Chapter 2.

Mia didn’t sleep that night.

She sat at the kitchen table with the contract spread out in front of her, reading it by the light of a single lamp while her father snored fitfully on the couch — exhausted from relief, she guessed, or from the particular kind of relief that came with someone else paying for your mistakes.

The document was thirty-two pages long. She read every line twice.

Term: 24 months from date of marriage.

Public appearances: required, frequency at Mr. Cross’s discretion.

Living arrangements: shared residence, separate quarters.

Settlement upon completion: $2,000,000, contingent on fulfillment of all terms.

Early termination by Ms. Bennett: forfeiture of settlement, reinstatement of original debt.

Early termination by Mr. Cross: settlement paid in full regardless of term completion.

That last clause made her stop.

Why would he protect her financially even if he was the one who ended things early? Rich men didn’t write contracts that gave away leverage for nothing. Every version of this she imagined — a business tycoon marrying a stranger to fix his image, to satisfy some family expectation, to win a bet — none of it explained a clause that only benefited her.

Unless the version of the story she’d been told wasn’t the real one at all.

She almost woke her father to ask if he knew more than he’d admitted. But when she looked at him, gray-faced even in sleep, the shadows under his eyes deeper than she’d ever seen them, she couldn’t do it. Whatever this was, whatever Damian Cross wanted from a marriage neither of them could want for the obvious reasons, she’d find out on her own.

She signed her name at the bottom of page thirty-two at 4:47 a.m.

The wedding took place six days later, in a private room at the county clerk’s office, with two witnesses Mia had never met before and would likely never see again. No dress. No flowers. Damian wore a suit the color of a closed door and checked his watch twice during the vows.

“You may kiss the bride,” the officiant said, more out of habit than expectation.

Damian looked at her for a long moment — long enough that Mia felt heat crawl up her neck despite herself — and then leaned down and pressed his mouth to her cheek instead of her lips.

“Efficient,” she muttered, once the officiant had looked away.

“I don’t perform for an audience of two.” His voice was low, meant only for her. “Save the performance for people who matter.”

“And who decides who matters?”

“I do.” He straightened his cuff. “Welcome to the family, Mrs. Cross.”

The name landed strangely in her ears. Mrs. Cross. Not her name. Not yet a person she recognized.

The penthouse took up the entire top floor of a building on the north side of the city, and it was less a home than a museum that happened to have a bed in it. Mia stood in the entryway with her single suitcase — everything she owned that mattered fit inside it — while a member of the household staff, a woman introduced only as Delia, hovered nearby like she wasn’t sure whether to help or wait for instructions.

“Your room is down the east hall,” Delia said finally. “Mr. Cross’s wing is on the opposite side. He asked me to tell you dinner is at seven, if you’d like to join him. Attendance isn’t required.”

“Does he ever eat with anyone?”

Delia’s mouth twitched — something that might have been amusement, quickly smoothed away. “Not in the two years I’ve worked here, ma’am. No.”

Interesting, Mia thought, filing it away.

She found her room exactly where Delia said it would be — large, cold, expensively decorated in the kind of neutral palette that suggested no one had ever actually lived in it. She set her suitcase on the bed and opened it, and that was when she noticed the door at the far end of the room, half-hidden behind a curtain, slightly ajar.

Curiosity got the better of her before caution could catch up.

The room beyond wasn’t a closet. It was a study — smaller than the rest of the penthouse’s grand proportions, cluttered in a way nothing else in the apartment was. Papers stacked on every surface. A corkboard on one wall, covered in photographs and newspaper clippings, string connecting them in a pattern she didn’t understand at first.

Until she did.

Her father’s face was in the center of it. Older photographs — from a decade ago, judging by his hair, his weight, the tie he used to wear before he stopped caring about ties. Around him, other faces she didn’t recognize, and one clipping, yellowed at the edges, with a headline she could just make out from where she stood:

CROSS FAMILY BUSINESS COLLAPSES AMID FRAUD ALLEGATIONS — RICHARD BENNETT NAMED IN INVESTIGATION

Her stomach turned to ice.

“What is this?” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “Why is my father’s face on your wall like a crime board?”

“Because he is the reason my family lost everything.” Damian’s voice was flat, controlled, the same tone he’d use to read out a quarterly earnings report. “Ten years ago, your father’s fraud didn’t just cost him. It cost mine. My father lost his company, his reputation, and eighteen months later, his life — a heart attack, the doctors said, though I’ve always thought grief killed him faster.”

The room tilted slightly under Mia’s feet. “You’re telling me—”

“I’m telling you that I didn’t marry you to save your father.” Damian stepped into the room, closing the distance between them with slow, deliberate steps. “I married you because for ten years, I’ve been waiting for the day Richard Bennett would need something only I could give him. And now that day is here.”

Mia’s mouth had gone dry. “So what am I? Some kind of collateral?”

“You’re my wife.” He said it without a trace of warmth, without a trace of anything at all. “What you are to me beyond that hasn’t been decided yet.”

He turned to leave, and Mia found her voice before he’d cleared the doorway.

“You could have ruined him without marrying me. You could have let him go to prison and been done with it. Why go through all of this? Why me?”

Damian paused. For a moment, she thought he might actually answer — really answer, the way she’d wanted him to back in his office.

“Prison ends,” he said finally, without turning around. “This doesn’t. Goodnight, Mrs. Cross.”

The door closed behind him, and Mia stood alone in a stranger’s study, staring at her father’s face pinned to a wall of quiet, decade-old vengeance, understanding for the first time exactly how far out of her depth she truly was.