Novels by Desire Cane

Sofia My new bedroom was larger than the entire apartment I’d grown up in, and I hated how much that fact unsettled me more than the wedding itself had. I stood in the doorway for a long moment before I made myself walk in, running my hand along furniture that probably cost more than a year of the restaurant’s profits, feeling like an intruder in a life I’d technically agreed to but hadn’t yet learned how to actually occupy. Somewhere down the hall, behind a door I had no intention of opening, Damian was presumably doing whatever ruthless billionaires did on their wedding night when the marriage wasn’t real and the bride wasn’t speaking to them. I wasn’t speaking to him because I didn’t trust myself to, not because I had nothing to say. There was something underneath his careful explanations, some weight he was carrying that had nothing to do with security details or board functions, and I’d spent three years reading people across a restaurant counter well enough to know when someo

Damian I laid out the terms of our household the first night, in the study, with considerably less confidence than I’d managed in any boardroom in a decade. “Separate bedrooms,” I said. “Obviously. The staff have all signed confidentiality agreements, so you needn’t worry about what they do or don’t report to the board or the press. In public, we maintain the appearance of a marriage. In private, you owe me nothing beyond basic civility.” “That’s generous of you.” Sofia stood near the window, still in her wedding dress, arms crossed in a way that suggested she was bracing for a catch she hadn’t located yet. “What else.” “Your allowance is yours. Spend it on the restaurant, on yourself, on whatever you like. I won’t track it, and I won’t ask questions about it. If you want to continue working at Reyes Imports, I have no objection, though the board will expect you at certain functions, and I’ll need advance notice to arrange security for those.” “Security.” “You’re a Castellano no

SofiaThe dress arrived two days before the wedding, delivered by a stylist I hadn’t hired, paid for by an account I hadn’t asked to be opened, in a box too elegant to belong to any closet I’d ever owned.“Mr. Castellano wanted you to have options,” the stylist said, laying out three gowns across my childhood bed like she hadn’t noticed the peeling wallpaper or the water stain in the corner of the ceiling I’d been meaning to fix for two years. “He said to tell you there’s no obligation to choose any of these. He simply didn’t want cost to be the reason you settled for something you didn’t actually want.”I chose the simplest one, a pale ivory dress with long sleeves and no beading, nothing that photographed as a statement, because some stubborn part of me refused to let this wedding look like anything other than what it actually was. A transaction. An arrangement. Not the kind of day a woman spent years imagining.City hall on Saturday morning was smaller than I’d ex

SofiaI signed my name three times before my hand stopped feeling like it belonged to someone else.Damian’s lawyer, a woman named Priya Anand who spoke in the clipped, careful cadence of someone paid specifically not to waste anyone’s time, had walked me through every clause the night before, over a video call that lasted two hours and left me with a headache and a strange, grudging confidence that at least the paperwork itself wasn’t the trap I’d been braced for.“Eighteen months,” Priya said again, for what felt like the fifth time, as if repetition alone might make the arrangement sound less absurd. “Full debt forgiveness effective the day of signing. No claim on Reyes Imports or any personal asset belonging to you or your father. A monthly allowance, which you are under no obligation to spend on anything related to Mr. Castellano’s public image. And an exit clause that requires nothing further from either party once the term concludes.”“And the parts that protect him,” I said. “

SofiaI didn’t sleep. I sat at the kitchen table above the restaurant until almost three in the morning, the contract draft Damian’s lawyer had emailed open on my laptop, reading every clause until the words stopped making sense and started simply repeating themselves in my head like a song I couldn’t turn off.It was, as far as I could tell, exactly what he’d promised. Eighteen months. Full debt forgiveness upon signing. No claim on the restaurant, the building, or any asset belonging to my father, structured instead as a personal arrangement between Damian and myself. A monthly allowance that made my eyes water for reasons that had nothing to do with gratitude. An exit clause at the end of the term with no further obligation on either side.It read like mercy. I didn’t trust mercy that came wrapped this neatly, not from a man who’d spent three years building the exact conditions that made refusing it impossible.My father found me there at six, moving slower than he used to, the tre

DamianShe left my office at four forty, and by five I had already read the signed contract’s draft language four times, which was three more times than any deal I’d closed in the last two years required.Marcus found me still at the window when he let himself in without knocking, a habit I’d stopped correcting years ago because he was usually right about whatever had earned him the exception.“The board meeting’s been moved up,” he said. “They want confirmation on the engagement before Thursday’s shareholder call. Apparently rumors are already moving faster than we are.”“There’s no engagement yet. She hasn’t answered.”“She will.” Marcus said it the way he said most things about my decisions lately, with the particular confidence of a man who had learned a long time ago not to bet against me, even when he disagreed with what I was doing. “You don’t build a plan like this one for three years and leave the outcome to chance.”“I didn’t build it to force her hand with no room for a rea