chapter 2

Nathan’s POV

I had been staring at that letter for three days before she walked into my office and ruined my shirt.

My father’s lawyer found it while going through the old family files, tucked behind a box of photographs nobody had touched since my parents died. It was written in my grandfather’s handwriting, dated forty years ago, addressed to a man named Walter Hartman.

I read it so many times I had it memorized.

Should a Cross ever need a Hartman, a Hartman will answer, and should a Hartman ever need a Cross, a Cross will answer. This I swear on my name and my company.

Underneath it, in a different pen, someone had written one more line. If the debt is ever called, let it be paid in full, whatever the cost.

I did not believe in old family promises. I believed in numbers, in contracts, in things that could be proven. But three days ago my father’s will had been read aloud in a boardroom full of people who wanted to see me fail, and it had said something I still could not fully accept.

“Nathaniel must be married within ninety days of his thirtieth birthday,” the lawyer had read, “or all controlling shares of Cross Hospitality Group transfer to Gerald Cross as acting chairman.”

My uncle had smiled the entire time. My father had never trusted him fully either, though he never said it outright. He simply made sure Gerald always sat one seat further from the head of the table with every passing year, a small, silent message that only people who paid attention would ever notice. I had paid attention. I had learned early that my uncle’s smile was never a comfort, only a warning wrapped in good manners. I remembered every second of that particular smile, the way he had leaned back in his chair like a man watching a show he already knew the ending to, the way the other board members had suddenly found their papers very interesting instead of meeting my eyes.

I had built the last eight years of my life around not failing this company. I had missed birthdays, missed vacations, missed the ordinary parts of being thirty years old that other men my age took for granted, all so that my father’s legacy would not end up sold off in pieces to strangers. I was not going to let a clause about marriage be the thing that finally broke it.

Ninety days. My birthday was six weeks ago. That left me thirty four days to find a wife, or lose everything my father built, everything I had spent eight years protecting since he died.

Vanessa Cole had already made it clear she was ready and waiting, the way she had been ready and waiting since we were teenagers, whenever it was convenient for her family’s board seat. I would rather lose the company than marry Vanessa Cole. There was a version of my life, once, where marrying her would have felt inevitable, a tidy solution everyone around us expected without ever asking either of us if we wanted it. That version of my life had ended the day I learned exactly what she was capable of when money was on the table.

Then my lawyer had pulled the old letter and said one sentence that changed everything.

“If you married a Hartman instead, your grandfather’s promise would satisfy an old private loan agreement buried in the original company charter. It is legally binding. Nobody could challenge it, not even Gerald.”

I had laughed at first. It sounded like something out of an old novel, not a real solution for a company worth two billion dollars.

But now the granddaughter of Walter Hartman was standing in my office with coffee dripping down my sleeve, arms crossed, refusing to sit down, looking at me like I had personally insulted her family.

She was nothing like I expected. Smaller than I imagined and somehow more dangerous, with dark eyes that did not blink away from mine even once.

“Explain it,” she said. “Now.”

“Forty years ago your grandfather saved my grandfather’s company from bankruptcy,” I said. “He gave him a loan when no bank would. In return, my grandfather made a promise. If the Cross family ever needed help, a Hartman would be owed the same.”

“So pay him back with money,” she snapped. “That’s usually how debts work.”

“It is not that simple.”

“Make it simple.”

I almost admired her for that. Nobody spoke to me like that anymore, not since I became CEO, not since everyone in this building learned to agree with whatever I said.

“My father’s will requires me to marry within thirty four days or I lose the company to a man who would sell off every property my family has owned for eighty years to the highest bidder,” I said. “Including, I imagine, your grandmother’s bakery.”

Her face went pale.

“I am not asking you to fall in love with me, Miss Hartman. I am asking you to marry me for one year. In exchange, your grandmother keeps her bakery, the building is taken off the sale list permanently, and I will pay off whatever debts your family carries. All of it.”

She stared at me like I had lost my mind.

“You want me to marry you.”

“I want to save my company. You want to save your grandmother’s bakery. This is not romance. This is business.”

“This is insane.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But you came here today asking why I was ruining your family’s life. I am telling you that I am also offering to save it. The choice is yours.”

She was quiet for a long moment, coffee cup crushed in her hand, jaw tight like she was fighting to keep from either shouting or crying, I could not tell which.

“I need to think,” she finally said.

“You have three days,” I told her. “After that, I will need another answer, from someone else.”

Her eyes snapped back up to mine, sharp and furious.

“There is no one else,” she said. “There’s only me.”

I watched her walk out of my office, spine straight, refusing to look back once, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something other than exhaustion.

I felt curious about what she would decide.

I sat back down at my desk long after she left, the old letter still open in front of me, and found myself reading my grandfather’s handwriting one more time, slower this time, the way you read something when you finally understand why it was written in the first place. A promise made forty years ago, waiting quietly in a drawer for exactly this moment. I did not believe in fate. I believed in leverage, in timing, in contracts that held up under pressure. But some small, unguarded part of me wondered if my grandfather had somehow known, even then, that his promise would eventually land on someone who would refuse to be intimidated by it.