ARRANGED MARRIAGE WITH THE BILLIONAIRE

Raven

"You are marrying Nathan Vale next month."

I didn't turn around.

I held the keys to a silver Bentley and ticket stub #114, staring blindly into the dark gravel of the Greystone Heights driveway. My father’s voice was the last thing I expected to hear on a Saturday night.

Two years. No calls. No texts. No lawyers. And the first thing Marcus Vance said to me was a wedding announcement.

"Wrong girl," I said. I dropped the keys into the steel lockbox and let the lid slam shut like a vault. "I just park the cars."

"I know. I got you the shift."

That made me turn.

My father stood at the end of the valet tent in a tuxedo that cost more than my motorcycle with bourbon in one hand. He looked rested. Healthy. Like a man who hadn't lost a single night's sleep over the daughter who walked out of his house with a duffel bag and a toolbox.

Behind him, up the lawn, three hundred people in silk and black tie were toasting Celia Vale and her new husband under a white tent the size of a church. A string quartet was murdering Pachelbel. Past the hedge, at the dark end of the turnaround, a black car sat with its lights off. Somebody's driver, waiting on somebody's boss. I had stopped seeing it.

"You got me the shift," I repeated.

"Premier Valet owes me a favor. Four hundred cash for one night." He sipped. "You didn't think that was strange?"

I had. I'd also thought my rent was nineteen days late, and four hundred dollars was four hundred dollars and I'd stopped asking questions about good luck a long time ago because I never got any.

I dropped the Bentley keys in the lockbox and slammed the lid.

"Get lost. I've got a Range Rover coming up the hill."

"Saturday, Raven. You will attend Nathan's birthday party. You will be there with me, you will smile and you will marry Nathan Vale." He said.

"I'd rather be dead."

"That's dramatic."

"That's accurate." I took a step toward him. "He cornered me at the Harrington party when I was 17. He put his hand on the back of my neck and told me I would be prettier if I smiled more. He is a small, mean man with a big last name and you know that, you've known it for years, and you're handing me over anyway."

"The Vales control the northern counties. The primary's in March." He looked at me over the glass. "They want you."

"I won’t marry that prick."

"You will. You are my daughter." He stated.

I stepped toward him. Gravel crunched under boots I had had resoled twice because I couldn't afford new ones.

"Let me say this slowly so you understand." I said. "I don't live in your house. I don't take your money. I don't even use your name if I can help it." I flicked the plastic tag on my vest. RAVEN, it said. First names only. Premier didn't want guests getting familiar and it was the one rule of this job I liked. "You cut me off two years ago. You don't get to cut me off and then give me orders."

Marcus looked at me for a long moment. "How's the garage on Ninth?"

Everything in me went still.

The quartet switched songs. Somebody up the lawn laughed too loud. A car door slammed down by the gate.

"Don't," I said.

"Miller's lease is up in January. I know the owner." He took another sip. "And the fire inspector. Old wiring down there."

Hot blood began raging inside me.

"You're threatening a mechanic," I said. "A senator is threatening a mechanic with a building inspection. Do you hear yourself?"

"I am informing you."

"You're scared."

That brought his eyes up to mine. "Of what?"

"Of losing." I moved in close enough to smell the bourbon and the cologne he'd worn my whole life, the one that used to mean Daddy's home. "You're four points behind a man who sells sofas, and you came out here in the dark to sell your daughter to the Vales because you can't win on your own. You're not powerful. You're desperate. You just dress it better than most."

The glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

For one second, I had him. I watched it land.

Then he set the bourbon on the podium, right on top of my ticket book, and the wet ring bled through the paper.

“Next Saturday..,” he said. "My men will pick you up." He paused and stared coldly into my eyes. "If you refuse, your boy learns what it's like to lose everything he built." His voice didn't change at all. "You taught him that, didn't you? That you can walk away from anything."

I closed the distance. My fist tightened so hard the tendons in my wrist screamed. I was going to hit a senator.

But before I could raise my hand, a horn shattered the night

One long, deafening roar out of the shadows.

I looked toward the hedge. The black car I had noticed earlier was moving.

Its engine came alive with a low growl that rolled through the gravel. It came out of the darkness and stopped beside the valet stand.

Aston martin. Black on black. Tinted glass.

And I watched something happen to Marcus Vance that I had never seen in twenty-four years.

He flinched.

Small. Most people would have missed it. A tightening at the jaw. His fingers going to his cufflink and twisting it once, the way they did in debates when the question was one he hadn't prepped.

"Wylder," he said under his breath.

I knew the name. Everyone in this city knew the name.

Empire Group owned half the skyline, and the other half owed it money. But I'd never seen the man. He didn't do galas. He didn't do interviews. He didn't do weddings, apparently, except that the driver's door was opening.

He was taller than I expected. Dark suit, no tie, collar open like the dress code was a suggestion he'd considered and declined. Black hair pushed back from a face made of hard lines. A jaw that could cut glass. He moved like a man who had never once in his life hurried for anybody.

My father's smile came on like a porch light.

"Aaron." He stepped forward, hand out. Easy. Too easy. "Didn't see you there. How long have you been sitting in the dark?"

Aaron Wylder walked past the hand.

No show about it. He just walked past it the way you'd walk past a lamppost, and my father was left standing with his palm open in the air while three valets and a busboy watched.

I had seen senators shout at my father. I had seen reporters corner him and donors threaten him. Nothing ever touched him.

This did. His hand dropped. His ears went red.

I could have kissed the man for that alone.

Aaron stopped at the podium and held out his keys. Not to me. To the air in front of him, like he knew a hand would be there, because a hand was always there.

I grabbed them. "Ticket," I said, and tore one off the book. It was damp with my father's bourbon. "One-fifteen."

He didn't take it. He didn't look at it. He didn't look at me. His eyes were on the tent up the lawn, on the lights, on something I couldn't see. I might as well have been the podium.

I don't know what made me do it. Maybe it was the four hundred dollars I now knew was a leash. Maybe it was my father standing there with his face on fire. Maybe I just wanted, for one second, to be the only Vance who got a reaction out of this man.

Aaron buttoned his jacket, stepped around me, and walked up the lawn toward the wedding.

I stood there with his keys biting into my palm and the ticket still held out in the air like an idiot.

Behind me, my father laughed. It came a second too late to be real. "That," he said, "is a man who doesn't waste time on valet girls."

He picked up his bourbon. He looked once at the Aston Martin, at its dark glass, then back at me, and I could see him running numbers behind his eyes.

"Saturday, Raven." He went up the lawn after Aaron, and he didn't look back either.

I parked the Aston Martin at the far end of the lot, under the oaks. I killed the engine and stayed there.

The interior smelled like leather and nothing else, like it had never been touched. A dashboard so clean it looked unused. No coffee cup, no receipts, no gym bag on the back seat.

The car of a man who didn't leave pieces of himself anywhere.

Then I noticed the driver's window.

It was down. Not all the way. Two inches. Just enough.

He had been sitting right there in the dark with the window cracked. He'd heard it. He had heard the garage, and the fire inspector, and Jace's name. He had heard me call a senator a desperate man who sold his daughter.

He had heard all of it.

And he had leaned on that horn the exact second my fist closed.

Coincidence, I told myself.

At one in the morning, he returned.

I brought the Aston Martin up myself, waving off the other valets.

I stood by the driver's door as he approached, his jacket hooked over one shoulder. He held out a hand for his keys.

I put them behind my back.

That got his attention. His eyes locked onto mine. Pitch black.

"Are you Marcus's rival?" I asked bravely.

"The keys, Miss." His voice was low, resonant, and cold.

I didn't move. "Did you hear it?" I said. "The conversation."

He studied me for a long moment.

"Raven Vance."