Chapter 2

The Aftermath of a Kiss

SOREN

The cameras are still going when I pull back.

I count — three seconds, maybe four — enough for the shot to be clean, enough for the story to write itself. Billionaire Soren Vane and Mystery Woman. By morning, it'll be on every entertainment feed that matters, and Cassandra's seventeen seconds of video will be competing with something far more compelling: the Ice King, apparently, has a soft side.

I let go of her jaw.

The woman doesn't move. It’s like she is frozen, eyes wide, lips parted, and the expression on her face is the kind of shock that comes right before a person either faints or screams. I put my hand on the small of her back, lightly, a gesture that reads as tender to the cameras and functions as a warning.

Don't.

She doesn't.

Good instincts. Or maybe just good fear of response. Either way, useful.

I smiled for the cameras, then spoke just three words that would cause chaos before I shut the door.

“Meet my fiancée.”

And just like I predicted, the paparazzi went wild. But that was all I was going to say to them. It was enough.

The moment we walked through the suite door, I locked it behind me immediately. The noise drops immediately, muffled by thirty thousand dollars' worth of soundproof door.

Cassandra is gone. I note this without surprise. She's theatrical, not stupid. She knows a losing position when the lighting shifts.

I turn around.

Talia Jett, I note her name from the nametag on her chest,  is standing in the center of my suite looking like she's been hit by something she didn't see coming. And she truly didn’t. The tuxedo jacket is two sizes too large, the collar sitting wrong on her shoulders. Her hair has come half-loose. Her hands are clutching nothing because she had dropped the bottle earlier, in the hallway. I heard the crash. And all she’s trying to do right now is hold herself together through sheer grip strength.

She's looking at me the way people look at a car accident. Can't stop, can't process, can't leave.

I pour myself a scotch from the bar cart. Not the Macallan, obviously.

"Sit down," I say.

"I —" Her voice comes out wrong. She clears her throat. "I need to go back downstairs. I'm working, I have a —" She stops. Swallows. "I have somewhere I need to be."

"Sit down, Talia."

She sits.

I take a moment to look at her properly, the way I look at anything I'm considering owning– without sentiment, without hurry.

She's younger than I initially thought. Mid-twenties, probably. Sharp-featured in a way that photographs well, which I've already confirmed from the hallway. Not polished, not curated, nothing like the women who usually orbit events like this. No veneers. No careful neutrality. Every single thing she's feeling is moving across her face in real time, which, under normal circumstances, would be a liability.

Right now, it's an asset.

She's a nobody. Facts.

Not the kind of nobody that comes with a complicated history, an ex with ambitions, a family with its own agenda. The kind of nobody that means clean. Manageable. A variable I can fully account for.

I set my glass down.

"Your phone," I say. "The texts. Loan sharks, or private debt?"

The color drops out of her face. "How do you —"

"Your phone was face-up on the hallway console when we came through. I read quickly." I pull out my chair and sit across from her, the marble table cold and pale between us. "Twenty-three hours remaining, at the time. Less, now."

Her jaw tightens. For a second, something moves behind her eyes that isn't fear — something harder, more cornered. "That's my business."

"It's about to be mine." I lean back. My tech assistant had sent me a quick recap, but she could not have noticed when she was so lost in the way things had just spiraled out of her control and comprehension.

I continued talking,  "Your brother's debt. Your mother's apartment. Dex — I'm assuming that's who holds the note — has a pattern of following through. You know this or you wouldn't be here in an ill-fitting tuxedo rehearsing speeches to drunk philanthropists."

She stares at me. "How did you know– You don't know anything about me."

"I know enough." I check my watch. "The board convenes in three hours. Emergency session, called by three members who've decided my personal life is a liability to the company's upcoming expansion. They need evidence of — " I pause, choosing the word deliberately " — stability. A man with a fiancée is considered stable. A man photographed kissing a woman in a hotel hallway to the apparent exclusion of a scene with a socialite is considered human at minimum."

The silence that follows is the kind where a person is doing rapid, desperate arithmetic.

Good. She should be.

"I don't understand what you're asking me," she says finally. Carefully.

"I think you do."

"You don't know me." She says it again, but differently this time — less defensive, more like she's reminding herself. "You kissed me thirty seconds ago. Telling cameras that I’m someone I'm not. I am not your fiancée. I'm a waitress. I'm no one."

"Yes," I say. "Exactly."

She blinks.

"I don't need someone with a profile, Talia. I don't need someone with ambitions, connections, or a publicist. I need someone that no journalist can locate a paper trail on by morning and someone who has enough to lose that I can trust her to hold a line." I hold her gaze. "You have everything to lose. That's not an insult. That's a qualification."

Her hands are still balled in her lap. I can see the effort it takes her not to look at her phone.

"This is insane," she says.

"Probably."

"People don't — this isn't —" She exhales. "This is the kind of thing that happens in a terrible movie."

"And yet." I stand, move to the desk against the far wall. The folder is already there. I prepared it three days ago when the board situation became clear, though I hadn't yet identified the specific variable I'd need. Funny, how things resolve themselves. "The terrible movie has a very specific runtime tonight, and we're already in act two."

I pick up the folder.

It's black and thick, the contract inside running thirty-one pages that my legal team spent seventy-two hours refining. Every clause is clean. Every exit is defined. Every number is exact. I've done messier deals for significantly less ROI.

I cross the room and set it on the marble between us.

She looks at it as if it might move.

"What is this?"

"Terms." I sit back down. "Duration, twelve months. Public appearances, defined schedule, fully staffed support — stylist, security, housing. Non-disclosure that protects both of us equally." I pause. "And compensation."

Her eyes come up to mine.

"Sign this, Talia Jett," I say, and I slide the folder the last few inches across the table toward her, "and two million dollars is wired to your creditors before the sun rises. Refuse, and I throw you back to the wolves at the door."