CHAPTER 5: The Devil's Terms

"Marry me."

He said it into the dark, in the flat voice other men used for the weather. Vivian thought she had misheard. Gray light was seeping around the edges of the curtains, and the fire had died to a red thread in the grate.

"What?"

"Marry me, Vivian."

Vincent had propped himself on one elbow. She could not read his face.

"Not as a favor, and not because of tonight. As a bargain. I'd like you to hear all of it before you

answer."

She sat up and pulled the blanket to her chest. An hour ago she had asked what he wanted from her. She had not expected the answer to come with a ring finger attached.

"Go on,"

She said.

"Julian and his parents took your father's company. I'll help you take it back. Every share, every signature, every board seat. I'll help you make the Marshes pay for what they did to you, and I'll do it properly, in a way they can't wriggle out of."

His voice stayed even.

"Then there's Magnus."

The name made her stomach turn over.

"He sent men for me."

"He paid eleven million dollars for you. He doesn't forget a purchase."

Vincent sat up as well.

"There is one man in this city who can stand in a room with Magnus Dray and not lower his eyes. I'm the one who's been standing there for fifteen years."

"Why hasn't someone stopped him?"

"Because stopping him costs more than most people can pay."

His jaw tightened.

"Understand what I'm telling you. If you marry anyone else, Magnus will have him buried before the cake is cut. A banker, a lawyer, a good man who loves you. It won't matter. But if you carry my name, he can't touch you without starting a war he

can't win. That is the only protection that will hold."

Vivian slid away from him until the cold edge of the mattress touched her thighs.

"You're hearing yourself,"

She said.

"You want me to marry a mafia boss to escape a drug dealer."

"Yes."

"You told me yourself you're not a good man. I saw the stain in your hallway. You're cold, Vincent. You decide who lives in a room, and you do it without raising your voice."

Her hands were shaking and she hid them under the blanket.

"Why would I risk my life for that? I didn't survive yesterday to sign my name on another man's property."

"You wouldn't be property."

"Wouldn't I?"

He took the question without flinching.

"I never said I was safe. I said I was honest. The Marshes smiled at you for three years."

He reached for his shirt on the floor, and the birds on his forearm moved as he did.

"Here is the honest part. I'm not asking for love. I run a business, and it needs a wife who can sit in a boardroom and read a contract without being told what it says. Hale Logistics holds shipping licenses I can't get any other way. You'll stand beside me at certain dinners, certain events, where people need to see Mrs. Cross. In return, you get protection nobody can buy."

"A business partner."

"For now."

"And if I refuse?"

"I'll put you in a car and send you wherever you want to go. I won't stop you."

He pulled the shirt on, slowly.

"But hear what happens next. Gerald Marsh has known you since you were nineteen. He holds your signature on a dozen documents. By tonight he'll tell every newspaper in the city that you're grieving and unstable, and that a criminal took advantage of you. Julian will cry on camera. I've known those people for thirty years, Vivian. They don't lose gracefully. They'll ruin you, and they will smile while they do it."

She wanted to call him a liar. She could not, and that was the horror of it. She remembered Gerald holding her hand at her father's funeral. She remembered signing everything he gave her.

"I need time,"

She said.

"You can have it."

"I need to think."

She pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes. Her whole body ached in two separate ways, from the church and from him, and she could not tell which ache she was more afraid of.

"Yesterday I was a girl planning a wedding. I don't even know who I'm supposed to be today."

"You're the woman who broke a man's nose with her bare hands."

There was no flattery in it.

"Whoever you decide to be, she's already stronger than the one who walked into that church."

She did not answer.

She was learning that when he said something kind, he said it like a fact, and that made it harder to dismiss.

"Then think."

He stood and crossed to the window, a dark shape against the gray.

"Take as long as the day allows."

She had opened her mouth to answer when the sound came.

It rolled up from the courtyard, thin and hugely amplified, the squeal of a microphone being switched on. Then a voice.

"Vivian! Vivian Hale! If you can hear me, please, come out!"

Her blood went cold.

It was Julian.

Vincent drew back one curtain and she was beside him before she knew she had moved, the blanket dragged around her like a cloak. Below, the villa's courtyard was full. Vans with satellite dishes sat nose to tail on the gravel. Photographers jostled at the foot of the steps with lenses raised, and reporters held microphones toward a small group in the middle of the crowd.

Gerald Marsh stood with his hand on his wife's elbow. Celeste Marsh was dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief. And in front of them, holding a microphone against his chest with both hands, tears already shining on his cheeks, stood Julian in a charcoal suit.

At the top of the steps Dario and four men stood in a line. They did not move. They could not. A line of armed guards forcing back a crowd of cameras would be on every screen by noon.

"My fiancée,"

Julian said, and his voice cracked in exactly the right place,

"Vivian Hale, has been missing for almost a full day. We were to be married at noon today. Her phone was traced to this house. The home of my own

godfather."

A hush went through the reporters. A hundred shutters clicked.

"Mr. Cross is a man I've respected all my life,"

Julian said.

"I'm only asking him to let her walk out and tell us she's safe."

Vincent let the curtain fall an inch.

"He's very good,"

He said quietly.

"He's rehearsed."

Her own voice sounded strange.

"He's been awake all night."

"Stay here."

"Vincent..."

"They'll want me first."

He was already buttoning his collar.

"Give me ten minutes to do this my way. Then decide."

"And if I decide to run out there and tell them everything?"

He stopped, one cufflink still unfastened, and looked at her. She had expected an order. What she saw was a man who did not like the answer he was about to give, and gave it anyway.

"Then I'll stand beside you while you do it,"

Vincent said.

"I'd rather not. But it's your life, and I'd be a hypocrite to take the choice back after offering it."

He went out. Vivian stayed at the window, her breath fogging the glass. Down in the courtyard Julian was still weeping for the cameras. And then, as if he had felt her watching, he lifted his head and looked straight at the second-floor window.

He smiled, small and certain.

"There she is,"

Julian said into the microphone.