MARA'S POV

I laughed.

It came out before I could stop it, short and sharp, the kind of laugh that has no humor in it. I looked at Dominic Ashford sitting across from me in my mother's bakery like he belonged there and I waited for him to tell me he was joking.

He didn't.

His expression didn't change. He just sat there, completely still, watching me process what he had said with the patience of someone who was used to waiting for rooms to catch up with him.

I pushed the paper back across the table toward him.

"Get out of my bakery."

"Hear me out first," he said.

"I don't need to hear you out. I need you to take your number and leave."

He didn't move. He looked at the paper I had pushed toward him and then back at me and said, "Six weeks. That's all I'm asking for. A legal marriage, on paper, witnessed and documented. After six weeks we file for divorce quietly and you walk away with everything on that paper plus a settlement on top of it."

I stared at him. "Why."

It wasn't really a question. It came out flat, the way words do when you're trying to buy yourself time to think.

He was quiet for a moment, which surprised me. I expected a man like Dominic Ashford to have a rehearsed answer ready for everything. Instead he looked briefly like someone choosing how much of the truth to use.

"My grandfather's estate has a clause," he said. "I need to be married before my thirty-third birthday to access a portion of my inheritance. My birthday is in six weeks."

I let that sit for a second. "So you need a wife the same way you need a permit. Administratively."

"Yes."

"And you came to me."

"Yes."

"The woman who called you out in front of sixty people at a community meeting."

Something moved behind his eyes, not quite an amusement but close to it. "You were the most honest person in the room that night."

I looked down at the number on the paper again. I didn't want to look at it. Looking at it made it real and real was dangerous because real meant I was actually considering this, which I wasn't. I absolutely was not considering this.

"What does the marriage actually involve," I said. "Practically."

"You move into my residence for the six weeks. We attend a small number of public events together to satisfy appearances. We maintain a functional relationship in front of staff and any relevant parties. Beyond that you have complete privacy and complete autonomy."

"And the bakery block acquisition."

He paused. Just briefly, but I caught it. "That's a separate matter."

"It's not separate to me. You're asking me to marry you while your company is actively trying to remove me from this building."

"The acquisition is on hold."

"On hold isn't cancelled."

He looked at me steadily. "I can't make promises about business decisions based on personal arrangements."

"Then you can leave," I said. "Because I'm not signing anything that doesn't protect this building. You can keep your money."

He studied me for a long moment and I held his gaze because I had been holding the gaze of people who thought they could outlast me since I was nineteen years old and I was not about to stop now.

"I'll pause all acquisition activity on this block for the duration of the arrangement," he said finally. "In writing."

"Paused still isn't cancelled."

"It's what I can offer right now."

I should have said no. Every sensible part of me was saying no. I thought about my mother sitting at this exact table, hands dusted with flour, telling me that some doors look like traps and some traps look like doors and the only way to know the difference is to ask yourself what you're walking toward, not what you're walking away from.

I was walking toward saving the only thing she left me.

"I need to think about it," I said.

He stood, straightened his jacket, and picked up the paper. For a second I thought he was taking it with him, which sent a panic through me. I immediately hated myself for feeling. But he placed it back down on the table in front of me.

"You have three days," he said.

He walked out. The door closed behind him and the bakery went quiet again and I sat there looking at that number until my eyes lost focus.

I called Jess that night. I told her everything, all of it, and she was silent for so long I checked to see if the call had dropped.

"Mara," she said finally.

"I know."

"He walked into your bakery and asked you to marry him."

"I know."

"Dominic Ashford. The man you basically called a criminal in front of the whole neighborhood."

"I didn't call him a criminal. I implied he had no soul."

"Same thing." She exhaled. "Okay. How much money are we talking about."

I told her the number.

She was quiet again, longer this time.

"That's enough to save the bakery," I said. "Clear everything. I have breathing room for the first time in two years."

"And all you have to do is marry your enemy."

"On paper. For six weeks."

"Mara." Her voice shifted, softer now. "What would your mom say?"

I closed my eyes. That was the question I had been turning over since he walked out the door, the one I couldn't stop landing on no matter how many times I tried to think around it. What would Lena Villanueva say to her daughter sitting in her bakery holding a number that could save everything she built, attached to a man she had spent months fighting.

I thought I knew the answer.

I was wrong.

I called Carlos instead, not to tell him about Dominic but just to hear his voice. He picked up on the second ring and asked me how the day was and I told him it was fine. He told me about his shift and complained about his manager and I listened and made the right sounds and when we hung up I sat alone in the dark bakery for another hour.

Then I picked up my phone and pulled up the number Dominic had left at the bottom of the paper.

I typed a message and stared at it for sixty seconds before I sent it.

“I have conditions. Meet me here tomorrow at seven.”

His reply came in less than a minute.

“I'll be there at six. I want coffee.”