Chapter 2

The building didn't have a sign. Just a number stenciled on glass, forty stories up. The lobby was so quiet my sneakers sounded rude against the marble.

A woman was waiting by the elevator when I stepped out. Tailored suit. Tight smile. A tablet clamped under one arm.

"Ms. Reyes. This way." No coffee offered. No small talk either. Just a hallway, a door with no label, and a chair angled toward a desk that put me right back in a job interview I hadn't applied for.

"Marissa Cole." She sat and folded her hands. "I handle intake for arrangements like this one. Say it back to me first. What do you think you're here for?"

"A marriage of convenience." Saying it out loud, under lighting three shades better than anything in my apartment, made it sound almost reasonable.

"Correct. One year, legally binding. Cohabitation required, intimacy not, though most arrangements shift on that front eventually. That part's between you and the client, not this office." She slid the folder across the desk. It was heavier than it looked. "Compensation releases in three installments. Final and largest one on the anniversary of the marriage, contingent on both parties honoring the contract through the full term."

"And if I don't."

"Then you forfeit whatever's still owed, and the client keeps every legal benefit the marriage granted him." Flat, the way you'd read someone a bus schedule. "I'd think carefully before testing that clause."

I opened the folder instead of answering. The contract ran close to forty pages, single-spaced, dense enough that I lost my place twice reading the first paragraph alone. The word irrevocable showed up twice before page two ended. Somewhere around page six, a section on property division repeated the phrase notwithstanding any prior verbal agreement. Three times. That wasn't caution. That was someone bracing for a fight that hadn't happened yet.

"This is a lot," I said.

"It's supposed to be. It protects you as much as it protects him."

Behind the contract sat a confidentiality agreement, three pages on its own, and tucked into the back pocket of the folder, a shorter document I almost missed. A background questionnaire. Half of it is already filled in.

My education. My work history. My parents' names.

My father's name, circled in blue ink that wasn't mine.

"Someone already had information on me. Before I ever picked up the phone."

Marissa answered a half-second too slow for me to believe her. "Standard due diligence. We vet everyone before a match is proposed."

"This says my father worked for Halden Consolidated. That's not on any job application I've ever filled out. Nobody outside my family knows that."

"I can't speak to the specifics of our research process." She reached over and closed the folder for me. It annoyed me more than it should have.

I didn't answer right away. Wasn't agreeing. Wasn't leaving either.

"There's something I need before I even consider signing this." I kept my voice steady. It took more effort than it should have. "My sister. Luz. She's nine. She lives with me, and she comes with me, wherever this goes. That part isn't negotiable."

Marissa's expression barely moved, which told me she'd expected it, or something close to it. "That's a significant addition to any arrangement of this kind."

"It's not optional." I thought of Ricardo's laugh that night at the door. Wet and ugly, right before he grabbed for Luz's wrist. He'd laughed like watching us panic was half the reason he came at all. I hadn't been able to get that sound out of my head in three weeks. "If the answer is no, we're done here."

"I'll relay the request to the client. It isn't my decision to make." She made a note on the tablet. I couldn't read it from where I sat. "I'd guess he says yes, given what he's offering. Most men paying what he's paying don't walk away over one more line item."

I didn't love being called a line item. Filed it away anyway.

For a second, I actually stood up. Pushed the chair back, folder still open on the desk, reached for my coat off the back of it. Marissa didn't try to stop me. She didn't say anything at all. She just watched, patient, like she'd seen this exact moment play out before. That was worse than if she'd argued. I sat back down.

I read the forfeiture clause three times. I read the section on cohabitation twice, because the wording left more room for interpretation than I trusted. I asked what "reasonable domestic conduct" meant, specifically, and got an answer that sounded rehearsed enough that I didn't believe a word of it. I asked if I could bring my own lawyer to look it over first. She said I could, but the offer expired in forty-eight hours regardless. Lawyer or no lawyer.

I thought about Ricardo's hand around Luz's wrist, and that laugh, and a courtroom seventeen days out with a judge who'd never once seen the two of us at our kitchen table laughing about a boy who ate glue on a dare. I thought about what a lawyer costs, and how that number probably wasn't an accident either, not when the offer on the table was built to run out before I could afford anyone else's opinion.

My hand hovered over the signature line longer than I meant it to.

"You don't have to decide today," Marissa said. Not unkindly. Somehow, that made it harder.

"Yes, I do." I signed before I could talk myself back out of the only option I actually had.

I didn't have to wait long. Marissa's phone buzzed on the desk between us. Something shifted in her face before she said a word.

"He's approved it."

"Is that normal? Him answering that fast?"

"Nothing about this file has been especially normal, Ms. Reyes." She said it carefully. Already decided how much to give me, apparently. Not much. "That's all I can tell you about it."

I wanted to push. Something about the pause before normal made it clear. She knew more than she was saying. Probably had, since before I sat down. I let it go. That door wasn't opening twice.

My phone buzzed in my coat pocket before I'd even stood up. A text. Unknown number. No name attached.

Request approved. Be on time on Thursday.

That was it. No warmth in it. No explanation. Nothing about the man I was apparently marrying, except that he didn't waste words. I read it twice anyway. Some part of me expected the second pass to say something different.

It didn't.

I looked down at the confirmation page instead. A time. An address I recognized from the skyline more than I'd ever seen it up close. Under client information, a name I'd never heard before in my life.

Client: Rowan Blackwood.

I read that twice, too. It landed even less than the text had.