Chapter 2

People with the most to lose don't cause problems.

The words followed me out of his office and into the elevator and all the way down to the lobby.

I stood on the pavement outside the building in the cold afternoon air and realized my hands were shaking, not from fear, but from the humiliation of knowing he was right, because I had walked into that office as a desperate woman and walked out as a transaction, and I had let it happen because I had no other choice.

My mother's surgery was scheduled within twenty-four hours.

I sat in the hospital waiting room alone while she was wheeled through the theatre doors, and I stared at my hands the whole time thinking of what to tell my mother about my marriage to the Kain heir.

These same hands had just signed away six months of my life to a man who saw me as nothing more than a controlled variable, and now I was sitting here pretending it was worth it. It had to be worth it. I thought to myself.

Daniel texted me once after I told him everything that had happened. “You don’t have to do this, Elena,” he said.

I didn’t reply to him because we both knew this was the only option, so he agreed to the annulment when Malvin’s lawyer showed up at his door the next morning with paperwork.

Daniel signed it without calling me first, and when it was done, he sent me just one message. “Take care of yourself, Elena.”

That was the one that broke something small and quiet inside me, but I couldn’t afford to feel weak at that moment.

Three days after the surgery, I stood in a government registration office with Malvin beside me, with just a clerk, two witnesses his lawyer had arranged, and a form I signed with my full name.

When we walked out, Malvin’s car was already waiting. He held the door open, I got in without looking at him, and we rode in silence for a few minutes.

"The company will release a statement tomorrow," he said.

"Your assistant already briefed me," I replied

"You'll move into the penthouse this weekend."

I nodded because there was nothing else to say, and he wasn't asking either.

The penthouse was on the forty-fourth floor and had more space than anywhere I had ever lived.

When I arrived at his penthouse, his head housekeeper, Grace, showed me around carefully. She didn’t ask questions, which made me like her immediately.

My room was down the hall from Malvin’s. I unpacked my bags in under thirty minutes, stayed in my room for a long while, and came out to find Malvin in the dining room reading something on his tablet, then he glanced up briefly.

"There's food," he said.

"I'm not hungry," I replied.

"Grace mentioned you haven't eaten since you arrived." He set the tablet down.

Something tightened in my chest. "You asked her to report to you about me?"

"I asked her to make sure you were settling in." His tone was completely flat. "Eat something, Elena. I'm not asking because I care, I'm asking because a sick wife is an inconvenience I don't need right now."

There it was, but at least he was honest.

I sat at the far end of the dining table and ate in silence while he went back to his tablet, and we didn't speak again through the meal.

The only sounds were the quiet clink of cutlery and the low hum of the city forty-three floors below us. When I finished, I picked up my plate.

"Your mother," he said, without looking up. "How is she recovering?"

"The doctor says the surgery went well. She needs rest and follow-up care."

He nodded once. "The ongoing medical bills are handled directly, and you don't need to track them."

"I want to track them," I said.

He looked up. "Why?"

"Because I need to know exactly what I owe you when this is over," I replied.

His eyes stayed on me for a moment, unreadable. Then he looked back at his tablet. "Follow the contract, stay out of my business, and don't embarrass me publicly. That's all you owe me."

I said nothing, took my plate to the kitchen, rinsed it quietly, and went to my room.

That night I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and I thought about my father, about how he died broken and disgraced, blamed for something that destroyed everything we had, and about how I swore, standing at his grave at ten years old, that I would never let anyone hold that kind of power over my life, and yet here I was, in a penthouse that wasn't mine, and in a marriage that wasn't real.

I couldn’t sleep for a long time.

In the morning, Malvin's driver took us to the office together. People stared the moment we walked in, some whispered, and some didn't bother hiding it. I kept my face neutral and went straight to my desk.

By midday, a colleague, Maya, appeared beside me with the kind of expression that meant she had been waiting all morning to say something.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this," she said quietly, leaning close. "But before you joined, there was someone. A woman who was close to the CEO whenever he visited from the main office." She glanced toward Malvin's closed door. "She left suddenly three months before you started, but nobody knows why."

I kept my eyes on my screen. "Why are you telling me this?"

Maya hesitated, then said. "Because she came back this morning, and she's been in his office for over an hour."

I didn't look up, but Maya wasn't finished.

"And before she went in," she said carefully, "I heard her tell his assistant that she wasn't leaving until he explained why he chose you."

I finally looked towards his office, and through the glass wall, she was staring directly at me.