrow morning at six AM instead of nine." His voice was hollow. "And they're sending two officers instead of one. They said it's standard procedure for cases flagged as high-risk fraud."
High-risk fraud. The words echoed in my head.
"There's more," Daniel said. "They're going to interview us separately. They want to see if our stories match."
My heart stopped. We'd practiced together, memorized the same script, but separately? Without being able to check with each other, to make sure we were saying the same things?
"We're screwed," I whispered.
Daniel's phone buzzed again. A text this time. He looked at it, and I watched all the color drain from his face.
"What?" I asked. "What now?"
He turned the phone toward me. The text was from an unknown number, but the message was clear:
Looking forward to seeing you both tomorrow. I'll be there to provide my testimony about your beautiful marriage. Don't disappoint me. - R
Richard was going to be at our interview. Richard, who had all the evidence of our fraud, who could destroy us with a single word, was going to sit there and watch us lie to federal officials.
"He's going to sabotage us," I said. "He's going to wait until we're in the middle of the interview and then—"
"No." Daniel stood abruptly. "No, he's not. Because I'm calling him right now and telling him I'll sign the papers. Tonight. He can have CoreStone, he can have everything, just—"
"Daniel, stop—"
But he was already dialing. Already pressing the phone to his ear. Already giving up everything he'd worked for to save me.
The call connected. I heard Richard's voice, smooth and satisfied, saying hello.
And then the apartment door burst open.
Two people in dark suits stood in the doorway, badges already out.
"Daniel Park? Nora Chen?" the woman said. "We're with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We need you both to come with us. Now."