Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

The contract is twelve pages.

I know what a real contract looks like. I grew up watching my father sign them across boardroom tables. I know the tricks. The buried clauses. The language that sounds like nothing until a lawyer circles it in red six months later.

Alfonso knows I know. He's standing by the window watching me read like he's got all the time in the world.

He doesn't fool me.

Page one is clean. Standard terms. Temporary marriage, minimum twelve months, public appearances required, full access to Tommaso resources for the duration.

Page two. Three. Four.

Clean.

Page seven.

I stop.

*"The party of the second part agrees to reside exclusively within Tommaso-approved properties for the duration of the agreement. Any departure requires written authorization from the party of the first part."*

I read it twice.

"I can't leave without your permission." I look up. "That's what this says."

"That's what it says."

"That's not a marriage contract." I set it down on the bed. "That's a cage with better furniture."

He turns from the window. Slow. Unhurried. He crosses the room and picks up the contract and flips to page seven and sets it back in front of me.

"You were dead four days ago." His voice doesn't change. Same temperature as the room. "Ryan Angelo has already filed paperwork to contest your father's will. Selena Hunter gave a press interview this morning describing your history of emotional instability." He tilts his head. "Without my name, you walk back into Canada as a ghost. No assets. No credibility. No proof of anything." He pauses. "With my name, you walk back as my wife. And nobody contests a Tommaso."

I stare at him.

He's not wrong. That's the part that makes my back teeth grind together.

"The clause stays," he says. "Non-negotiable."

"Everything is negotiable."

"Not this." He straightens up. "I don't invest in things I can't protect. You leave without security, you're dead before the week is out. This isn't control, Rose. It's math."

I hate that it makes sense.

I hate him for knowing that I know it makes sense.

"Fine." I pull the contract back. "But I want it in writing that I have full operational control over my revenge. You don't interfere, you don't redirect, and you don't pull resources without my sign-off."

Something shifts in his face. Not respect exactly. More like he's updating something.

"Page eleven." He says it before I get there. "Already in."

I find it. Read it. He's right.

I look up.

"You drafted this before I woke up," I say.

"I drafted it before you regained consciousness."

Cold. Calculated. Completely unsurprised by me.

I don't know whether to be furious or impressed and I don't have time to figure it out.

"Show me what you have on them." I close the contract. "You said you've been busy. Show me."

---

He opens a laptop on the desk and turns it to face me.

It's a video file. Timestamp says four days ago. Two hours before the truck.

The angle is a parking garage. Security footage, high quality. Ryan and Selena are standing between two cars. She's in the coat she was wearing when I found them. He's still in his dinner shirt.

I turn up the volume.

"The missing person report needs to go in by morning." Selena's voice. Brisk. Businesslike. Like she's planning a calendar event. "Depression angle. I've already talked to her assistant, she'll back it up."

"And if she comes back?" Ryan.

"She won't." Selena doesn't even blink. "But if she does, the instability narrative is already planted. Her own board won't back her. The will contest moves forward either way."

Ryan rubs his face. "The shares."

"Sixty percent to you once she's declared. We already talked about this." Selena puts her hand on his chest. "By the time anyone asks questions, it's done."

The video ends.

I don't move.

My hands are completely still on the laptop edge. I notice that. Some small, separate part of me notices how still I am.

They planned it. Not the truck, maybe, that was accident or luck or whatever universe decided to kick me while I was already down. But everything after. The missing report. The narrative. The shares.

They had this ready before I even walked through that door.

That thing in my chest that I thought was grief finishes dying. Right now. In this room.

What replaces it doesn't have a name yet. It's too cold for grief and too focused for rage.

It's a decision.

I pick up the pen.

I sign every page.

---

Alfonso makes one phone call.

He speaks in Italian. Fast, quiet, three sentences. He hangs up.

Within twenty minutes, two women and a man I've never seen arrive in the room. The women carry cases. The man carries a tablet.

"What is this." I look at Alfonso.

"The first step." He nods at the man with the tablet. "Legal is already moving your identity documents into the Tommaso system. New travel credentials, new financial access, all under a new name." He pauses. "Publicly, Rose Alexander remains missing. By tomorrow, she'll be presumed dead."

"And privately."

"Privately, you're my fiancée. And you've been in Italy for two weeks."

One of the women starts unpacking the cases. Clothes. High-end, structured, nothing like what I would have picked for myself. The other sets up a mirror and opens a makeup case.

I look at Alfonso.

"You're rebranding me."

"I'm protecting an asset." No apology in it.

I should be furious. Maybe I am. But I also remember Selena's voice on that tape. *By the time anyone asks questions, it's done.*

Not anymore.

I sit down in front of the mirror.

The man with the tablet turns it to face me. A news feed. Live. Canadian morning news, the logo bright in the corner.

The headline reads: *Family and friends gather to honor missing heiress Rose Alexander.*

I watch Ryan stand at a podium in a dark suit. His face is arranged into something that looks like grief if you don't know him. Behind him, Selena in black, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

My memorial service.

It's already scheduled.

I watch Ryan grip the podium and say my name like it costs him something and I feel nothing. Not pain. Not even anger right now.

Just clarity.

*Good.* Let them bury me. Let them divide everything up and make their speeches and think they won.

The best revenge I could possibly give them is letting them believe it.

Alfonso moves to stand behind me. In the mirror his face is unreadable. He looks at me the way you look at something you've built and are checking for flaws.

"From tonight," he says, "Rose Alexander is dead."

His eyes hold mine in the reflection.

"You belong to the Tommaso name now."

I look at myself in the mirror. The woman looking back is still wearing hospital-bruised skin and borrowed clothes and the wreckage of one very bad night.

But her eyes.

Her eyes are different.

I pick up the Tommaso name like a weapon.

And I smile.