Vows and Debts

Chapter 4:Sundown

MIA

I had three hours to decide. I spent the first one doing nothing at all.

My phone had four missed calls from my father. I didn't listen to a single one. I already knew what they would say.

I thought about going home. There was no home left to go to.

I thought about saying no. There was no real no to say. Renzo's voice came back to me, flat and certain.Or the debt is settled a different way. That wasn't a choice.

By the second hour, my hands had stopped shaking. By the third, I had an answer.

I found Renzo waiting outside my door.

"I'll do it," I said.

He didn't look surprised. "Mr. Sabbatini will want to hear that from you directly."

Vincent was in his study combing through papers. He looked up as I approached

"Well?" he said.

"I'll marry you."

"Good." His voice stayed flat, businesslike. "Tonight, we will go to the court and and it official”

"Romantic," I said, before I could stop myself.

That flicker again, at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "You'll get used to my version of it."

"I don't know your version of anything."

"You will." He stood and buttoned his jacket. "One rule. Whatever happens between us, you don't run. Not to your family. Not to the police. Not anywhere. You disappear on me, and I will assume the worst, and I will come looking."

"Is that a threat or a vow."

"With me," he said, "they're the same thing."

I had no answer for that, so I gave him none.

I left his study with my heart still pounding, and I understood, fully, for the first time, exactly what I had just agreed to become.

A wife. A debt paid in full. A stranger's name.

Nothing about me. Nothing about love. Nothing about choice.

And still, somehow, the only door left open to me.

VINCENT

She said yes faster than I expected.

Three hours. Most people in her position used every minute I gave them, looking for an exit that didn't exist. She used half of it and walked in with her answer already decided.

I watched her face when she said it. No tears. No begging. Just a flat, final yes.

That told me more than the file Renzo gave me ever could.

Mia Calloway. Twenty-six. Every picture of her family online had her sister Bianca in the center and Mia at the edge of the frame, half cut off. I noticed it the first time I went looking for leverage against her father. I noticed it again tonight, watching her walk into my study expecting nothing from anyone, already at peace with that.

I knew exactly what that calm cost. I had worn it myself once. In a house that taught me early how little I was worth to the people who were supposed to want me anyway.

Renzo knocked once and let himself in after she left.

"She agreed," he said. He already knew.

"I heard."

"You could have taken the money eventually. Made Calloway sweat for another year. You didn't need to do it this way."

"I know what I needed."

"Then what was this about."

I didn't answer.

Renzo let it go. He always did, when my face shut a conversation down. He left without asking again.

I sat alone for a long time after that. Turning the glass in my hand. Thinking about the way Mia Calloway had looked at me

No fear. No hesitation.

She had none left to spend on me. She had already spent it all on someone who deserved it even less.

Whatever I had told myself this arrangement was about, watching her walk out of that room, I understood it had already become something else.