Chapter Five: The Signature

I sat there with the pen in my hand longer than I should have, and the thought that finally pushed me forward had nothing to do with money or trusts or exit clauses.

It was simple. One man spent a year lying to me. The other spent two days proving he didn’t have to.

My phone rang before I could finish the thought. My mother, asking me to come to dinner that night, her voice carrying the kind of forced lightness that meant she expected me to behave myself. “Just a family dinner, Olivia. Ava will be there. It’s time we all moved forward together.”

I agreed before I could talk myself out of it, mostly because some stubborn part of me still needed to see how far they would go.

I found out the answer the moment I walked into my parents’ dining room. Ava sat beside Ethan like she belonged there, leaning into his shoulder, laughing at something he’d said. Around her neck hung the sapphire necklace Ethan had promised me two Christmases ago, the one he said he was still saving for. He had given it to her instead, and neither of them seemed to think that was worth hiding from me.

I sat through twenty minutes of small talk before my aunt leaned across the table and patted my hand. “You should be happy for your sister, Olivia. Life moves on. There’s no use holding onto bitterness.”

Nobody at that table corrected her. Not my mother. Not my father. Not even a glance in my direction that suggested anyone understood what they were asking of me.

I excused myself before dessert. I didn’t go home.

Damien’s office was still lit when I arrived, the kind of quiet, focused light that belonged to a man who didn’t waste hours pretending to relax. He looked up when I walked in, and something in his expression settled, like he’d been waiting without admitting he was waiting.

“You don’t have to do this tonight,” he said. “If your answer is no, I’ll drive you home myself. No questions.”

That was the moment I trusted him enough to sign. Not completely. Not yet. But enough to believe that if I chose the door he’d left open, he would actually let me walk through it.

“I know,” I said. “I’m not here because I have to be.”

I sat across from him and pulled the contract toward me. My hand was shaking slightly as I uncapped the pen, and before I could say anything, a glass of water slid across the desk toward me. He didn’t comment on it. He didn’t even look at my hand directly. He simply made sure I had something steady to hold before I needed to ask.

I signed my name on the line at the bottom of the page, slowly, deliberately, with a clearer head than I’d had in three days.

“It’s done,” I said, sliding the contract back to him.

He looked at it for a moment, then back at me. “There’s something else I need to ask you.”

“What?”

“I need the wedding to happen this weekend.”

I stared at him, certain I had misheard. “This weekend? That’s barely three days.”

“Seventy-two hours,” he said, calm as ever, like he was confirming a meeting time and not rearranging the entire shape of my life.

“That wasn’t in the contract.”

“Because it isn’t a condition of the contract.” His expression didn’t change. “You can say no. If you do, what you just signed still stands.”

“Then why this weekend?”

“Because the timing matters to me.”

“Why?”

He was quiet for a moment, something moving behind his eyes that he didn’t let all the way to the surface. “That’s something I owe you an explanation for before you agree. Not tonight. But before the weekend, if you say yes.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but his phone rang first. He glanced at the screen, then answered, his expression unreadable as he listened. Whatever was said on the other end made something flicker across his face, brief and controlled, gone almost before I caught it.

He set the phone down and looked at me with a stillness that suddenly felt heavier than before.

“It appears your family already knows.”

I didn’t understand what he meant until my own phone buzzed in my bag. Then it buzzed again. And again, until it wouldn’t stop, a flood of notifications stacking on top of each other faster than I could read them.

My mother. My father. Ava, three messages in a row. Unknown numbers. A news alert with my name printed in the preview line before I’d even opened it.

And above all of it, lit up and ringing again before I could even swipe it away.

ETHAN CALLING.

The whole city knew I was marrying Damien Black before I had even figured out how to tell my family.