CHAPTER FOUR — Moving Day

The penthouse took up the top two floors of a building on Fifth Avenue. The first time I walked in, I understood I'd spent my whole life in rooms smaller than this apartment's closets.

"You don't have to keep everything in boxes," Sofia said, trailing me through a living room with a view of Central Park that looked fake, like a screensaver. "There's staff for unpacking."

"I've unpacked my own boxes since I was eighteen."

She smiled, quick and approving. "He said you'd say that."

"He pays attention," she added, like a secret she wasn't sure she should share. "More than people think."

Damien found me an hour later in my bedroom — separate from his, as agreed — surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and a photo of my mother I hadn't decided where to hang.

"You didn't have to do this yourself," he said, leaning in the doorway, tie loosened, sleeves rolled, looking less like the man from the boardroom photos.

"I like doing things myself. Wasn't in writing, but it's a rule."

"Noted." He nodded at the photo. "Your mother?"

"Grace Bennett. Died when I was twenty. Cancer." I hadn't meant to say that much. "She used to say the house needed her garden more than a mortgage payment on time. Neither of us could touch it after."

Damien was quiet, and I braced for hollow condolence. Instead: "I'll have the mortgage finalised this week. The house is yours, free and clear, regardless of what happens between us after the year."

"That wasn't in the contract."

"I'm adding it. Some things shouldn't depend on a marriage staying intact."

I set the photo down, facing the door. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet." A ghost of dry humour. "You haven't met my cousin."

"Should I be worried?"

"Vaughn will be at the engagement dinner Friday. He's charming right before he asks you for something." Damien's expression hardened. "He's spent ten years waiting for a reason to take this company from me. I'd rather you hear that from me first."

"Consider me warned."

"He'll be watching everything you say for a way to prove this marriage isn't real." He held my gaze. "I should have told you before you signed."

"Would it have changed my answer?"

"No. But you'd have signed knowing the whole shape of it."

"I can handle charming and watchful," I said. "I've managed men who think they're the smartest person in a dental waiting room for three years."

Something almost like real amusement crossed his face. "Don't underestimate him."

"I don't underestimate anyone anymore. It's recent. You're the reason."

He didn't answer, but he didn't look away either, and the silence stretched into something that felt less like a business arrangement.

"Dinner's at seven," he finally said. "I'll send a car."

"I can take a cab."

"I know," he said, turning for the door. "I'd still rather send the car."

Before he left, he paused in the doorway again, like there was something else he wanted to say and hadn't decided whether to. "Eleanor will be at dinner tonight too. She insisted, once she heard Vaughn was invited. Consider it reinforcement."

"Does she know the real terms?"

"She knows more than she lets on about most things. I'd rather you hear that from me than be surprised by it." A faint, almost rueful smile. "My grandmother has spent thirty years being underestimated by people who assumed her silence meant she wasn't paying attention. She was always paying attention."

"Sounds like someone I'd like."

"I think you will." He knocked twice on the doorframe, an oddly boyish gesture for a man who ran a billion-dollar company, and left me to finish unpacking alone.

I stood in my new bedroom, waiting for dinner with a man named Vaughn who'd apparently spent a decade waiting to destroy the life of the man I'd just agreed to marry, and thought: I don't think this is just a business arrangement anymore, either.