Chapter 2

Sebastien Fournier's office smelled like old paper and cigarettes he pretended he'd quit.

He was seventy-one years old, built like a man who had been large once and shrunk without losing the frame. White hair. Thick glasses. A face that had seen enough of the world's ugliness to stop being surprised by it.

He looked at me across his desk and said nothing for a long time.

I had told him everything.

Not the rebirth. Not the drowning. I wasn't insane and I wasn't going to sound insane. What I told him was this: I had found documents. I had been going through my father's files last night — couldn't sleep, wedding nerves — and I found things. Discrepancies. Transfers that didn't make sense. A pattern I couldn't explain but couldn't ignore.

All of it was true.

I just hadn't found it last night. I had found it over five years of watching my life come apart seam by seam.

But the documents existed. I knew exactly where they were. And I knew exactly what they proved.

Sebastien took off his glasses and cleaned them with the corner of his jacket.

"You understand," he said slowly, "what you are telling me."

"Yes."

"You are telling me that the man you are marrying tomorrow has been positioning himself to acquire Rousseau Textiles through a combination of marital asset manipulation, manufactured board influence, and what appears to be a pre-planned transfer structure hidden inside your prenuptial agreement."

"Yes."

He put his glasses back on. "And you found this last night."

"Yes."

He looked at me for a long moment. He wasn't stupid. He had known my father for thirty years. He had watched me grow up. He knew what a twenty-two year old girl in love looked like and he was smart enough to see that whatever was sitting in front of him right now was not that.

He didn't ask questions he didn't want the answers to.

That was why Damon had never been able to buy him.

"Show me," he said.

I spent four hours in that office.

I walked Sebastien through everything I remembered. Names, dates, account numbers, the specific clause in the prenup — section 14, subsection C, the language about shared business ventures entered during the marriage that sounded standard and wasn't. The shell company Damon had registered in Luxembourg eighteen months ago. The advisor he would introduce me to in six weeks whose credentials were fabricated.

Sebastien wrote everything down. He made calls. He pulled records. By noon his desk looked like a paper explosion and he had gone through half a pack of cigarettes he was definitely not supposed to have.

At 12:34 he put down his pen.

"Mireille," he said.

My name. He never used my name.

"If what you're telling me is accurate — and I am already finding enough to suggest it is — then Damon Kessler is not a man who fell in love with you." He stopped. Chose his next words. "He is a man who identified you as an acquisition target."

I didn't flinch. I had already lived through understanding that. The flinching was done.

"I know," I said.

"Your father—"

"My father cannot know." I leaned forward. "He is sick, Sebastien. If he finds out the man I'm marrying did this, it will—" I stopped. Breathed. "I need to handle this in a way that doesn't destroy him before it destroys Damon."

Sebastien was quiet.

"What do you need from me?" he finally asked.

"Three things. First — I need the prenuptial agreement voided before tomorrow. I need documentation of why and I need it clean." I held up two fingers. "Second. I need you to find Nikolai Voss."

He blinked. "The Voss Capital CEO."

"Yes. I need a meeting. Today if possible. Tonight at the latest."

Sebastien's expression didn't change but something moved behind his eyes. "That is an unusual name to bring up the day before your wedding."

"I know."

"And the third thing?"

I looked at him straight. "Make sure everything we've done this morning is documented, witnessed, and locked somewhere Damon Kessler cannot reach it. Not digitally. Not in any system he could access. Physical copies only. Your personal safe and whatever secondary location you trust most."

Sebastien stared at me.

Then he did something I had never seen him do in twenty-two years.

He smiled.

Small. Brief. Gone almost before it arrived.

"You are your grandmother's blood," he said. "She would have done the same thing."

He reached for his phone.

Nikolai Voss was harder to reach than I expected and easier than I feared.

Sebastien knew someone who knew someone. By three in the afternoon I had a number. By four I had a response through an intermediary: Mr. Voss is available this evening. Eight o'clock. He will send an address.

The address came at seven.

A private members club in the 8th arrondissement. The kind of place with no sign on the door and a staff that looked through you when you asked questions.

I wore black. No jewelry except my grandmother's watch — the one Damon had accidentally broken in year two. Hair back. Flat shoes because I was not performing femininity for anyone tonight.

I told my mother I was having dinner with my cousin Isabelle. Last girls' night before the wedding. She cried a little and hugged me and told me I was going to be so happy.

I hugged her back and didn't say anything.

He was already there when I arrived.

Nikolai Voss was not what I expected.

I had built a version of him in my head from articles and photographs. Cold. Transactional. The pictures showed a man in expensive suits at industry events looking like he was calculating the ROI of every handshake.

The man sitting at the corner table was all of that.

But he was also younger than I remembered from those photos. Thirty-one. Dark hair, cut short, no styling. A jaw that looked like it was carved out of something that didn't give. His suit was charcoal and perfectly fitted and he was sitting completely still the way very few people ever manage — not tense, not relaxed, just still. Like a machine at rest.

He watched me cross the room.

Didn't stand until I reached the table. Then he rose — a single clean movement — and gestured to the seat across from him without offering his hand.

"Mademoiselle Rousseau."

His voice was low. Slight accent underneath the French, something Eastern European that he had mostly buried.

"Mr. Voss."

We sat.

A waiter appeared. Nikolai didn't look away from me. "Water," he said. "She'll tell you what she wants."

"Just water," I said.

The waiter disappeared.

Nikolai leaned back in his chair. He had a way of taking up space without moving. Like the room rearranged itself around where he was sitting.

"You asked for this meeting," he said. "It's your time."

No small talk. No pretense of social niceties. I had read that about him and it was accurate.

Good. I didn't have time for niceties either.

"I'm going to say something," I said, "and I need you to hear all of it before you respond."

He said nothing. Which I took as agreement.

"Tomorrow at two in the afternoon I am supposed to marry Damon Kessler."

Something shifted in his face. Microscopic. Gone instantly.

"I'm not going to marry him," I continued. "I'm going to walk into that church and I'm going to reject him in front of four hundred people and his legal team and his family. That is happening regardless of what you and I discuss tonight."

Nikolai looked at me with absolutely no expression.

"What I'm here to discuss," I said, "is what happens after."

I put a folder on the table between us. Sebastien had helped me put it together that afternoon. Clean, organized, sourced.

"Damon Kessler has been planning to acquire my family's company since before he started dating me. The method is documented in there. He has also been systematically identifying and undermining his top three business competitors." I tapped the folder. "You are number two on that list. He has already begun constructing a fraud case against you. Within six months he will file it. Fabricated documentation, bribed officials, three witnesses. You will lose your firm."

Nikolai did not move.

Did not look at the folder.

Did not look away from my face.

"That is a significant claim," he said.

"Yes."

"Do you have evidence."

"Some is in the folder. The rest I can lead you to. It will take your team approximately two weeks to verify everything independently." I held his gaze. "It will check out."

Silence.

The club was quiet around us. Low conversation from other tables. Someone's glass set down on marble.

"Why are you bringing this to me," Nikolai said.

"Because I want a contract marriage."

Nothing. He just looked at me.

"Twelve months," I said. "Legal marriage, separate lives, full autonomy for both parties. In exchange for your name and the legal protection it provides me while I dismantle what Damon has built — I give you everything I know. Every move he is going to make. Every timeline. Every fake document before it surfaces. You will be able to counter every play he runs before he runs it."

I paused.

"He is going to try to destroy you regardless," I said. "I'm offering you the chance to see it coming."

Nikolai Voss looked at me for a long time.

He had very dark eyes. The kind that didn't give you anything back when you looked into them — not warmth, not hostility, nothing. Just assessment. Pure and flat and focused.

I didn't look away.

I had drowned. I had been buried by a man who smiled while he did it. Nikolai Voss's flat stare had nothing on that.

He leaned forward. Put his elbows on the table. His voice dropped lower, quieter, and somehow that made it heavier.

"You understand what you're asking me."

"Yes."

"You want me to marry you tomorrow—"

"Not tomorrow. Within the week. I need time to—"

"You want me to marry a woman I met forty minutes ago," he said, "based on intelligence I haven't verified, in exchange for information about a business rival who may or may not be planning what you claim."

"Yes."

"And you believe I will agree to this."

I looked at him. "I believe you're going to open that folder. And I believe that when you do, you're going to find enough to make you very interested in what I said about the fraud case. And then you're going to call someone tonight to begin verifying it."

I stood up. Put on my jacket.

"You have my number through Sebastien Fournier," I said. "I'll be available until midnight."

I picked up my bag.

"One more thing," I said. "When Damon finds out I rejected him tomorrow, his first move will be financial. He will try to isolate me. Freeze the assets he's already positioned to control. He will do it within forty-eight hours." I looked down at Nikolai, who was still sitting completely still, watching me. "If we're going to do this, the timing matters."

I left him with the folder.

I got home at nine.

My phone had fourteen texts from Damon.

Thinking about you.

Can't sleep.

I keep looking at your photo.

I'm the luckiest man alive.

I read all of them. I sat with them. I let myself feel whatever was left of what I used to feel when I read things like that.

There wasn't much.

Just something cold and clear at the bottom of everything. Like water under ice.

At 11:47 my phone rang.

Unknown number.

I answered.

"The Luxembourg account." Nikolai's voice. No greeting. "It was registered seventeen months ago, not eighteen. My people found a discrepancy in the dates you gave."

I thought for a moment. "September, not August. You're right. I was off by a month."

Silence.

"Everything else checked out," he said.

I closed my eyes. Opened them.

"So," Nikolai Voss said. "Tell me what you need."

Chapter Three coming soon…