Welcome To Hell

He pressed in closer and I smelled him, cedar wood and something deeper, a fragrance that was more expensive. "I need a wife. You need money. We can help each other."

I laughed. Actually laughed. "That's your line? That's what you're going with?"

"It's not a line. It's a business proposition." He retrieved a card, and pushed it across the bar. Damien Cross, CEO, Cross Industries. "You're Isla Monroe. Your father is the owner of Monroe Textiles... was, I mean to say. It's hemorrhaging money. Filing for bankruptcy."

Ice flooded my veins. "How do you—"

"I know everything about everyone I do business with. And I want to do business with you."

"I don't understand."

"Marry me," he said simply. "One year. A contract. I pay off your father’s debts, I cover his medical bills, I save the company. In exchange, you are the dutiful wife. No feelings. No complications. The year winds up, and we’re divorced. You walk out with enough money to begin anew and both of us get what we want."

Sophie made a choking sound. I ignored her.

"Why?" I demanded. “What the hell could make you need to buy a wife?”

A flicker passed behind his eyes, there's pain, perhaps, or rage. "Family reasons. I must be married before I can inherit something that's mine. It doesn’t matter to the lawyers if it’s true, only if it’s legal.”

"This is insane."

"This is business."

"You don't even know me."

"I know enough." Out came another card, his lawyer’s, it seemed. "I know you're desperate. I realize you do not have any other choice. Because I know in about six hours your mother’s going to wring you out, and you are just going to crawl right back up inside that cheating fiancé of yours because, somehow, she is going to convince you, oh yes, she will!"

He leaned in even closer, his voice turning to something intimate and terrible.

"But you can do something about it, Isla. You can marry the man who betrayed you and spend your life paying for everyone else’s mistakes. Or you marry me, save your family without dismantling yourself, and leave in a year with your pride still intact."

My heart was racing. This couldn't be real. Men like him didn’t stumble into dive bars and propose to strangers. This was a setup, a joke, a...

“I’ll give you 10 million dollars,” he said. “Five now, five at year-end. And all of your father’s debts are forgiven. Plus a penthouse in Manhattan. And, you know, whatever it takes to make this year tolerable.”

Ten million dollars.

My father's life was saved.

One year of my life.

"Why me?" I whispered.

His smile would slice you to the bone. "Because you want it badly enough to say yes, and badly enough to keep your word. Because I saw you walk in here three hours ago looking like somebody had destroyed your whole world, and I thought, maybe there. Someone who sometimes knows the only way to go forward is by making a deal with the devil."

"You think you're the devil?"

"I know I am." He stood, straightened his cuffs. “I’m going to Vegas in two hours. Lawyer on call, prenup drafted, wheels up. You’re sick and tired of being haunted by your ex, and you long to win back your family? Come with me. Sign the papers. Become Mrs. Cross by sunrise."

"And if I say no?"

He glanced at me as if he could read it. "Then you say no. I walk, you never see me again, and you pick up the pieces of your disaster as best you can. But we all know you won’t, no.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I see you doing the math in your head to work out if one year with a stranger is better than spending a lifetime with the person who crushed your soul.” He made for the door, then stopped. "I know you're much stronger than you think. And I also know in five minutes you’re all going to be following me.”

The door closed behind him.

Sophie grabbed my arm. "Isla. You can’t possibly be serious.”

I looked at the business card, at the lawyer’s number, at the impossible offer from an impossible man.

My phone buzzed. A hospital text: Your father is calling for you.

Another from Marcus: We have to talk. I love you. This is fixable.

Another from my mother: The wedding can still take place. Don't be stupid.

Between heartbeats, I came to my feet, a choice made.

"I’ll call you when I’m on the ground,” I said to Sophie.

"Isla."

"I'm going to Vegas," I said. “I’m going to marry a stranger. And I am going to save my father’s life without losing my own.”

"This is crazy!"

"Good." I took my purse, hands finally steady after hours on end. "I'm tired of being sane."

The cold air rushed against me as I darted through the door. He was in it, propped against a shiny black car that was likely worth more than my parents’ house had been, sin wrapped up in Armani.

"I have conditions," I said.

"Name them."

"Separate bedrooms. No touching unless absolutely necessary. And when it’s over that year we never talk to each other.”

He smiled, slowly, dangerously, destructively. "Deal."

He opened the car door. I paused for just a moment, teetering at the edge of the cliff, every instinct in my body shrieking at me to flee.

But I’d been playing it safe my entire life, and where did that get me?

Betrayed. Broke. Broken.

Perhaps it was time for a little danger.

I got in the car.

He settled in next to me, and the door shut with the sound of a cage locking.

“You will not regret this,” he said.

"I already do." I looked into his eyes and met him staring, just like I hoped he would. "But I'm doing it anyway."

"Good." He finally ordered the driver to go, and the car left the curb, my old life receding into the distance, heading for some unspeakable new thing. "That makes two of us."

As we navigated the neon-washed streets on the way to an airport, on the way to Vegas, on the way to a marriage fueled by desperation and untruths, I caught him looking at me.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing." But the look in his eyes turned dark, something possessive and fierce dancing across their depths. “Just wondering if I’m screwing up.”

"Wondering or knowing?"

"Both." He looked away, jaw tight. "Both."

It was a four-hour flight to Vegas.

We hadn’t spoken at all by the time we landed.

When we signed the papers, my hands were trembling so much that I could barely grip the pen.

By the time we were married (the judge who performed the ceremony actually said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife”) I was laughing and crying.

Then Damien Cross kissed me, a hard and quick, cold-as-frozen puckering of lips that was nothing at all and everything in the world, rolled into one, and I knew I had either made the best or worst decision of my life.

"Welcome to hell, Mrs. Cross," he whispered against my lips.

I gave an inch away and looked up into his storm-gray eyes with a smile.

"Right back at you, husband."