Chapter 3 — The Proposition

The private lounge is quieter than the rest of the hospital, the lighting softer, the air cooler. Victoria takes a seat without asking, crossing one leg over the other as she sets a tablet on the table between us.

I remain standing for a moment before sitting opposite her.

"Let's not pretend this is a social visit," I say.

Victoria smiles faintly. "I never pretend."

She slides the tablet across the table. I look down at it.

Numbers. Charts. Declining lines that don't need explanation.

"The company is unstable," she says. "Stocks are falling. Deals are collapsing. There are opportunistic parties positioning themselves for a takeover."

I scroll once, my expression unreadable. "And you want me to fix it."

"I want you to return," she corrects. "Temporarily."

I set the tablet down. "No."

She doesn't react. Not visibly. She's the kind of person who's learned to let silence do the arguing for her.

"You're uniquely qualified, Elena," she continues, calm as ever. "You understand the internal structure better than most of the board. You've been quietly supporting operations for years."

"I was his wife," I say. "Not your employee."

"And yet you were more effective than half the people on payroll."

I lean back slightly. "Find someone else."

Victoria tilts her head, studying me. Then she taps the screen.

The display changes.

My gaze sharpens as I look down.

A name.

My sister.

A series of transactions — debt, large, messy, unmistakably dangerous.

"What is this?" I ask, my voice lower now.

"Your family," she says simply. "Doing what they do best."

My fingers tighten against the edge of the tablet.

"They've involved your sister in something she won't be able to walk away from," Victoria continues. "But I can make it disappear."

The room feels smaller.

"And what do you want in return?" I ask.

Her smile returns, softer this time. "Come back to the mansion. Be his wife. Stabilize the company."

My jaw tightens.

I think about Mia — nineteen, gentle, the kind of trusting that our parents have always known exactly how to weaponize. I think about the years I spent quietly keeping this family's business afloat while being treated like furniture in my own home. I think about how easily Victoria just laid all of it on a table like she was offering me a menu.

"No," I say.

It isn't the answer I want to give. It's the only one I have room for right now, because agreeing this quickly would mean I've already lost whatever ground I have left to negotiate from. Victoria taught me that without meaning to, over three years of watching how she moves through a room. You never say yes to the first offer. Not even when you already know you will.

Victoria doesn't push. She simply watches me, patient in a way that feels more like waiting out a storm than losing an argument.

"Think about it," she says.

"I don't need to."

"You will." She says it without malice. Just certainty, the same certainty she uses for everything, like she's already seen how this ends and is only being polite by letting me arrive there myself.

I stand. "I should go."

"Elena."

I stop, my hand on the back of the chair.

"Your sister has until the end of the week," Victoria says. "After that, it stops being my problem to fix."

I don't answer. I walk out.

---

The corridor outside the lounge is emptier than before, the hour deepening into something that feels less like morning and more like the long stretch before it. I lean against the wall for a moment, my arms crossed, my mind running through numbers that have nothing to do with the company.

Mia doesn't know how to read a contract. She's never had to. Our parents made sure of that a long time ago — keeping her soft, keeping her useful in the specific way a daughter who doesn't ask questions is useful. I used to think I was protecting her by taking the weight myself. Now I'm not sure I did anything but delay the day someone else would use her as leverage instead.

I pull out my phone and call her.

She picks up on the second ring, her voice bright in the particular way it always is when she doesn't know anything's wrong. "Hey! I wasn't expecting you to call this early."

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"I'm fine," she says, drawing the word out like a question she doesn't understand. "Why? What's going on?"

I close my eyes briefly. "Nothing. I just wanted to hear your voice."

A pause. "Elena. You never just call to hear my voice."

She's not wrong. I used to think that made me a bad sister. Now I think it just made me the only adult in a family that never had one.

"I'm handling something," I say carefully. "It might affect you. I need you to trust me, and I need you to not ask our parents for anything, no matter what they tell you. Okay?"

Her voice sharpens slightly, worry finally breaking through. "Elena, what did they do?"

"I'll explain when I can," I say. "Just — promise me."

A long breath on the other end. Then, quieter, "Okay. I promise."

"I love you," I say.

"You're scaring me a little."

"Don't be scared," I say. "I've got it."

I hang up before she can hear how much I'm not sure that's true.

---

By the time I make it back to the main wing, the sun has fully risen, spilling harsh and clean through the windows. Alexander is still in his room, and somewhere down the hall, Victoria is likely already moving on to whatever comes next in whatever plan she's built around me.

I stand outside his door for a moment, not going in yet.

I think about the version of my life I signed away a few hours ago — the clean, quiet freedom I felt walking out of my lawyer's office, before my phone buzzed with news that pulled me right back into the center of everything I thought I'd escaped.

I think about the fact that Victoria didn't threaten me. She didn't have to. She just showed me a door already closing and let me decide how I wanted to walk through it.

I push the door open.

Alexander is awake again, propped slightly higher against the pillows than before, his eyes finding me the second I step inside. Something in his face eases, like he'd been bracing for me not to come back at all.

"You're here," he says.

"I told you I would be," I say, though I'm not sure which version of myself said it — the one who means it as comfort, or the one already calculating what staying is going to cost.

He doesn't ask where I went. He just watches me cross the room, like my presence alone is enough to settle something in him that nothing else can.

I don't sit.

Not yet.

Because some part of me is still standing at the edge of a decision Victoria already knows I'm going to make.