Chapter 2: The Deal

I stood in the hallway for a long moment. The smart move was to turn around, get back in the elevator, go home, and forget I ever saw it. I had spent three years playing it safe, knowing exactly when to step forward and when to pull back, knowing the difference between an opportunity and a trap.

But I had also spent three years trying to get behind that door.

So I entered the office, and it was dark except for the city lights pouring through the tall windows. I went straight to the desk first, but found nothing. I checked the drawer, and it was also empty. Then I moved to the filing cabinet against the distant wall.

That was when I heard the footsteps.

They came down the hallway, slow and steady. I straightened up and turned around.

Adrian Tao stood in the doorway, still dressed from the gala, his jacket off, and his collar loose. He looked at me with a calm expression that was impossible to read.

“You didn’t go home,” he said.

“Neither did you.”

His mouth shifted slightly, almost a smile. He stepped inside, walked to the window, and stood there, facing me.

“I left the door open,” he said. “Because I was coming back here.”

I stayed quiet.

“You walked in,” he said. “And came straight to the desk, then the filing cabinet,” he continued. “Were you looking for something?”

The room remained quiet.

“Most people would have gone home after a night like tonight,” he said. “You came up here.”

I stood exactly where I was and waited. He looked at me for a moment.

Then, he crossed to the desk and sat on the edge of it, completely at ease. “Conference Room 38-A. Tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock.”

He reached past me, opened the drawer I had been searching, pulled out a thin folder, and held it out to me.

I took it and looked at it.

It had four pages. A contract, attached with a non-disclosure agreement at the back.

“Read it tonight,” he said as he grabbed his jacket. “Bring your questions tomorrow. And Harper… next time you want something in this building, you don’t have to wait for an open door.”

Then he left.

I stood there in the dark with the contract in my hands and the city lights behind me. A strange feeling settled in my chest. The man I came to investigate had been watching me just as closely.

I took the contract home.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat at my kitchen table until morning, reading every line, checking every clause against the notes I had gathered for three years. I wrote everything down in a notebook that I would burn later.

By the time I showered and dressed I had run through the conversation so many times in my head. I felt ready

When I reached the conference room the next morning, Adrian was already there. Jacket off, one arm resting on the table. He didn’t stand up or offer a greeting. He just looked at me with that same steady gaze and waited.

I sat down across from him.

“You read it,” he said.

“All of it,” I replied.

He laid out the situation plainly. “My father had given me an ultimatum to marry within thirty days or lose my inheritance and position in the company, which would be transferred into a board-controlled trust. Dominic would hold advisory power over that trust. And I need twelve months of a convincing marriage, public appearances only, separate lives, no intimacy. A financial settlement at the end of the year.”

He named the number like it meant nothing to him.

He said it all without apology, as if he were reading it from a list. Then he paused and looked at the window for a moment before he looked back at me.

“The trust isn’t the problem,” he said. “The board is the problem. Once Dominic’s advisors control the financial oversight structure I lose access to twelve years of internal records. Records I have been trying to reach for eight months.”

He said it flatly. Like a man who had decided that particular detail was relevant to the negotiation and nothing more.

“Things are happening in this company that I don’t fully understand yet,” he said. “I need time and I need my position to get to them. The marriage buys me both.”

He picked up his jacket and set it on the chair beside him.

“That’s why I need twelve months,” he said. “Not only for appearances, but mainly for work.”

He slipped in a small extra clause without making a big deal about it. It was my access, as his wife, to the estate’s communication systems and the company’s internal records.

He mentioned it once, briefly, and moved on.

At that time, I thought it was just common. Only later did I start to wonder if that was the real reason behind it all.

Then, he explained why he chose me. “I needed someone calm, with no big social goals that would create complications for me, or expect anything real between us. The kind of woman whose feelings would not be my problem.

He said it all unapologetically. I allowed him to finish, then looked at the contract on the table between us. I didn't reach for it, I allowed the silence to stretch for a moment.

Then I asked my three questions. “The public disclosure. What I’m permitted to confirm or deny, to whom, and under what conditions?”

“The NDA, does it reach back to cover professional work I was doing before the date I sign it?”

“Early termination,” I said. “Who can trigger it, under what conditions? And what happens to the settlement if the year ends early?”

Adrian went still. For the first time, he looked at me as if I had surprised him. I read the contract again in front of him, then picked up the pen and signed it.

I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked out.

In the cold parking garage, I called the only number I never saved in my phone.

Daniel answered right away.

“I’m in,” I said. “I’ll have everything within the year.”

A pause. “How?”

“I’m marrying the CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER.”

I hung up before he could say anything else.

I stepped back into the building. Just then the elevator doors opened, and Adrian was already inside. He held the door for me. We stood side by side as the numbers climbed, neither of us spoke.

“We should get to know each other,” he said finally, eyes on the numbers. “At least on the surface.”

A few seconds passed.

“You’re harder to read than I thought,” he added.

“Most people say that like it’s a problem.”

He glanced at me. “It isn’t. It’s just interesting.”

The doors opened on my floor. I stepped out without looking back.

Back at my desk, I opened my laptop and pulled up the files I had been building for months. My thoughts raced swiftly again. One year, real access. This was the key I needed.

My phone buzzed with a new message from him.

Dinner tonight. Dominic wants to meet his future daughter-in-law. Seven o’clock.

Dominic Tao. The man whose name sat at the center of every dark corner I had been digging into for three years. Tonight I would sit across from him as his son’s future wife.

I set the phone down. One slip tonight, one wrong word or expression, and everything could fall apart. I closed my laptop and started getting ready. I had six hours to become someone who looked completely harmless.

I had done harder things before. But, at that particular moment, I just could not remember what they were.