The Offer

POV: Kira

"Mara Soto." His voice came through my door before I even got the chance to look through the peephole, low, certain, nothing like a knock from a neighbor or a delivery. "Or should I use Kira."

My whole body went cold.

I stood frozen for one full second, hand hovering over the lock, running through three years of contingency plans in my head, the go bag under my bed, the second phone taped behind the bathroom mirror, the route out the fire escape I had memorized my first week in this apartment and never once used.

I opened the door instead. Running would only confirm what he already seemed to know.

"I do not know who that is," I said, keeping my voice as flat as I could manage, though my pulse was slamming hard enough that I was sure he could hear it from where he stood.

Luciano Rodriguez leaned one shoulder against my doorframe like he had all the time in the world, jacket gone, sleeves rolled up, looking nothing like the exhausted man on the stairwell that morning and everything like a man who had come here with a plan already decided.

"Kira Quezada," he said again, unhurried. "Presumed dead three years ago. Closed casket funeral. Father's company still limping along without her. Should I keep going, or have I made my point."

"You have the wrong person." My hand tightened on the door, ready to shut it in his face.

"I have the right person," he said, and something in his voice gentled, just slightly, just enough to catch me off guard. "And I am not here to hurt you. If I wanted to expose you, I would have done it already. I would not have knocked, at all" he stressed the last word

I did not move. I did not let go of the door either.

"Then why are you here." I asked with my chin raised up

"Because I need a wife," he said, plain as anything, like he was telling me the weather. "And you need to stay disappeared. I think we can help each other."

I almost laughed at him, well almost. "You want to marry me." I said it out loud in disbelief 

"I want to marry Kira Quezada, publicly, quietly enough not to draw questions about where you have been for three years, and convincingly enough to satisfy my dying grandmother and flush out the man who is trying to take everything I own." He held my eyes the entire time he said it, steady, like he was daring me to look away first. "In exchange, you get my name, my protection, and a reason nobody will ever come looking for the real you again. Nobody touches a Rodriguez wife, Kira, and not even my uncle."

The word landed in my chest like a stone dropped down a well.

"Your uncle?" I asked

"Marco Igliozzi." He watched my face when he said it, watched it carefully, and whatever he saw there answered a question he had clearly been carrying since he knocked. "I take it you know the name." He replied

My mouth had gone dry. Three years, and one sentence from a stranger's mouth had undone every wall I had built.

"Get out," I said, my voice shaking despite everything I did to keep it steady.

"Kira." he said my name and looked dead into my eyes

"Do not call me that." My hands were trembling now, and I hated that he could see it, hated that three years of careful invisibility had come apart in one conversation on my own doorstep. "You do not get to say that name like you know me. You do not know anything about me." I retorted 

"I know enough." His voice stayed calm, infuriatingly calm, while mine was falling apart in real time. "I know he was supposed to marry you. I know you disappeared instead of letting that happen. I know exactly what kind of man my uncle is, better than almost anyone alive, because I have spent my entire adult life trying to keep him from taking what is mine. So no, I do not know you. But I know enough to understand why you ran."

I did not answer him. I could not, not with my throat closing the way it was.

"I am not asking you to trust me," he said, quieter now. "I am asking you to think about it. One year. My name on your paperwork instead of his. Think about what that buys you." He said it softly now

He took a card from his jacket pocket and held it out. I did not take it right away.

"You have until tomorrow night," he said. "After that, I go back to my grandmother with another woman on my arms. And I go back to wondering how long it takes my uncle to find you on his own, because men like him always find what they are looking for eventually, Kira. The only question is whether you are protected by then, or not." He pointed out

"Why me." The question came out before I could stop it, quieter than I meant it. "You could find yourself a woman to be your wife and fight your uncle head on by yourself "

Something shifted in his face, just briefly, there and gone before I could name it. "Because my uncle already knows where you are, whether you believe that yet or not. He has not spent three years wondering where you went. A stranger cannot protect you from him, Kira. Only my name can."

I took the card.

He held my eyes a moment longer, like he was memorizing something, then turned and walked down the hallway without looking back, and I stood in my doorway with his card burning a hole in my palm and six years of careful silence collapsing around my ears.

Tomorrow night. I had less than twenty four hours to decide whether to marry a stranger, or wait for Marco Igliozzi to finish what he started years ago.