CHAPTER THREE

Marilyn

He didn't sit back down.

He stayed exactly where he was, standing in front of me, close enough to be deliberate about it and the silence stretched between us like something he was enjoying.

"Name your condition," I said.

His mouth curved. It was not a smile exactly, it was

more like a predatory grin.

"Marry me."

The words were so quiet and so calm that it took my brain a full second to process them.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Marry me," he said again, slowly like he was worried my brain wouldn't process what he said.

I stared at him. "That is not a condition. That is a joke."

"It's a strategy." He moved back to his desk, unhurried, and braced both hands on the edge of it, facing me.

"You want Dylan finished. You want your shares protected and your company intact. You want Charlotte to spend the rest of her life understanding what she threw away. I can deliver all of that, but not for free, and not in a way that leaves you looking like a woman scorned running to the press with a phone video."

I opened my mouth.

"Think before you speak," he said.

I closed it.

He continued. "Dylan will never see it coming. Of every move you could make, marrying me is the one that will genuinely break something in him. Not because of you, but because I am the one person in his life he has never been able to touch, and the idea of me having what he thought was his will eat him alive."

I hated that I was still listening.

“And what will the headlines say? Jilted heiress jumps straight to the cousin. I'll look unhinged."

"I own a media company," he said simply. "I can control the narrative. By the time the story runs, Dylan and Charlotte will be the villains and you'll be the woman who made the most ruthless pivot in New York society this year. People will respect it."

I stood and walked to the window, needing a few feet of distance between us. The city spread out below, full of people making worse decisions than this for worse reasons.

I thought about Charlotte straddling Dylan in those silk sheets she had picked for me. I thought about his voice. She'll hand them over without question. She trusts me completely.

I turned back around.

"This isn't purely strategic for you," I said. "Don't pretend it is. You want to get under his skin. I'm just the most effective tool available."

He didn't deny it. "Marrying you would be the cleanest way to finish something that's been unfinished for a long time. You benefit. I benefit. Dylan suffers."

He tilted his head slightly. "I don't see the problem."

"The problem is that you're asking me to exchange one bad arrangement for another. At least with Dylan, I thought it was real," I said, keeping my voice level,

"And now you know better." His eyes held mine.

"This time you'd go in with your eyes open. No illusions, no vulnerabilities, no one in a position to use you. You'd have the full weight of my name and everything behind it. Can Dylan say the same?" He paused.

The room was very quiet.

I had spent four days grieving a man who had been laughing at me the whole time. I had cried for a life that was never real. And now I was standing in an office being offered something brutally honest for the first time in longer than I could remember.

It was still insane. But it was honest.

"Fine," I said. "I'll agree to your terms. But I have conditions of my own."

Something in his expression shifted. "Go on."

"This is a contract and nothing more. No romance, no blurred lines, no complications. We take Dylan and Charlotte apart, we protect my company, and when it's done, we dissolve the marriage quietly and move on with our lives." I held his gaze.

"I want all of it in writing. I don't trust verbal agreements."

"Wise," he said. "I'll have legal draw it up."

"And I want independent counsel to review it before I sign anything."

"Naturally." He reached for his phone.

I watched him place the call. He hung up in under a minute.

"It's arranged," he said.

"We'll marry tomorrow."

I felt the floor tilt slightly beneath me. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow. My terms, my timeline. If that's a problem, we can end this conversation now."

He said it without malice, which was almost worse. Just fact. Take it or leave it.

I thought about Dylan texting me about flower arrangements while he was sleeping with my sister. I thought about how long I had been the last to know.

"Tomorrow, okay fine." I said.

"Good." He sat back down, already reaching for the document he'd set aside when I walked in. "My assistant will send you everything you need tonight. You can see yourself out."

I picked up my bag. Walked to the door.

"Marilyn."

I stopped but didn't turn around fully.

"Don't lose sight of what this is," he said.

"Sentiment is what got you here. It won't get you out."

I looked at him over my shoulder for exactly one second.

"I know what this is," I said. "Don't forget that I'm the one who came to you."

I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me.

In the corridor, I exhaled slowly, my hand still on the handle.

I had just agreed to marry a man I didn't know to destroy a man I thought I loved.

The terrifying part wasn't that it felt wrong.

It was that it felt like the first decision I'd made in years that was entirely my own.