CONTRACT WIFE, SECRET MOTHER

POV: Emily

"Miss Carter, Mr. Kane will see you now."

I didn't move at first. My dress was soaked through, my hair plastered to my neck, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking. The receptionist looked at me the way people look at something they'd rather not touch. I stood up anyway.

The elevator ride to the thirty-second floor felt like ascending to a sentencing. I watched my reflection in the polished steel doors. Red eyes. Pale face. A woman who had run out of options three days ago and was only now admitting it.

The doors opened. The office was enormous and cold. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed a city drowning in rain, and the man behind the desk looked like he belonged to it. Alexander Kane didn't look up when I walked in. He was reading something, pen in hand, jacket perfectly pressed like the storm outside was a personal insult he had chosen to ignore.

I stopped a few feet from his desk. He still didn't look up.

"Sit down," he said. His voice was low. Not unkind. Just empty of anything that wasn't instruction.

I sat.

He turned a page. I watched the side of his face. Sharp jaw, dark hair, a stillness about him that made the room feel smaller. He was younger than I expected. Maybe early thirties. But his eyes, when he finally looked up, were the eyes of someone who had never once been caught off guard.

"Emily Carter," he said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Your father owes three million dollars to four separate creditors. Two of those creditors have already filed for enforcement. The third is scheduled to appear at your family home tonight." He set his pen down. "You came here because Marcus Holt told you I was the only person who could stop it."

"Yes," I said again. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"Do you know what I want in return?"

I looked at my hands. "Marcus told me."

"Then let's not waste each other's time." He opened a drawer and placed a document on the desk between us. It was thick, bound, marked with little yellow tabs. "One year. We marry, make the required appearances, and maintain the image of a functional couple. After twelve months, we divorce quietly and you walk away with two hundred thousand dollars and your father's debts cleared."

I stared at the document.

"No emotional involvement," he continued. "No interference in my personal or professional life. You will attend events when I require it, smile when necessary, and answer questions from the press without embarrassing either of us."

"And outside of that?"

"You're free."

"Free," I repeated.

Something about the word felt like a joke neither of us was laughing at.

"You'll have your own room," he said. "Your own schedule. I have no interest in your personal life, and I expect the same respect."

I looked up at him. "This is a business arrangement."

"Everything is a business arrangement."

I picked up the edge of the contract. The paper felt heavy. I flipped past the first page, then the second. Words like cohabitation obligations and discretionary conduct clausesblurred in front of me.

"What happens if I say no?" I asked.

He leaned back in his chair. "Then you leave, and your father is arrested by morning."

My stomach dropped.

"There are other ways," I said. "Loans. Legal options."

"You've tried them. That's why you're here." He wasn't being cruel. That was the worst part. He was just stating facts, the way someone reads a weather report. "Miss Carter, I don't enjoy this any more than you do. I need a wife for reasons that are my own. You need money and intervention that only I can provide. This is a clean transaction."

"Clean," I said softly.

I thought about my father. About the sound of his voice on the phone two nights ago. He hadn't cried, which somehow made it worse. He had just said, Emily, I don't know what I've done, in a voice so quiet it barely reached me.

I thought about my mother's house. The garden she planted the year before she died. The kitchen where my father still kept her apron hanging on the same hook. I pressed my fingers flat on the desk.

"I have questions," I said.

"You have three minutes."

I looked at him. "Why me?"

For the first time, something shifted in his expression. Not much. Just a small tightening around the eyes. "That's not relevant to the terms."

"It's relevant to me."

He held my gaze. "You were selected because you're credible, educated, and have no public profile that complicates mine. You are, for lack of a better word, manageable."

The word landed like a small slap.

"Manageable," I said.

"Is that an objection?"

Before I could answer, my phone rang.

I almost ignored it. Then I saw the name on the screen.

Mrs. Adeyemi. Our neighbor. The woman who had keys to my father's house.

I answered without thinking. "Hello?"

"Emily." Her voice was hushed, urgent. "There are men here. Two of them, with papers. Your father, he's arguing with them and I don't think..."

"What kind of men?"

"Police. Emily, they have handcuffs."

The phone nearly slipped from my grip. I grabbed it tighter.

"Tell him I'm sorting it," I said. "Tell him to please not argue. Please. I'm sorting it right now."

I hung up. Alexander Kane was watching me. His expression hadn't changed, but he wasn't pretending to look away either.

My hands were shaking again. I hated that they were shaking.

I pulled the contract toward me. I picked up the pen he had left on the desk. The tip hovered over the signature line and I stared at my own name printed there in clean black letters. Emily Rose Carter.

I thought about what I was signing away. A year of my life. My name. The version of love I had always quietly believed in, the slow kind, the real kind, the kind that wasn't arranged in a boardroom while rain hammered the windows thirty-two floors up.

I signed. The pen scratched across the page and then it was done. I set it down. I didn't look at him.

"You'll contact whoever you need to contact," I said. "Tonight. My father doesn't spend a single hour in a cell."

"It's already been arranged." He reached across and took the contract without ceremony. "My assistant will send a car to your address tomorrow morning. Be ready by nine."

I stood. My legs felt strange, like they belonged to someone else.

"Tomorrow morning for what?" I asked.

He looked up at me, and for the first time since I had walked into his office, something that might have been satisfaction crossed his face.

"The wedding is tomorrow."