CHAPTER 5: TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Voss Tower took up an entire block of Sixth Avenue, fifty two floors of glass and steel that Temi had walked past a hundred times without ever once imagining she'd be riding an elevator to the fortieth to discuss the terms of her own marriage.

The receptionist who greeted her knew her name before Temi said it, which told her more about how carefully this morning had been arranged than anything else could have. She was led down a hallway lined with framed black and white photos of buildings the company had developed, into a conference room with floor to ceiling windows and a view of the park that made the whole city look small and manageable, the way money always seemed to make things look from high enough up.

Adrian was already there, standing at the window with his back to the door, and beside him sat two people Temi didn't recognize. A woman in a sharp navy suit who introduced herself as Naomi Chen, Adrian's chief operating officer, and an older man with silver hair and a folder thick enough to double as a doorstop, Adrian's attorney, Mr. Reyes.

"Ms. Callahan," Reyes said, standing to shake her hand. "Thank you for coming. I understand you'd like your own counsel present for this."

"I would." Temi had spent an hour on the phone that morning until Pri's cousin, an actual contract lawyer named Delphine who owed Pri a favor from law school, agreed to join by video call. Delphine's face appeared on a screen at the end of the table a moment later, sharp eyed even through a laptop camera. "She's dialing in."

"Of course," Reyes said, unbothered, like this was exactly the response he'd expected and possibly hoped for. "Shall we begin?"

Adrian finally turned from the window. He looked different in daylight than he had in the shadows of that bar, less bracing for weather and more like a man who had simply decided, sometime overnight, to stop pretending this was anything other than what it was. He nodded at Temi, a small, formal acknowledgment, and took his seat at the head of the table.

"The terms," Reyes began, sliding a folder across the table to Temi and a matching one toward the laptop screen for Delphine, "are as follows. Marriage within fourteen days, to satisfy the will's requirement that Mr. Voss be, quote, married in good faith, unquote, before the sixty day window closes. A confirmed pregnancy within four months of the marriage date, achieved through whatever method the two parties agree upon privately. The marriage to remain intact for a minimum of eighteen months following the child's birth, to avoid any appearance of the arrangement being what it, candidly, is."

"And after the eighteen months," Temi said.

"An amicable, quiet divorce," Reyes said. "Full custody arrangements negotiated in good faith at that time, though Mr. Voss has indicated he intends to propose equal shared custody regardless of how the marriage ends. And the settlement, as outlined previously, disbursed in full upon finalization of the divorce, not before."

"Not before," Temi repeated. "So if I walk away early, for any reason, I get nothing."

"That's correct."

Delphine's voice crackled through the laptop speaker. "That's an aggressive clause. What happens if Mr. Voss is the one who breaches the agreement? Infidelity, for instance, or failure to uphold the public appearance requirements?"

Reyes glanced at Adrian before answering, a small deference that told Temi this particular question hadn't fully been settled between the two of them ahead of time. "Mr. Voss has agreed to a matching penalty clause. Breach on his end forfeits his right to renegotiate custody terms and triggers an accelerated settlement in Ms. Callahan's favor."

"I want that in writing before anyone signs anything," Temi said.

"It will be."

Naomi Chen, silent until now, finally spoke, her voice cool and measured in a way that suggested she'd been turning something over since Temi walked in. "I want to be direct with you, Ms. Callahan, because I think you'd respect that more than pleasantries. I advised against this. Not because of you personally. Because a rushed, publicly scrutinized marriage born out of a broken engagement is exactly the kind of story the press will not let go of, and Voss Industries cannot afford a distraction like that heading into the fourth quarter."

"Noted," Temi said. "For what it's worth, I didn't exactly plan on being anyone's plan B either."

Something in Naomi's expression shifted, not quite warmth, but something closer to respect than the cool assessment she'd walked in with. "No. I imagine you didn't."

They spent the next two hours going line by line through the contract, Delphine pushing back on three separate clauses until Reyes conceded ground on all three, Temi asking questions she hadn't known to ask until she heard herself asking them out loud. What happened to the settlement if something went wrong with the pregnancy. Whether she'd retain full ownership of her studio throughout the marriage, no shared assets, no complications. Whether the prenup extended to protect Adrian's holdings from her, which it did, thoroughly, and which she found herself grateful for rather than insulted by, because it meant at least one part of this arrangement was honest about what it actually was.

Adrian said very little through most of it, letting Reyes and Naomi handle the mechanics, but Temi noticed he was watching her closely the entire time, the way you'd watch someone across a chess board, trying to read intentions three moves ahead of the actual conversation.

It was nearly noon by the time Delphine signed off and Reyes gathered his papers, leaving Temi and Adrian alone at the long table for the first time all morning, the city stretched out silent and gold below the windows.

"You held your own in there," Adrian said.

"I had a good lawyer."

"You asked better questions than most people twice your age with three times the legal background." He said it plainly, not quite a compliment, more an observation, the kind of thing Temi suspected he said rarely and meant every time he did. "I want to be honest with you about something Reyes didn't put in the contract."

Temi went still. "Okay."

"My father will contest this the moment it's announced. He's been waiting for an opening since my grandfather got sick, and a rushed marriage to my ex fiancée's maid of honor is going to look, to anyone who wants it to look that way, exactly like the kind of desperate, poorly considered decision that proves I'm not fit to run this company." Adrian's jaw tightened. "I need you to understand that marrying me doesn't just mean signing a contract. It means stepping into a fight that has nothing to do with you and everything to do with a family that was broken a long time before either of us met."

"You're trying to talk me out of it."

"I'm trying to make sure you say yes with your eyes open. There's a difference."

Temi thought about the settlement number sitting in the folder in front of her, the studio, Pri, Malik and Dara's jobs, the version of her future that existed if she signed this and the version that existed if she didn't. She thought about Adrian's father, a man she'd never met, already sharpening whatever weapon he intended to use against a son who hadn't asked for any of this either.

"I've survived worse fights with less on the table," she said finally. "I'm in."

Something eased, just slightly, in Adrian's shoulders, though his expression stayed carefully unreadable. "Then I'll have Reyes finalize the paperwork by tomorrow. We should discuss the wedding date."

Temi was still nodding, still half lost in the strange, vertiginous feeling of having just agreed to marry a man she'd known for barely twenty four hours, when the conference room door opened without a knock, and a tall, silver haired man in an impeccable gray suit stepped inside like he owned the building, which, Temi would learn within the next ten seconds, in a very literal sense, he partially did.

"Adrian," the man said, his eyes cutting past his son to land directly on Temi, cold and assessing in a way that made her skin prickle. "I heard the strangest rumor this morning. Something about a new bride."

Adrian went rigid beside her.

"Father," he said. "You weren't supposed to be back from Genev

a until Thursday."

"Clearly," Marcus Voss said, "I moved up my flight."