CHAPTER SIX: The Contract

Sofia

I signed my name three times before my hand stopped feeling like it belonged to someone else.

Damian’s lawyer, a woman named Priya Anand who spoke in the clipped, careful cadence of someone paid specifically not to waste anyone’s time, had walked me through every clause the night before, over a video call that lasted two hours and left me with a headache and a strange, grudging confidence that at least the paperwork itself wasn’t the trap I’d been braced for.

“Eighteen months,” Priya said again, for what felt like the fifth time, as if repetition alone might make the arrangement sound less absurd. “Full debt forgiveness effective the day of signing. No claim on Reyes Imports or any personal asset belonging to you or your father. A monthly allowance, which you are under no obligation to spend on anything related to Mr. Castellano’s public image. And an exit clause that requires nothing further from either party once the term concludes.”

“And the parts that protect him,” I said. “Where are those.”

“Confidentiality, mostly. Nothing about the marriage’s true nature leaves this room, this office, or your household staff, who will all sign their own agreements. Beyond that, the contract is considerably more generous to you than to him, which is, frankly, unusual enough that I’d have advised you to walk away if I hadn’t read it four times looking for the catch myself.”

“Did you find one.”

“No,” Priya said. “Which is its own kind of unsettling, in my experience.”

My father sat beside me through the final read, quiet in a way that had nothing to do with approval and everything to do with the fact that he’d run out of arguments two days ago and had nothing left but worry. He held my hand while I signed the last page, his grip steadier than it had been in months, like some part of him had decided that whatever came next, at least the waiting was finally over.

Damian signed across from me without reading it again, which told me either that he trusted his own lawyer completely or that he’d already memorized every word of a contract he’d apparently been drafting in his head for far longer than the nine days he’d given me to decide.

“Congratulations,” Priya said, collecting the pages into a folder with the brisk efficiency of someone closing out a transaction rather than witnessing a marriage. “You’re getting married Saturday.”

“Saturday,” I repeated. “That’s four days.”

“The board wants confirmation before the shareholder call,” Damian said, like that explained anything about the particular cruelty of compressing an entire wedding into ninety six hours. “I’m aware it’s fast. I’d rather move quickly and get the public performance out of the way than drag out the part neither of us actually wants.”

“And what exactly does the public performance involve.”

“A small ceremony. City hall, technically, though the board will expect photographs that look considerably more elaborate than that. A dinner afterward with select board members and press. After that, you’ll move into my home, and we’ll begin figuring out the rest of it as it comes.”

“The rest of it,” I said. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It isn’t simple. I never said it was.” Something in his voice shifted, quieter than the version of him I’d met across that desk four days ago. “But I intend to make it as survivable as I can for both of us, and I’d rather be honest about the difficulty now than pretend otherwise and disappoint you later.”

It was, I realized, the first time he’d said anything that sounded less like a negotiation and more like an actual promise, and I didn’t know what to do with the fact that some part of me believed him.

My father walked me out afterward, his hand steady on my shoulder, and didn’t say anything until we were outside on the sidewalk, the late afternoon sun turning the glass towers around us gold.

“You did the right thing,” he said, though his voice carried the particular weight of a man who wasn’t entirely certain he believed his own words. “For the restaurant. For me.”

“I know, Papa.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not terrified for you.”

“I know that too.” I squeezed his hand, the one that had held mine steady through every bad year since my mother died, and tried to sound more certain than I felt. “Four days. I’ll be a Castellano by Saturday, and the restaurant will be safe, and we’ll figure out the rest of it as it comes.”

I didn’t tell him that I’d caught myself, twice during that meeting, watching Damian’s hands instead of listening to the terms, or that some reckless, unguarded part of me had wondered what it would actually feel like to be chosen by a man like that for reasons that had nothing to do with revenge.

I had four days to remind myself that wondering was dangerous, and that I had far more important things to focus on than whether Damian Castellano’s eyes had softened, just slightly, every time he looked at me across that table.

Back at the restaurant that evening, I found Marisol wiping down tables after close, the radio playing low, the particular quiet of a kitchen finally emptied out after a long shift. She took one look at my face and set down her rag.

“You said yes,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I signed the contract an hour ago.”

“And how do you feel about that.”

I sat down at the nearest table, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour. “Relieved. Terrified. Furious that I don’t have a better option. And something else I don’t have a good word for yet.”

Marisol studied me for a long moment, the way she’d studied me since we were fifteen and she’d first learned to tell when I was hiding something even from myself. “That last one,” she said. “Does it have anything to do with how he looked at you, by any chance.”

“I don’t know him, Marisol. Four days ago I didn’t know his name beyond a headline.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, not one I was ready to say out loud, not even to the person who’d known me longest. I changed the subject instead, asked about the dinner rush, let her talk about the new supplier she’d found for the empanada wrappers, and tried not to think too hard about the particular warmth in Damian’s voice when he’d told me he intended to make this survivable, like my comfort mattered to him beyond whatever this arrangement was actually protecting.

I failed. I thought about it the entire walk home, and long after I should have fallen asleep.

The next morning, Priya’s office sent over a schedule for the remaining three days, each hour accounted for with the precision of a military operation rather than a wedding. Dress fittings. A rehearsal of sorts, though neither of us had vows to practice since the officiant would supply them. A single joint interview with a lifestyle magazine Damian’s team had apparently selected months in advance, the questions pre-approved, every answer we were permitted to give already loosely scripted to protect the story the board needed to believe.

I read through the sample questions twice, sitting at my kitchen table with my father’s recipe book open beside me for no particular reason except that it steadied me to have it near. Where did you meet. How long have you been seeing each other. What drew you to him. Each answer already half written for me in Priya’s careful shorthand, each one a small, necessary lie I was going to have to deliver convincingly to strangers who’d print whatever I said as truth.

My father watched me read through it, his own coffee cooling untouched in front of him. “You don’t have to do the interview,” he said. “Whatever the contract requires, there has to be a version of this that doesn’t ask you to lie to an entire magazine about falling in love with a stranger in four days.”

“It’s part of the arrangement, Papa. I knew that going in.”

“Knowing it going in doesn’t make it easier to live, mija.” He reached across the table and closed the recipe book gently, like he needed my full attention for what came next. “Just promise me you won’t lose yourself in whatever performance this marriage requires. Whoever Sofia Reyes was before Saturday, I’d like her to still be standing there when all of this is finally over.”

I promised him, though some uneasy part of me already suspected that keeping that promise was going to be considerably harder than either of us currently understood.