The Substitute Wife

Chapter 2: Fine Print

Marcus answered on the second ring. "Lisa? It's almost eleven. Are you all right?"

"I need you to pause the Halvorsen renewal."

The line went quiet. "Say that again."

"Pause it. Before Friday."

"Lisa." His voice dropped. "That license is the reason Tactron has led its field for six years. Your father built it. You told me you would never touch it."

"I know what I told you." Her voice cracked, and she hated it. "I'm touching it."

He exhaled slowly. "Then understand what you're asking. The agreement lets me hold a renewal for seventy two hours. After that, the penalty clause starts running, and it runs against the licensor."

"Against me."

"Against you. The hold costs them nothing for three days. Then it starts costing you."

"Then I have three days."

"To do what?"

"I don't know yet." She wiped her face with the back of her hand and smelled wine. "To make them listen."

"This won't make Vivian Cole listen. It might make her dig in." He paused. "And once the board sees a hold on that license, they'll trace it to the Reyes estate. They'll find out it's you."

Lisa looked through the glass doors. Inside, the quartet had started again. Guests were laughing. Someone had already cleared her place at the table.

"They don't know the license is mine," she said. "Ryan doesn't know. They think the Reyes estate is an old trust that sends royalty checks."

"For now."

"File the hold, Marcus."

"Lisa, what did they do to you?"

She ended the call.

"Lisa."

Ryan stood in the terrace doorway, his tie crooked, his chest rising and falling like he had run the whole house. "I've been looking everywhere."

She wiped her face again. "Who were you calling?" he asked.

"No one."

He crossed the terrace and set his jacket around her shoulders. She let him, and she hated that too.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I didn't know she would do that. The wine, any of it. I swear."

"But you knew about the rest."

He did not deny it. "The surgeon told me in March, in the waiting room, while you were still under. Mother called that night. And the next night, and the one after. I signed the agency's intake form just to make her stop. I never thought it would go anywhere."

"You signed up for a surrogate on the night of my surgery."

"I signed a piece of paper in a hospital hallway at midnight, because I was exhausted and scared." His voice broke. "I told myself it didn't count."

"And then you let me hear it at a party, in front of thirty people."

"I tried to tell you tonight. You saw me try."

"You had four months, Ryan."

He had no answer for that.

"The board is already pushing me for an heir," he said at last. "If I don't give them one, they'll vote me out. Everything my father built goes to people who don't care about it."

"So this is about Tactron."

"It's about us. It's about..." He stopped. "I don't know what it's about anymore."

It was the first honest thing he had said all night, and it did not help. Lisa noticed his hands were shaking too.

"Do you want a child that badly?" she asked.

"I want you."

"That isn't what I asked."

He looked away.

The music from the dining hall drifted across the terrace. Neither of them spoke until Lisa did.

"I want the contract."

"Lisa, it's midnight."

"Every page. Tonight."

"It's with Mother's lawyers."

"Didn't the agency send you a copy in March?"

He rubbed his face. "Mother's lawyer did. I never read past my page."

"Then send it to me, and I will."

"Please don't shut me out."

"Then send it."

He took out his phone and tapped the screen. Inside her bag, her tablet buzzed.

"Go back inside," she said. "Your mother will want to explain me to your guests."

"I'll come up after."

"Don't."

He stood there a moment longer, then he went.

Lisa took the elevator to the residence floor and locked her bedroom door. She peeled off the wet dress, pulled on a robe, and sat by the window with the tablet in her lap.

The contract ran forty one pages. She read every one of them. Page three named the intended parents as Ryan Cole and Lisa Reyes. Page nine said the surrogate would live at the Cole residence for the length of the agreement. Page fourteen listed the compensation, and the number made her stop for a moment.

On page nineteen, she found the signature page.

Ryan's signature was at the top, dated March fourteenth.

Below it, in blue ink, was her own name. Lisa Reyes. Dated March fourteenth.

She stopped breathing.

The L looped the way hers did. The y trailed off the same way. It was very close. It was almost perfect.

March fourteenth was the day of her second surgery. She had been under anesthesia from morning until evening. For ten days afterward, she could not hold a pen.

She had never seen this document before tonight. She had never signed it.

Her hands were unsteady as she opened the hospital portal on the same tablet. She scrolled back to March and found the surgery record. Anesthesia began at 8:10 in the morning. She was moved to recovery at 4:40 in the evening. She had spent the entire day unconscious, with a nurse watching her breathe.

Her signature had been on a legal contract the whole time.

Her eyes dropped to the line beneath her name.

Witnessed by: A. Voss.

Lisa read it twice. Amara Voss was a stranger, a name Vivian had announced at dinner like a new hire. She was not supposed to have been anywhere near the hospital in March.

Downstairs, a car door closed. Then the front door opened, and Lisa heard Vivian's voice through the floor, warm for the first time all night.

"There you are. Come in, Amara. Welcome home."

Amara was not supposed to arrive until next week.