The Vow of Vengeance

Nadia Knows

She was sitting on my kitchen counter when I got back.

Not in a chair. On the actual counter, legs dangling, eating crackers from a box she had found in my cupboard and reading something on her phone with the focused intensity she usually reserved for court documents and reality television finales.

Nadia Cross had a key to my apartment and absolutely zero respect for the concept of waiting to be invited.

I dropped my bag on the chair by the door and shrugged off my jacket.

"Well?" she said without looking up.

"He said yes."

She looked up.

The cracker stopped halfway to her mouth. Her eyes moved over my face with that rapid, precise assessment that had made her one of the sharpest people I had ever known — reading me the way she read everything, quickly and completely and without the filter of what she wanted to find.

"He said yes," she repeated.

"By end of day I'll have a draft contract."

She set the cracker down on the counter beside her. Set the phone down. Gave me her full attention in the way she only did when something had genuinely surprised her, which was rare enough to be significant.

"Celeste," she said carefully. "You walked into Dorian Vance's office this morning and proposed marriage and he said yes."

"That is what I just said."

"To you. Specifically. Within twenty-four hours of the request."

"Eighteen months minimum cohabitation," I said, moving to the kettle. "Thirty percent of the portfolio at market rate on maturity. Shared residence, separate arrangements. Contract to be reviewed by your brother before I sign anything."

Silence.

I turned around.

Nadia was staring at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before — somewhere between stunned and deeply, profoundly unsettled.

"My brother," she said.

"He's a contract lawyer. He's independent. He's the only person I trust not to have existing loyalties to my father or anyone connected to him."

"My brother," she said again, "is going to have a stroke."

"He'll survive." I turned back to the kettle. "I need you to call him today. Tell him to clear tomorrow morning."

She didn't speak again for a full two minutes.

I made the tea. Set a cup in front of her. She picked it up automatically, which meant she was thinking hard enough that her hands were operating independently of her mind.

Finally she said, "Why did he agree?"

"The portfolio," I said. "My mother's trust. He's been trying to access adjacent assets through my father for two years without success. I gave him a cleaner route."

"That's the transaction," Nadia said. "I'm asking why he agreed. Dorian Vance doesn't need money. He doesn't need property access badly enough to attach his name to a public scandal." She looked at me steadily. "So why did he say yes that fast?"

I wrapped both hands around my cup.

"He has his own reasons for wanting Mirelle to fall," I said.

The words landed in the kitchen like something physical.

Nadia went very still.

"He told you that?"

"At the end of the meeting. Unprompted."

"And you have no idea what those reasons are."

"Not yet."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she exhaled — a long, careful breath that she used when she was organizing information into categories of concern.

"So you've entered into a marriage negotiation," she said, "with a man who has a hidden agenda connected to your primary antagonist, whose motivations you don't fully understand, on a timeline of eighteen months minimum, with a contract that doesn't yet exist." She looked at me. "Tell me the part where this is a good idea."

"It's not a good idea," I said. "It's the only idea."

"There's a difference."

"I know." I met her eyes. "Which is why I need your brother to go through that contract with a microscope. Every clause. Every term. Every piece of language that could be interpreted two ways — I want to know before I sign."

Nadia studied me for a long moment.

Then she picked up her phone.

Marcus Cross arrived at seven that evening.

He was three years older than Nadia and looked it in the way that lawyers looked older than their age — not in years exactly but in the particular weariness that came from spending too long reading documents designed to obscure rather than illuminate.

He sat at my kitchen table with the preliminary framework Dorian's legal team had sent at five fifty-eight — two minutes early, which I noted — and he read it in complete silence for twenty-two minutes while Nadia and I sat across from him and did not speak.

When he finished he set it down and looked at me over the top of his glasses.

"This is," he said, "either the most airtight preliminary framework I have ever read or the most dangerous one. I haven't decided which yet."

"What's the distinction?" I said.

"Airtight means they want this to work cleanly," he said. "Dangerous means they've closed every exit they could anticipate." He tapped the document. "The terms you negotiated are honored — all of them. The seventy percent protection clause is solid. The cohabitation terms are specific enough to be enforceable." He paused. "But there are three sections here I want to reread before I give you my full assessment."

"Take the time you need," I said.

He looked at me for a moment.

"Celeste," he said carefully. "Do you understand who you're dealing with?"

"I'm beginning to," I said.

"Dorian Vance has been involved in four major acquisitions in the last three years," Marcus said. "In every single one, the other party walked away believing they had negotiated well. It took between six and eighteen months for each of them to realize they hadn't." He held my gaze. "He is extraordinarily good at making people feel like they won."

The kitchen was quiet.

I thought about the meeting. The way he had agreed to my terms — cleanly, without visible resistance. The way the contract had arrived two minutes before the stated deadline. The way he had revealed Mirelle at the end, just enough, just precisely enough to give me a reason to trust the alignment between us.

Like a man placing pieces exactly where he wanted them.

"Then I need to be better," I said.

Marcus looked at me for a long moment.

Then he picked up the document again.

"Let me finish reading," he said.

I had spent three days planning my move. Sitting in my kitchen watching Marcus read, I was beginning to understand that Dorian Vance had been planning his for much longer.