Vows of vengeance: His contract wife

( Rhoswen’s pov)

The chandelier above the ballroom throws light across three hundred faces I've known my entire life, and not one of them looks at me like they actually know me. They look at me like I'm something to admire. Or measure. Or in the case of the wives gathered around the champagne fountain, quietly resent.

"Rhoswen." My father's oldest business partner kisses both my cheeks, his cologne thick enough to taste. "Four days. Four days and you'll be a married woman. Your father would be so proud."

I give him the smile I've been practicing since I was seven, the one that never reaches anywhere near my chest, where something has been sitting cold and tight since I put on this dress three hours ago.

"He would," I say, because it's easier than admitting I have no idea what my father would think anymore. He's been gone for six years. People stop being predictable once they're gone. You spend enough time imagining what they'd say, and eventually you realize you're only talking to yourself.

Across the room, Callum is laughing at something, his golden head tipped back, one hand resting casually on the shoulder of a senator's son. He catches my eye through the crowd, and something in his face softens, just for me, the way it always does.

The cold thing in my chest loosens a little.

This is what I hold on to.

This is what's real.

Four days.

"You look luminous, darling."

Graham appears at my elbow the way he always does, quiet as a held breath. He smells faintly of cedar and the same aftershave he's worn since before I could tie my own shoes. He takes my hand and holds it between both of his, and for a moment, the entire overwhelming room narrows down to just this my godfather's steady grip, the silver at his temples catching the light, and the warmth in his eyes that has meant safe to me since I was eleven, when I buried my mother, and again at twenty, when I buried my father.

"I keep thinking he'd have walked me down the aisle," I say before I can stop myself. "Instead of"

"Instead of me." Graham finishes gently.

There's no hurt in his voice. There never is with Graham. That's why I've never had to be careful with him the way I'm careful with everyone else in this room.

"I know it's not the same, sweetheart. It never will be. But I promise you, I won't let you walk into that ceremony alone. Whatever it takes."

I don't know yet how much weight those words are carrying.

I only know my eyes sting, and I blink hard.

Graham squeezes my hand once before letting go to greet someone else. He moves through the crowd like water, finding the lowest point in a room, touching shoulders, remembering names, making everyone feel as though they matter.

I've spent my whole life believing that if the world ever burned down around me, Graham Calloway would be the one pulling me out of the fire.

I don't know yet that he's the one who's going to light the match.

I feel him before I see him.

That's the only way I can explain it. The air in the room changes. The temperature seems to drop a few degrees, even though nothing has actually moved.

I turn my champagne glass halfway to my mouth, and there he is.

Torin Blackwood.

I've seen his photograph in the business papers a hundred times. The profile that turns hostile takeovers into headlines. The name investors say with something caught between respect and fear.

But photographs don't capture what happens when a man like that walks into a room.

They don't show how conversations around him grow quieter without anyone actually deciding to lower their voices.

He isn't looking at me.

That's the strange part.

Every other man in this ballroom has looked at me tonight admiring, appraising, calculating what my marriage means for their portfolios.

Torin Blackwood is staring at the far wall, his jaw tight, a glass of something dark and untouched in his hand. He looks like a man counting down the minutes until he can leave.

Then, for exactly one second, he isn't.

His eyes find mine across the room.

It isn't the casual glance of a stranger noticing a beautiful woman at a party. There's something else there. Something that looks almost like recognition.

Grief.

Maybe even regret.

It's gone before I can decide what I'm seeing.

He looks away first, his jaw tightening as he lifts his glass to his mouth, like he suddenly needs something to do with his hands.

"Don't."

Callum's voice comes warmly against my ear, and his hand settles at the small of my back.

"That's Blackwood. Ignore him. He's got no manners and even less charm. He'd tear this entire deal apart with his bare hands if he thought it would cost me a single point of market share."

"He was staring," I say.

"He stares at everyone like he's deciding whether they're worth destroying."

Callum presses a kiss to my temple, easy and warm, then guides me toward the dance floor.

"You, least of all people, have anything to worry about from a man like that."

I let him turn me into music.

I let the ballroom spin gold around us. I let myself believe that the only number that matters is four the number of days between tonight and my wedding.

But some stubborn little part of me keeps drifting back across the room, toward the man standing alone against the far wall.

The man who looked at me like he already knew exactly how this story ends.

And hated every second of it.

I don't understand it.

I tell myself it's nothing. A stranger's bad mood. A rival's contempt. Nothing more.

I have no idea, dancing in my fiancé's arms beneath a chandelier my father once told me was far too expensive to be tasteful, that in four days I will be dead to everyone in this room.

That the man watching me from across the ballroom already knows it's coming.

And that he is the only person here who is going to spend the next two years waiting for me to come back.