Chapter One

Celeste’s Pov

"You signed it already."

My father didn't look up from his desk. That told me everything.

"Celeste…."

"Don't." I pressed my hands flat against the wood between us because I needed something solid. "Tell me you didn't sign a contract handing me to a man I don't know."

He looked up then. His expression was the one I had seen my whole life, the one that meant he had already decided and was now waiting for me to accept it. "The Ferraro deal is dead. Someone had to fix it."

"Someone." I laughed. It didn't sound like me. "You mean me. I had to fix it."

"You were already seen with him. The story is already out."

"I was drugged, Papa."

"I know that."

"And you signed the contract anyway."

He folded his hands. "The Voss family is more powerful than Ferraro ever was. This is not a punishment. This is an upgrade."

I stared at him for a long time. Long enough to understand that there was no version of this conversation where he heard me. There never had been. I was twenty six years old and I had spent every one of those years keeping this family above water and my father had just sold me to settle a scandal my sister created.

"When." My voice came out flat.

"Two weeks."

I walked out before he could say anything else.

Sera was waiting in the hallway. She knew from my face. She reached for my arm and I stepped around her without stopping.

"Celeste, please…."

"Not right now."

"I didn't think it would go this far. I just needed one night, I needed Dante to think the engagement was already broken, I didn't think—"

I stopped walking. I turned around slowly. She looked the way she always looked when she wanted forgiveness before she had earned it. Young. Sorry. Already halfway into the story she would tell herself later to make this easier to carry.

"You drugged me," I said. "You put something in my drink and sent me out and didn't check where I ended up. And now I'm getting married in two weeks to a man whose face I didn't even see."

Her eyes filled. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are." I turned back around. "It doesn't help."

******************

I didn't sleep that night. I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about the morning I woke up in that hotel room. The sheets were expensive. The room was quiet. The man beside me was already half dressed with his back to me and I left before he turned around because something about the stillness of him frightened me more than the situation did.

I had told myself it was manageable. One night. No name. No trace.

I was wrong about all of it.

The Voss estate was two hours outside the city. I had heard the name my whole life the way you hear about weather in a country you've never visited, present, consequential, distant. Nico Voss didn't attend events. He didn't sit at tables. People came to him or they waited. The fact that my father had gotten a meeting at all told me how badly he had needed to fix things.

I did my own research in those two weeks. What I found didn't comfort me.

Nico Voss had taken over the empire at twenty eight after his father's death and restructured it so completely that the allied families had spent three years trying to understand the new map. He didn't make threats. He made decisions and let the outcomes speak. There were no verified photographs of him that were less than four years old. He had no public profile, no known relationships, nothing that could be used as leverage.

He was, by every measure, untouchable.

And I was about to live in his house.

******************

The morning of the transfer — I refused to call it a wedding — I dressed without help and came downstairs to find my father in the foyer with two men I didn't recognize. Dark suits. No expression. The kind of still that meant they were always watching.

My father kissed my cheek. "You'll be well taken care of."

"Goodbye, Papa."

He flinched slightly. Good.

The drive was quiet. I watched the city thin out into open roads and then into something greener and more isolated and I kept my hands in my lap and my face neutral. One of the men tried to make small conversation once and I looked at him until he stopped.

When the gates opened I understood for the first time what the word compound actually meant. The estate was not a house. It was a statement. Stone and iron and a long driveway that seemed designed to give you enough time to feel the weight of where you were going before you arrived.

The car stopped. A woman came out to meet me — fifties, immaculate, with the kind of posture that had been trained into her rather than grown. She introduced herself as Iris and said she managed the household and would show me to my rooms.

Rooms. Plural. That was something.

I followed her inside and through corridors that were impressive in a way that felt deliberate, like everything here, until she stopped outside a set of double doors and opened them.

The room was large and quiet and had a window that looked out over the grounds. It was also not empty.

He was standing at that window with his back to me. Tall. Still. Exactly the kind of still I remembered from a hotel room two weeks ago.

My heart did something I didn't have a name for.

He turned around and looked at me and said nothing for a moment that stretched long enough to be uncomfortable.

Then — "You're shorter than I expected."

I met his eyes. "You're exactly what I expected."

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite anamusement. Not quite its opposite.

"We'll see how long that lasts," he said.