CHAPTER 4:The Terms

The contract was twelve pages long. Alina read every single word twice and still couldn't find the answer to the most important question: why her, when a man like Adrian Voss could have arranged this with anyone.

She spread it across the kitchen table at midnight, still in her coat, because since she came home from the meeting and she did not quite make it past the kitchen. The eviction notice was still on the counter. The hospital bills were in a folder beside the fridge, where she put things she needed to see every day so she didn't let herself forget how urgent they were.

She made tea. That she ended up not drinking.

Past midnight she called Ethan. He picked up on the second ring, which meant he'd been awake.

"Tell me everything," he said.

"He admitted the photograph was from an investigation. He admitted I affected his business. He accepted all four conditions before I even finished reading them out."

A long pause. "That's not reassuring."

"No."

"Men who accept everything you ask for immediately either don't intend to honor it, or they already planned for it." A pause. "What was he like?"

She thought about how to answer that. "Controlled," she said finally. "Very controlled. Not cold .More like someone who decided a long time ago exactly how much of himself other people were going to see, and he's never wavered from it."

"Did he scare you?"

She was quiet for a second. "Not in the way I expected."

"What does that mean?"

"I expected to feel threatened. I felt something else."

"Alina—"

"I'm not saying that it's a good thing, Ethan. I'm just being honest."

She heard him exhale. "What does the contract even say?"

"Six months. I live in his penthouse. I accompany him to events — business dinners, social appearances, that kind of thing. I behave as someone in a personal relationship with him without it being formally named. I maintain discretion. In return, all my financial issues will be taken care of. Mum's bills and needs will be taken care of while she is in hospital and twelve months after.

"Stop. Go back." His voice had sharpened. "Personal relationship."

"The word companion appears in the document. The word girlfriend doesn't."

"That's a legal distinction, not a real one."

"I know that."

"Alina." A pause. "What is he actually asking for? Because it isn't just someone to take to dinners. He's a billionaire. He has people for that. He doesn't need you for that."

The question she'd been turning over since she left his office. "I don't know yet," she said.

"But I think I need to find out more information from the inside."

"That is the most dangerous sentence you've ever said to me."

"Probably."

"I need you to hear me. Please. Just — really hear me." He sounded tired, suddenly. Tired and young, which was not how Ethan usually sounded. "I have a very bad feeling about this. Not because of the articles or the reputation. Because of the photograph. He had a picture of you for three years. He kept it. And now here you are in his office signing his contract. Does that not — does that not feel wrong or a bit suspicious to you?"

She looked at the contract in front of her. At the twelve careful pages. At the handwriting in the margin she hadn't been able to stop thinking about: You owe me.

"It feels like a lot of things," she said. "But none of them are worse than what happens if I don't sign it."

Ethan didn't answer for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was flat, indicating that he'd run out of arguments and was down to pure feeling. "Call me the second anything feels wrong."

"I will."

"First sign. First instinct. You call me."

"I will, Ethan."

"I mean it."

"I know you mean it. I love you. Go to sleep."

She hung up and sat alone with the contract and her cold tea and complete silence of a decision that's already made but hasn't quite been admitted to yet.

She signed it at eleven fifty-eight. Sitting in her socks, under the LED that always buzzed slightly on the left side, using the pen she kept in the kitchen drawer for takeaway orders.

She put the signed contract in its envelope and left it on the table for the courier who would come in the morning. Then she went to bed. She lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and thought about the twelve pages and the margin note and the way Adrian Voss had looked at her across the table — like she was something he had been patiently waiting for ,for a very long time.

The courier arrived at eight.

She handed over the envelope in her work uniform, watched it disappear into a black bag.

Her phone buzzed before she'd even closed the door. The message said: Mr. Voss confirms receipt. A car will collect you Sunday at ten. Bring only what you need — the rest will be arranged.

She stood in her doorway and re-read it and thought: the rest will be arranged. As if her life were already a thing that could be arranged. As if it hadn't already been, for three years, without her knowing.