CHAPTER 3: Her Terms

She came back the next morning at eight o'clock sharp.

I knew before Daniel buzzed me that it would be her. No one else in my orbit showed up unannounced two days in a row. No one else would have dared.

I told him to send her up.

She walked in carrying the contract — all forty-two pages of it — with small yellow sticky notes marking specific sections. She had used a red pen to underline passages. Three of them, from what I could see as she placed it on my desk without waiting for an invitation.

"You said it was straightforward," she said, without preamble.

"I said no such thing."

"You implied it."

"Miss Reeves—"

"Page eleven." She flipped to the marked page and turned it to face me. Her finger landed on paragraph four, subsection B. "Cohabitation clause. I move into your residence within seven days of signing." She looked up. "You didn't mention that."

"It's in the contract."

"I know it's in the contract. I read the contract." She flipped to the second marked page. "Page twenty-three. 'The party of the second part agrees to fulfill all reasonable duties befitting a spouse.'" She paused. "That language is deliberately vague."

She wasn't wrong.

"It refers to public appearances," I said carefully.

"Then write that. Specifically. In writing." She held my gaze. "I'm not signing anything with language I can't define."

I studied her across the desk. She had come prepared — every sticky note, every underlined clause. She hadn't just read the contract. She had dissected it. At some point between last night and this morning, Sophia Reeves had transformed from a girl in a desperate situation into something that looked remarkably like an opponent.

I respected opponents.

"What else?" I asked.

She blinked. She had expected resistance, not invitation. Good. Keeping people off-balance was how you learned who they actually were.

"Page thirty-one," she said, recovering quickly. "If either party terminates the agreement before the two-year term, the original debt is reinstated in full — with a thirty percent penalty."

"Standard protection against early exit."

"Standard trap," she corrected quietly. "If I leave, my father owes you nearly four million dollars. Which means I can never leave, regardless of what happens." She tilted her head slightly. "That's not a marriage contract, Mr. Cole. That's a cage."

The word landed between us.

A cage.

I said nothing. Because she wasn't wrong, and I had the uncomfortable sensation that whatever I said next would be weighed and measured and filed away with precise accuracy.

"I'll have the clause revised," I said. "Reasonable termination rights with thirty days' notice. No debt reinstatement after the first year."

Something moved across her face — too fast for me to catch it.

"Thank you," she said.

She said it simply. No performance. No relief. Just two words carrying the weight of someone who wasn't used to being given things without a cost attached.

I didn't examine why that bothered me.

"The cohabitation clause stands," I said. "The residence is large enough. Your own floor, your own entrance if preferred."

She considered this. Nodded once.

"And the spousal duties language — I want it rewritten to specify: public appearances, formal events, and social obligations only. Nothing beyond what is explicitly listed."

"Agreed."

She reached into her bag and produced her own pen — the same one she had placed on my desk the night before. She clicked it once, turned to the signature page, and paused.

"One addition," she said.

"We've covered the revisions—"

"This one is mine."

She wrote something in the margin. Small, neat handwriting. Then she turned it to face me.

I read it.

Then I read it again.

"Neither party will lie to the other about anything that directly affects the other's life. Honesty, where it is possible, is non-negotiable."

I looked up at her.

"That's not standard contract language," I said.

"No," she agreed. "It isn't."

"It's not legally enforceable."

"I know." She met my eyes without wavering. "I didn't write it for a court. I wrote it for you."

Silence settled over the office.

She was asking me for honesty. Not legally. Not formally. She was looking at a man she had known for less than twenty-four hours — a man who had purchased her like a line item on a balance sheet — and she was asking him, quietly, with a handwritten note in a margin, to simply not lie to her.

I thought about what Gerald had told me.

She doesn't know it was my idea.

I thought about the clause I hadn't revised. The one she hadn't found yet. Page thirty-seven, subsection C. The real reason I needed a wife in the next sixty days — not just for the board, not just for the shareholders. The thing that no contract language could make palatable.

I thought about what honesty cost.

And whether I had ever paid that price for anyone.

"Initial it," I said.

She did.

Then she signed her name — clean and clear across the signature line — and stood without waiting for me to speak. She straightened her bag on her shoulder and walked toward the elevator with the same composure she'd carried in.

She was almost at the doors when I said her name for the first time.

"Sophia."

She stopped. Turned her head — not all the way. Just enough.

"Page thirty-seven," I said. "Read it tonight."

A pause. Long enough that I noticed it.

"Is it bad?" she asked quietly.

I held her gaze across the length of the office.

"It changes things," I said. "I thought you should know before Friday."

The elevator doors opened.

She stepped inside.

And just before they closed, I caught it — the briefest shift in her expression. Not fear. Not anger.

Something closer to understanding.

Like she had already suspected that whatever I'd held back was the part that mattered most. Like she had signed the contract anyway, not because she had no choice — but because she had decided, somewhere in the quiet of last night, that I was worth the risk of finding out.

I stood there long after the elevator light blinked out.

The contract sat on my desk. Her handwriting in the margin. Her name on the signature line.

And on page thirty-seven — the clause she would read tonight, alone — the truth that was going to make this the most complicated two years of both our lives.

I should have told her myself.

I knew that.

I just didn't know yet that it was already too late.