SOLD HIS CONTRACT WIFE

Caged

# Chapter 3

My whole body went cold.

I closed my fist around the note just before Damian's eyes got to my hands. Before he'd taken two steps inside, I snatched up the closest folder. An employee handbook. I flipped it open on the desk like I'd been reading it all along.

"I didn't expect to find you here."

His voice was easy. No weight behind it. Just a man wondering why his fiancée was in the records room a week before their wedding.

"I got lost. Records department." I closed the handbook. "Trying to find whoever handles insurance forms. Apparently that person only works Tuesdays."

His eyes moved over the desk the empty surface, the one plain folder. He looked a second too long, but not like he suspected anything. Just like he noticed something was off with me.

"You could've asked me."

"Didn't want to bother you before your call."

"It's fine." He glanced at his watch and groaned under his breath, like a kid stuck waiting for something he'd been promised. "Come on. Dress fitting in twenty minutes. Sophia already threatened to reschedule us twice."

"Sophia wouldn't dare."

"Sophia terrifies me a little. Probably why we hired her."

I held my breath all the way to the hallway, and even then I could only let out a little of it. The note was tucked against my ribs. I swear I could feel it ticking.

"You've been off all morning," he said, matching my steps. He put his hand on my back without looking, the way he always did.

"Just tired."

"Most brides only talk about flowers this close to the wedding."

"I'm not most brides." At least that part was true.

I let a few seconds pass, then asked, "Who actually signs off on senior hires? You, or HR?"

"Depends on the role. Why?"

"Just curious. You're about to have a company full of strangers who know all your secrets."

"Legal checks the big ones. References, the usual stuff."

"Do you check them yourself? Or just trust what's on paper?"

"That's what background checks are for."

"What if someone made up a company on their résumé? Would anyone catch that before the interview?"

He laughed and slowed down a little. "What is this, an audit?"

"Wedding brain," I said. "I overthink everything this week."

"You've been asking a lot of questions for wedding brain."

"Have I?"

"Since yesterday, actually." He said it like it was nothing. No accusation. Just something he noticed, which somehow felt worse than if he'd been suspicious. He never pushed. Not until the morning he raised a gun and needed someone else's certainty to go through with it.

I kept his answer in the back of my mind. Nobody checks until after. I'm making sure that's not true this time.

We walked past the glass wall that looked down on the lobby. My steps slowed on their own. Down in the lobby, a man in a gray suit stood by the front desk, scrolling his phone, in no hurry at all. I couldn't even see his face. But the way he held his shoulders made my stomach drop, and then I remembered. The interview wasn't for another hour.

"Something wrong?" Damian asked, following where I was looking.

"No. Thought I recognized someone."

"You know half this city. Comes with being brilliant." He pulled me gently toward the elevator. "Sophia. Twenty minutes. I promised her we'd actually show up on time for once."

The wedding planner caught us in the lobby before we reached the elevator. A small, efficient woman with a tablet, already halfway forgiving us for being late.

"Miss Elena. Champagne or ivory for the table runners? I need an answer by Thursday or the vendor bumps us to the back of the line."

"Champagne."

"Good choice. Ivory washes out under the tent lights ruined four weddings this year already." She was already writing something else down, moving through seating charts and flower orders like she'd said the same words a hundred times. I nodded along, smiled, let Damian's hand rest against my back. A bride too happy with her own wedding to notice anything else. That was the whole point. Nobody looks twice at that.

When his hand touched my back, my throat tightened for a second, right where the fear used to sit before the gun went off. I smiled through it anyway. It was getting easier to do both at the same time.

That was the part I hated most.

"You two are the easiest couple I've worked with all year," Sophia said, tucking her tablet under her arm. "Most brides argue with me over every color. You just agree."

"We trust your judgment," Damian said.

"Smart. It's why you're paying me so much." She was already walking off, calling something to an assistant by the flowers. Then it was just the two of us in the lobby again.

Damian got pulled into a call a few minutes later, his voice dropping into work mode, already stepping away before he'd finished the sentence.

That left me alone for about ten minutes. Long enough to stop wondering if I could keep Marcus out of the building, and start figuring out how to make him fail instead. Stopping the interview would only make him more careful. And careful was worse than confident.

"Afternoon candidate's here," the receptionist called out.

The doors opened.

Marcus walked in like he already owned the place. Gray suit. Steady walk. The same calm he'd had standing over us with a gun in his hand. He swept the room once, fast, and I knew exactly what he was doing. He was checking the exits, the way I always did. Then he glanced at his watch, frowned a little, and reset it by a minute against the wall clock a small thing, done without him seeming to notice he'd done it.

Then he saw me.

He crossed the room and put his hand out. "You must be Miss Elena. Damian mentioned his fiancée used to be an architect herself, before the company took off."

Normal enough. A reasonable thing for Damian to have told a new hire. I shook his hand. My grip didn't shake.

"He doesn't usually talk business before an offer's signed," I said.

"He didn't." Marcus smiled, relaxed. "I asked."

Small thing. Almost nothing. But he went looking for information about me before he even walked through the door before he had any reason to care who I was, unless he already knew exactly what I'd become to him.

"Most people spend the morning rehearsing answers. Not asking about people they haven't even met."

"I find people more interesting than answers. Answers are usually the same from anyone who's prepared."

"And people?"

"People tell you things without meaning to." He held my eyes a second too long. "You, for example, are trying hard not to look like you're sizing me up."

"Am I."

"You are. I don't mind. I'd be doing the same in your place."

Behind me, the elevator chimed. Damian, done with his call, already walking toward us with his hand out for Marcus.

I had maybe four seconds before the two men who would one day ruin my life stood in the same room, shaking hands, both of them smiling.