Why Would I Trust a Kade

The silence on the line stretched so long that Seraphina began to wonder if Damon Voss had simply hung up without bothering to tell her.

"Say that again," he said finally.

"I want to marry you." She kept her voice level, though her pulse was hammering hard enough that she could feel it in her throat. "I'm not joking, and I'm not drunk, if that's what you're about to ask."

"I wasn't going to ask that." A pause, and she could hear the faint click of a lighter, the small hiss of a flame catching. "I was going to ask why a Kade heiress, engaged to Julian Renner, is calling a man her family has spent a decade pretending doesn't exist."

"Because I'm not marrying Julian."

"That's not what the society pages say."

"The society pages don't know everything." She closed her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow. This was the part she had rehearsed in her head a hundred times without ever actually preparing the words. "I need to speak with you in person. Not over the phone. Tonight, if you're willing."

"I'm not in the habit of meeting strangers on short notice, Miss Kade. Especially not strangers who open with a marriage proposal."

"Then think of it as curiosity." She let a thread of steel enter her voice, the kind she remembered using on board members in another life, another version of this same year. "You're the heir to the most powerful family in this city. I doubt very much that curiosity is something you're afraid of."

Another silence, shorter this time. She thought she heard something that might have been the ghost of a laugh.

"There's a restaurant on Delancy Street," he said. "Corvo's. Private room in the back. Nine o'clock. If I decide you're wasting my time, the meeting is over in five minutes."

"I understand."

"One more thing." His voice dropped, quieter, more deliberate. "Come alone. If I see a driver, a bodyguard, or so much as a nervous look toward the door, I walk out and you never get a second chance to explain yourself."

The line went dead before she could answer.

Seraphina sat on the edge of her bed for a long moment, staring at the phone in her hand. In her first life, she had spent six years believing Adrian Vescari, no, Damon Voss, her mind stumbled slightly even now, still adjusting to a world that had rearranged itself around her, was a man to be feared and avoided. She had crossed rooms to avoid standing near him at galas. She had let Julian whisper warnings about the Voss family into her ear and never once questioned whether those warnings were true.

Now she was walking directly toward him, alone, at night, because he was the only person in this city she trusted not to have a knife already prepared for her back.

She dressed carefully. Not the soft, romantic silhouettes Julian preferred, the ones that made her look delicate and easily managed. Something sharper. A dark green dress with clean lines, low heels she could run in if she needed to. She studied herself in the mirror and barely recognized the woman looking back. Not because her face had changed. Because her eyes had.

Corvo's was exactly the kind of restaurant she expected, dim lighting, exposed brick, the kind of quiet that came from a clientele who paid extra to never be overheard. A host led her through the main room without a single question, as though her arrival had already been expected, and opened a door at the back onto a private room with a single table set for two.

Damon Voss was already seated.

She had forgotten, or perhaps in her first life she had simply never allowed herself to really look, how commanding he was even doing nothing at all. Dark hair, sharper features than she remembered, a black suit that fit him with the kind of precision that suggested everything about the man was deliberate. He did not stand when she entered. He simply watched her cross the room, his expression unreadable, and gestured to the seat across from him.

"You came alone," he said. "I'll admit, I expected otherwise."

"I said I would." She sat, folding her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. "I don't make promises I don't intend to keep."

"Interesting philosophy for a woman engaged to Julian Renner."

The name landed like a slap, though she was certain he meant it to. She kept her face still.

"I'm not engaged to him. Not anymore."

"According to whom?"

"According to me." She met his eyes directly. "The engagement ends this week. He doesn't know that yet."

Something shifted behind Damon's expression, a flicker of genuine interest replacing the careful boredom he'd worn since she sat down. He leaned back slightly, studying her the way she imagined he studied a business rival, searching for the angle, the weakness, the real motive underneath the words.

"You called me an hour after making that decision to propose marriage. That's either very brave or very stupid, Miss Kade."

"It's neither. It's necessary."

"Explain necessary."

This was the part she had to navigate carefully. She couldn't tell him about the warehouse, the rope, the gunshot, the three years she had already lived and lost. No one would believe that, and even if he did, it would make her sound unstable, dangerous, a liability rather than an asset. She needed a version of the truth close enough to hold together under scrutiny.

"My father is going to die," she said quietly. "Not from illness. Someone is going to kill him and make it look natural, and I believe Julian is involved."

Damon's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "That's a serious accusation."

"I'm aware."

"What proof do you have?"

"None that would hold up anywhere official." She held his gaze, refusing to look away even as her heartbeat climbed. "But I know Julian. I know what he wants, and it isn't me. It's my family's company, our contracts, our influence. And once he has it, there won't be any reason to keep me alive either."

"So you've decided the solution to a man who might kill you for your inheritance is to marry a different man who could kill you for sport." His tone was flat, almost mocking, though his eyes were doing something else entirely, watching her with an intensity that made her want to look away and refuse to at the same time. "Forgive me if that doesn't strike me as a strategic upgrade."

"You wouldn't kill me."

"You sound very confident of that for someone who met me twenty minutes ago."

"I've watched you for years, Mr. Voss." It wasn't a lie, not exactly. She had watched him, across ballrooms and charity dinners, long before she understood why her attention kept drifting toward him instead of the man she was supposed to marry. "Everyone says you're dangerous. No one says you're dishonest. If you agree to protect me, I believe you'll honor it. That's more than I can say about the man I was engaged to for six years."

For the first time since she'd sat down, Damon was quiet in a way that felt less like calculation and more like genuine consideration. He reached for the glass of wine in front of him, turned it slowly by the stem, and didn't drink.

"Say I believe half of what you've told me," he said eventually. "Why marriage? A woman in danger asks for protection. She doesn't usually ask for a ring."

"Because protection ends." Seraphina had thought about this part more than any other, turning it over during the long hours before nine o'clock. "A bodyguard can be paid off, reassigned, killed. A husband from the Voss family is a permanent problem for anyone who wants to touch me. Julian would need to go to war with you to get to me, and I don't think even he is foolish enough to want that."

"No," Damon said slowly. "He isn't."

"Then you understand why it has to be marriage."

"I understand your logic." He set the glass down without drinking from it, his eyes never leaving hers. "What I don't understand is you. Six months ago, at your father's spring gala, you avoided even standing near me. Your fiancé made a point of telling everyone within earshot that the Voss family was, in his words, a stain on this city's business community. And now you're sitting across from me asking to become my wife, speaking with more composure than most men I negotiate with. Something changed you, Miss Kade. I'd like to know what."

Her mouth went dry. This was the question she had feared most, the one she had no honest answer for that wouldn't sound like the confession of a madwoman.

"People change," she said carefully. "Especially when they realize the person they trusted most has been lying to them."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I'm going to give you tonight."

Something almost like respect crossed his face, quick and gone before she could be certain she'd seen it at all. He studied her a moment longer, and then, unexpectedly, he smiled. It wasn't warm. It was the smile of a man recalculating an opponent's value mid negotiation.

"You're either the most convincing liar I've met in years," he said, "or you're telling me the truth and hiding a piece of it I haven't earned yet. I haven't decided which."

"Does it matter, if the arrangement benefits us both?"

"It matters a great deal to me, Miss Kade. I don't marry blind, and I certainly don't marry vulnerable. If I agree to this, you'll be tied to my family, my enemies, my name. That isn't a small thing to hand a stranger, regardless of how composed she sounds over dinner."

"Then don't think of me as vulnerable." Seraphina straightened, letting six years of careful survival, three of them lived twice now, harden into her spine. "Think of me as an asset. My father's company controls port access you've wanted for two years. My family's political connections could clear regulatory problems that have been sitting on your desk since spring. I'm not asking you for charity, Mr. Voss. I'm offering you a partnership neither of us could get anywhere else."

For a long moment, Damon said nothing at all. The candle between them burned lower, and somewhere beyond the private room she could hear the muffled sounds of the restaurant continuing on, oblivious to what was being decided in this small quiet space.

"You've done your research," he said finally.

"I've done six years of research, whether I meant to or not."

He studied her for another long beat, and then reached into his jacket and withdrew a card, sliding it across the table toward her. Plain black, a single phone number, no name.

"I'll consider it," he said. "That's not a yes."

"I understand."

"But if I find out you're lying to me, about Julian, about your father, about any part of this, the offer disappears, and so does whatever protection you were hoping to buy with it." His eyes held hers, cold and steady. "I don't forgive being used, Miss Kade."

"I'm not using you."

"We'll see."

He rose from the table then, buttoning his jacket in a motion that mirrored, in a way that made her stomach twist, the exact gesture Julian had made in the warehouse three years from now, three years that hadn't happened yet, might never happen now, if she did this correctly.

"Go home," Damon said. "Sleep. And Miss Kade, when you leave here tonight, watch which car follows you."

Her blood went cold. "What?"

But he was already walking toward the door, and by the time she turned to ask what he meant, he was gone, leaving her alone in the dim private room with a black card in her hand and a warning she didn't understand ringing in her ears.