Chapter 1: The Seven-Million-Dollar Wife

**Chapter 1**  

**Riya**

The man behind the counter at Queens Respiratory Supply had a cold sore, a name tag that said DENNIS, and the tired face of someone who had given this speech too many times to hear himself giving it.

“The rental agreement is clear, Ms. Kapoor. Sixty days past due, we’re entitled to retrieve the unit.”

“Retrieve.” I smiled at him. I’d practiced that smile in the bathroom mirror. “You mean you’d take my father’s oxygen.”

“I mean the equipment.”

I turned my laptop around on the counter so he could see the screen. A color-coded spreadsheet. Green for paid, yellow for what we could manage by Friday, red for everything else. I’d kept the books for Kapoor Imports for two years, ever since our accountant quit and Dad couldn’t afford another one. That meant I knew exactly how bad every number was. It also meant I knew how to make a bad number look like a plan.

“Four hundred today,” I said. “Six hundred on the first. The balance by the end of the month.”

Dennis read the screen. Then he looked at me, and something close to pity crossed his face. That was worse than the cold sore.

“Corporate won’t approve payment plans on this account. It’s flagged. I can take the four hundred, but it doesn’t stop the retrieval.”

“Flagged by who?”

“It just says corporate.”

I paid the four hundred anyway. I wanted a receipt with today’s date on it, in case anyone ever asked me what I’d tried. Then I walked out under the rumble of the 7 train, stopped in front of a pharmacy, and counted to ten so I wouldn’t scream at a display of reading glasses.

Seven days. That was how long the machine keeping my father alive had left in our apartment.

I should have known the day wasn’t finished with me.

The envelope was waiting on the kitchen counter, propped against the fruit bowl. The day nurse had left a sticky note on it: Courier. Signature required. I signed. Sorry.

Thick cream paper. Rajvansh Group embossed in the corner like a family crest.

I washed two coffee mugs that were already clean. I wiped down a counter that didn’t need it. Then I opened the envelope, and the number reached me before the words did.

$7,000,000.

I read it three times in case the zeros were multiplying. Dad had told me about the loan the way people tell you about a tumor: late, and smaller than it really was. Five years ago he’d borrowed from the Rajvansh Group to keep Kapoor Imports afloat. Manageable, he’d said. Five years of interest and penalties later, manageable had grown teeth.

Payment due in twenty-three days. Failing that, every asset in the Kapoor name would transfer to the Group.

Including this apartment. The one with the hospital bed in the second bedroom.

From the next room came the click and hiss of the oxygen machine, steady as a metronome. I walked in. Dad looked smaller than he had that morning, which was a thing that happened now, every few hours, like the cancer was working in shifts.

“You saw it,” he rasped.

“I saw it.”

“I’m sorry, beta. I thought I could fix it before—”

“Don’t. Rest.”

I checked the tubing where it met the machine, though I’d checked it that morning. Then I checked it again. When I looked up, his eyes were on my hands, and I put them in my pockets.

My phone rang in the kitchen. Unknown number.

“Miss Kapoor. Kabir Singh, legal counsel for the Rajvansh Group.” The voice was smooth, expensive and entirely empty. “Mr. Rajvansh would like to see you today at four. The Tower, Midtown. Ask for the private elevator.”

“I’m busy.”

“I’d suggest you aren’t.”

The line went dead. I looked at the eviction notice taped to our front door, at the oxygen receipt in my bag, at the letter on the counter.

Two hours.

Rajvansh Tower was forty-eight floors of black glass planted in the middle of Midtown like it owned the city. I walked through the revolving doors in the only decent dress I had left and my one good pair of heels, and I did my best to look like I belonged.

I didn’t. Not even a little.

A man with a keycard rode up with me in silence. At the top, a woman in a gray suit led me down a hallway lined with art that probably cost more than our building, to a set of double doors. She knocked once and opened them.

“Miss Kapoor, sir.”

The office was enormous. One wall was entirely glass, with Central Park laid out below it like somebody’s private garden. The desk was a slab of black stone. There were no family photographs, no awards, nothing personal at all, except a single frame on the credenza behind the desk, turned to face the wall.

Aryan Rajvansh didn’t stand.

I’d spent five years hearing his name whispered like a diagnosis, and I’d pictured something with fangs. Instead he looked about thirty-two, dark-haired, sharp-jawed, in a black suit with the top button undone, like he found the idea of trying too hard boring. Heavy watch. Hands resting loose on the desk. His eyes were the color of cold whiskey.

He was very still. It was the kind of stillness that has nothing to do with calm.

“Sit,” he said.

“I’ll stand.”

He didn’t repeat himself. He simply waited, with all the patience of a man who had time to spare, while I had twenty-three days. My feet gave in before my pride did. I sat.

“Your father signed a contract,” Aryan said. “In twenty-three days, at midnight, every remaining Kapoor asset becomes mine. Including the apartment where he’s currently dying.”

“You’d put a dying man on the street.”

“I’d collect what I’m owed.”

“Before you make your offer, then.” I leaned forward. “This morning, a medical supply company in Queens refused me a payment plan. Their account says flagged by corporate. If that was you, I want to hear you say it.”

His hand had been moving toward a pen. It stopped.

“Which company?”

I told him. He wrote the name on a pad, slowly, then looked at it for a moment longer than the name deserved.

“That wasn’t me,” he said.

“Is that supposed to be comforting?”

“It’s supposed to be true.”

I couldn’t tell if he was lying. That bothered me more than if he’d smiled.

He opened a drawer and slid a thin black folder across the desk. It stopped exactly at the edge.

“Open it.”

My hands were steady. I’d learned that the hard way, and I hated it. I opened the folder.

The first line was printed in clean, black type: MARITAL AGREEMENT between Aryan Rajvansh and Riya Kapoor.

I read it twice. Then I laughed. It came out ugly and loud in that glass room.

“You want to marry me.”

“I want a wife for three years,” Aryan said. “Marriage is just the paperwork.”

I waited for the punchline.

Aryan Rajvansh only watched me wait.